CONEJO VALLEY : Parents Join Plea on School Counselors

Parents concerned about the possible loss of four to eight counseling positions in the Conejo Unified School District have asked the school board to look elsewhere for cuts in next year’s budget.

The district has notified eight of the 19 full- and part-time guidance counselors that they could be reassigned to teaching next year, but no decisions have been made, said Leean Nemeroff, assistant superintendent of the 18,000-student district.

If eight positions were to be cut, it would raise the student-counselor ratio to 800-to-1, said David Holmboe, a counselor at Los Cerritos Intermediate School and president of the Conejo Valley Pupil Personnel Assn., which represents counselors in the district.

“This would reduce our ability to work one-on-one with students who are in crisis,” Holmboe said.

Before three positions were cut two years ago, the ratio stood at 450-to-1 with 22 counselors, Holmboe said. By comparison, the ratio at similarly sized Simi Valley Unified School District is about 410-to-1, Simi Valley school officials said.

The cuts would come at a time when more students and their families are experiencing stress related to economic hardship, which is filtering into the district’s classrooms, Holmboe said.

“We are dealing with more students who are academically not performing well,” Holmboe said.

The board is expected to review its budget-cutting options next month, Nemeroff said. The district needs to trim $2 million from its $75-million budget, after cutting nearly $7 million in the past two years.