A Lonely Battler for Students

Marino Parada arrives in his cluttered office at 7:30 a.m. with one goal in mind: to get a stack of “fail notices” out to parents whose kids are flunking.

Within minutes, things go haywire for the guidance counselor at Jefferson High in South Los Angeles.

A girl appears unannounced to confide a secret--she’s ditching school to get stoned at the park. A boy rants about a teacher who kicked him out of class. Two seniors stop by seeking letters of recommendation. Then Parada gets wind of a student walkout to protest a ban on clothes adorned with pictures of marijuana, so he skips lunch to patrol the cafeteria for protesters.

“I really need a break,” he says after five nonstop hours, the fail notices sitting untouched on his desk.

Parada is overwhelmed--and he’s not the only one. With enrollments escalating, schools nationwide face a severe shortage of counselors. And nowhere is the problem more severe than in California.

Here, from kindergarten through 12th grade, there is one counselor for every 979 students, the worst rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Some elementary school counselors serve 3,000 students or more.

Leading counseling and school health organizations recommend caseloads of no more than 250, a threshold that is especially important in secondary schools, where adolescence and academics often collide.

Counselors are supposed to serve as a safety net for students. Instead, they often perform triage, like nurses in an emergency room.

“By the time the day is over, I forget what I started,” Parada says, rubbing his bloodshot eyes after an 11-hour stretch.

Among the first to be trimmed when schools cut costs, counselors are also the first called upon to prevent violence and soothe students in its wake.

It is often when the shooting is over--after the deaths at Columbine High School in Colorado or at Santana and Granite Hills high schools near San Diego--that lawmakers and educators howl for counseling services.

After the San Diego County shootings in March, California’s schools chief, Delaine Eastin, made a point of seeking $300 million over five years to cut the state’s counselor ratio in half. The first installment--$60 million next year--has stalled in the Legislature.

But Parada believes the investment is long overdue. “I wonder how many of those school shootings could have been avoided because someone was able to detect that anger,” he says.

The counselor shortage hits hardest on crowded campuses like Jefferson, a year-round school about two miles east of USC.

Many of Jefferson’s 3,300 students come from families who survive on no more than $15,000 a year and who speak Spanish at the dinner table. In their neighborhood, taggers are bold enough to spray graffiti inside the school, and the nicest building for blocks around is the new police station a short walk from campus.

Many of the 500 students on Parada’s caseload are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Some have only one parent at home or live with other relatives.

At least half are failing, and most of those probably won’t graduate, he says. Parada, 36, identifies with his students. He is one of them--an immigrant from El Salvador who arrived in South Los Angeles as a teenager speaking not a word of English.

He is equal parts counselor, father, therapist and priest to those who enter his closet-sized office.

On one recent morning, the girl who confides her secret about ditching school to smoke pot takes a seat, fidgeting nervously.

“I am messing up so much,” she tells Parada, explaining that the police gave her a $250 truancy ticket, part of a crackdown on delinquency.

“If you get away from your friends, I guarantee that’s half the battle,” Parada tells her. “If you’re with them and you think you’re gonna give in, stop by and talk.”

He pauses to study the girl, who has bright red lipstick and lopsided bangs. “Have you ever thought about what you’d like to be one day?”

“A police officer.”

“Not like this. You’ll have to change. You have an opportunity. You can tell your mom, ‘I screwed up, but I’m going to try.’ ”

Parada urges the girl to come to school the following day. Instead, she ditches again.

In Short Supply for Many Years

Counselors have been in short supply for decades. Although their numbers nationally have grown nearly every year since 1960, their caseloads have remained stubbornly high because of the rise in school enrollments.

Along with school psychologists, social workers and nurses, counselors struggle to make a case for themselves in an era when schools tend to spend money with a single purpose: raising test scores.

“You can talk to a zillion counselors who will tell you how they make a difference, but we need the data that shows how a student is a better reader because of what we did,” says Mark Kuranz, president of the American School Counselor Assn. and a high school counselor in Racine, Wis. “Everyone wants to hold schools accountable, so you have to play that game.”

California is worse off largely because of Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that capped local property taxes and forced school districts to rein in expenses.

Like nearly half of the states, California does not mandate counselors in schools. As a result, the numbers vary from campus to campus. Instead of using counselors, some schools rely on teachers, coaches or clerical staff to advise students--even though they lack the two additional years of university training required for counselors to earn credentials.

“Counseling is a profession that has its own areas of expertise. It’s not something you tack onto someone else’s job,” says Trish Hatch, past president of the California School Counselor Assn.

