San Juan Capistrano : Student Counseling Center to Open at Plaza

Students wandering about the Plaza de Prosperidad shopping center will encounter a new kind of shop this September when the Capistrano Unified School District opens a storefront counseling center.

Earlier this month, the district’s board of trustees unanimously approved a plan to open a free counseling center outside the high school. The center will have a psychologist, guidance counselor and clerk, all working full time to help students with career and college planning, William Eller, assistant superintendent of instructional operations, said.

The center will be open from noon to 9 p.m. to encourage working parents to come with their children, Eller said. Plaza de Prosperidad is at 31877 Del Obispo.

A. Edward Westberg, a board trustee, said he thought of the idea because he wanted to make students feel more comfortable about using a counselor. Some students, he said, shy away from counselors at high schools because the counselors handle both discipline and guidance.

Eller and Westberg said the counseling center, which will be funded with about $100,000 from the district’s portion of state lottery funds, is not aimed at taking business away from private consultants.

“I’m sure there will still be parents that will take their kids to educational consultants. We feel we can provide the same services at no cost,” Eller said.

Doris Corcoran, who has two children in high school, said she will be glad to see the district open up the free counseling center. Corcoran is using an educational consultant to help prepare her children, a senior and a freshman, for college. “With 2,400 students, it’s a physical impossibility for the guidance counselors to devote the same amount of time to one student that a person you employ does,” she said. “You’re paying for individual attention.”

Bob Taniguchi, an educational consultant in San Juan Capistrano, said he assists about 150 clients, starting at age 12, with career and college guidance. His fee ranges from $35 to $250.

Working as a school psychologist at Dana Hills High School, Taniguchi carefully skirts the issue of whether the free counseling center will cause him to lose clients.

“It’ll be interesting. I’ve heard other people say that they don’t see why the counseling can’t stay in the school, but that’s only what I’ve heard,” Taniguchi said. “The whole concept is a surprise to me.”