After 12 years of service, counselor Nicole Coss has retired. On Oct. 31, Coss’s last day before retirement, her caseload was split equally between the three existing counselors. This increased the student-to-counselor ratio to around 400:1, surpassing the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) guideline of 250:1.
According to counselor Jennifer Jockheck, hiring a fourth counselor is crucial to helping ELHS meet the ASCA requirement, as she was hired to be a fourth counselor for the 2021 school year.
“Something that came out of COVID was that a lot of schools realized the importance of having enough counselors to adequately work with students,” Jockheck said.
A main concern of Coss’s departure for students was college applications. Students applying to college must go through their counselor to digitally submit their transcripts. The deadline for Common App was Nov. 1, the day before Coss left ELHS. However, according to Administrative Assistant Kristen Pfaendtner, a screenshot of the CommonApp website showed Coss completed everything before retirement.
“All of the other counselors have Coss’s login so they can go in and check and see if there is anything missing,” Pfaendtner said. “These schools are getting tens of thousands of applications, it takes them time to process that they’ve received a transcript.”
As a result of the retirement, each counselor took on approximately 100 more students. With a heavier caseload, Jockheck has been adjusting to working with more students.
“It’s one of those things where I’m trying to get to know the students. If the student is a senior, it’s a little harder,” Jockheck said. “Building relationships is what I’ve always been best at, I just don’t have that historical perspective.”
Before Jockheck was hired as the fourth counselor, existing counselor Jennifer Peatross was accustomed to having a larger caseload.
“I came from a school where we only had three counselors and I think we had more kids than East Lansing does,” Peatross said. “ So it’s not new territory, but we’re just adjusting.”
While student services rushed to fill the gaps of Coss’ departure, students felt alarmed about the sudden staffing change. However, Sam Tunistra (12) felt she was not adequately informed of the shift.
“I didn’t even know that I got a new counselor until I turned in my second semester LCC form,” Tuinstra said.
A job posting for school counselors has been listed on the ELPS website, but currently no applications have been submitted. This is largely due to the timing of the posting.
“The timing is going to make it a little more difficult,” Jockheck said. “Hiring for education usually happens in the summer, but now and again, you just get one of these unforeseen circumstances.”