Caseloads Still Stagger Counselors

A typical day for Paul Pagano, the sole counselor at Clifton Middle School in Monrovia, goes something like this:

He is in his office about to suspend a 13-year-old youth for repeatedly hassling a teacher when he has to cut away to check on two teenage girls who are trying to iron out a dispute through a peer mentoring program in an adjacent room.

A teacher walks in to discuss class schedules, but Pagano has to break away again to chastise two students who are serving an in-school suspension just outside his door. Instead of doing homework, they are goofing around.

As he finishes with the class schedules, another teacher walks in to tell him that she overheard two students talk about overdosing on drugs.

With a student body of 713 to counsel, Pagano’s life is an endless ballet of leaping from one crisis to another. He estimates that he talks to about 200 students a day, mostly for a minute or two, and still many others do not get the attention they need.

“Kids always say, ‘Mr. Pagano, I need to talk to you but I know you don’t have time,’ ” he said.

Pagano is part of a caseload problem that continues to plague many schools and government agencies despite an increase in tax revenues generated by a healthier economy.

For example, while experts recommend a maximum ratio of 300 students per counselor, Los Angeles County schools average 986 to 1. The statewide average is 1,056 students per counselor--the nation’s worst ratio.

Elsewhere in the county:

* Only three investigators are assigned to review the operations of the county’s more than 150 privately run foster family agencies. That imbalance came to light last month when it was revealed that the agency overseeing a foster mother who allegedly beat a 2-year-old girl to death had another foster child die while in its care, and a third shaken so hard he remains in a vegetative state--all within the past 10 months.

* Social workers have caseloads of up to 50 children a month although the union contract says that they should have no more than 30.

* Probation officers are responsible for up to 1,000 probationers at a time although the nationwide standard is one officer for every 100 probationers.

* Deputy public defenders are assigned nearly 1,200 misdemeanor cases a year while lawyers who handle felonies get up to 225 cases a year. The national standard: 400 misdemeanor cases and 150 felonies.

Some workers have benefited from social trends: Welfare reform has significantly cut welfare rolls, and the sharp drop in the homicide rate has given detectives more time to solve cases. But many weary field workers remain plagued by lopsided ratios, leaving them worried that the neediest and most troubled members of society are falling through the cracks.

Counseling workloads received more attention after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, when students spoke about behavioral signals that could have foreshadowed the attack.

Impractical ratios force counselors to perform “random acts of guidance,” according to Loretta Whitson, incoming president of California School Counselor Assn.

Byron Briggs, a counselor responsible for 672 students at Centennial High School in Compton, added: “We have a lot of social problems and we can’t get to half of them.”

Some counselors blame Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that froze property taxes and institutionalized the argument that government would cope with the cuts by simply eliminating waste.

In fact, counselors say, as tax revenues dropped, school officials let the number of counselors lag while enrollment continued to increase.

Whitson and other counselors say they have been an easy target for budget cuts because it is hard to show a correlation between their preventive efforts and academic performance.

“We have not done a good job of explaining the importance of what we do,” she said.

In the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, lawmakers from Washington to Sacramento began to demand more counselors in schools to reduce school violence.

A bill by Assemblyman Carl Washington (D-Paramount) to provide at least $10.7 million to hire counselors statewide for conflict resolution programs recently won overwhelming support in the Assembly and has been endorsed by Gov. Gray Davis.

Washington introduced the bill in January, but it only gained momentum after the Colorado shooting.

For Pagano, help could not come too soon. He is 39, gregarious and energetic, but says that he cannot keep this pace up indefinitely.

“Do I manage? Of course I manage. But I have no choice.”

He was going to be a lawyer once but quit law school after a semester, deciding to become a teacher. He taught for nine years before becoming a counselor at Clifton in 1991. He has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and two awards for excellence in counseling.

His job used to be done by two counselors, one to handle discipline matters and a second to offer emotional support and academic guidance. But in the summer before he took his post, the counselor in charge of discipline died and was never replaced.

He has been doing both jobs ever since.

His day starts when the bell for the first class rings at 7:45 a.m. Lunch is usually spent at his desk and he is almost always in his office long after classes end at 3:10 p.m., talking to teachers or parents about troubled students.

Clifton Middle School is located in the heart of Monrovia in the San Gabriel Valley. It has a racially balanced student body that includes many first-generation immigrants.

Pagano’s door is almost always open, allowing children to stream in and out.

One way Pagano tries to cope with the workload is by managing a peer counseling program that employs several seventh- and eighth-grade students to help resolve campus disputes. He selects and trains the students, but still checks in on the counseling sessions that take place on a sofa in a room just outside of his office.

“If I didn’t have those kids, I wouldn’t make it,” he says.

On a recent morning, two peer counselors were trying to resolve a dispute between 13-year-old Brittany and her 14-year-old friend, Sherah. Brittany had gotten the impression from another friend, Melissa, that Sherah wanted to fight her. Both girls were upset and Sherah had asked the peer counselors to intervene.

The counselors sat between the two girls, got them to explain what had happened and determined that it was all a misunderstanding, most likely caused by Melissa.

Brittany still appeared upset. Pagano wanted to talk to her in private, but he had to cut away to call a parent whose 13-year-old son was in trouble with his teacher for the fifth time in the semester. He promised to talk to Brittany later.

Minutes after Pagano suspended the 13-year-old boy, he learned about the two boys who were overheard talking about overdosing on drugs.

One of them, Kevin, a tall boy with baggy pants, was serving suspension in the next room at the time. Pagano called him in and closed the door. Kevin explained that he was simply telling a friend about a teenager in Pasadena who overdosed. Kevin insisted he had no intention of overdosing himself.

“You have to be aware of what you say in front of people,” Pagano warned the boy.

During the most hectic times of the day, Pagano talks with the rapid-fire speed of an auctioneer, often carrying on three conversations at a time. Several students said he handles it well.

“If there is a problem that he feels needs his time, he will take the time,” said 14-year-old Nathan Segovia.

Still, the crush makes it easy for Pagano to question his effectiveness. Earlier this year, a teenage boy he had known for three years committed suicide shortly after graduating from Clifton. Pagano saw no signs that the boy was suicidal, but wondered if he could have done more if he’d had more time to focus on individual students.

“When you get a tragedy like that, you feel so much more alone,” he said.