Counselors deal with far more than academics. They are mentors and surrogate parents, often filling a void when mothers, fathers--and teachers--fall short. They straddle a hazy line between school employee and family caretaker.

Their work can be delicate--even perilous. Counselors shudder at cases like a recent one in Pennsylvania in which a couple sued their teenage daughter’s school district, accusing her high school counselor of helping her arrange an abortion.

Another worry that lurks in a counselor’s mind is the possibility of violence. Parada and his colleagues are the ones called in when students lash out at peers, teachers or even parents.

“We try to find ways to deal with the situation so that it doesn’t end up in an explosion, in another Columbine,” he says.

‘A Critical Time in Your Life’

Parada and his counseling partner, Ana Parra, try to meet with each of 1,000 students at least once a semester. The only way to get it done is to run a mid-semester assembly line operation in the cafeteria.

On a recent day, they set up shop and attempt to schedule their 10th-graders’ classes for the coming school year. They must see nearly 400 students by the end of the day. That’s 80 seconds for each one.

As the first wave of students arrives, Parada stands and addresses them.

“This is a very critical time in your life,” he says. “This is where a lot of high school students fail. They fall behind. If you’re failing anything, you’ll have an opportunity to make it up.”

One at a time, the students approach tables where Parada and Parra are seated.

“Are you ready for 11th grade?” Parada asks. Many are half a year or more behind in credits, their index-card records marred by Fs.

One failing girl says she’s been in the hospital with a stomach tumor. A boy with no grades at all for the last semester says he dropped out of sight because gangs at his old school had threatened his life.

There is a story behind every F, but time is short and Parada is behind.

“I’m frustrated already,” he mumbles a few minutes after starting. “It’s ridiculous.”

From the next table, Parra looks out at the teeming cafeteria. “I have to get through all these kids,” she says. “There’s no way.”

And so they rush. Parada offers the same advice to each student who is behind in credits: There’s still time to graduate on time--if you work hard. Make up your Fs at adult school, at Saturday school or between semesters.

The message falls flat. Most of the students seem more interested in joking around with friends or doodling in their notebooks.

Nearly 40 students are waiting to be seen as lunch approaches. Parada’s stomach churns, his head aches. He retreats with Parra to the concrete steps outside the auditorium. He stretches his legs, takes a few deep breaths and closes his eyes in the warm sun.

Parada spent his childhood in the Salvadoran countryside. His father grew corn, his mother raised chickens. Their family of eight lived in a shack on an estate owned by a military patron.

At 16, Parada fled El Salvador’s civil war, just as boys in his neighborhood were being rounded up for the army. He landed at Manual Arts High School just blocks from USC, a 10th-grader who couldn’t read his own textbooks.

Still, he managed to learn English and graduate on time, turning to his teachers for tutoring after school while spending every free moment at the public library across the street from the university.

He was so moved by his teachers’ dedication that he decided to become one. After five years leading a social studies classroom, he became a counselor, convinced that he could do more good there.

Parada is now in his 12th year with the district, drawing a salary of $60,000 a year. He firmly believes that his students can make it, just as he did. And he takes a hard line with slackers. Hit the books, he tells them. Get serious. And above all, think about the future, even when you’re going to the bathroom. Sit there and think.

Sometimes he’s stern, sometimes soft--as when he calls the students mijo or mija, an endearment for my son, my daughter. He eases into Spanish as his conversations turn personal. But his only tool is his power of persuasion. And often, words aren’t enough.

That’s the case with the girl who gets stoned at the park. She unexpectedly pops into his office two weeks after their first meeting.

“Been lookin’ for you,” Parada says. “What happened?”

The girl takes a seat and picks at her nail polish.

“You been doing the same thing--the drug thing? I’m really concerned with your health.”

“I’m not addicted,” she says. “I just want it ‘cause it makes me feel happy and cool with my friends.”

“But that’s the addiction. . . . You have to tell your parents. Sooner or later they’re going to find out.”

Since he last saw the girl, Parada has consulted the school’s social worker. Both agree that she is no immediate danger to herself or others--the threshold for breaking the confidentiality of their sessions and reporting her to school officials.

The girl wants more than anything else to break her habit. But she won’t tell her parents. Her father, she says, doesn’t care about her, and her mother is too busy looking after a cousin whose own mother has disappeared.

“Sooner or later, something’s going to happen to you, physically or mentally,” Parada tells her. “God forbid, an accident on the street. I’m here for you, mija.”

Once again, he asks her to return the next day. He gives her a slip of paper and tells her to have each of her teachers sign it, to prove she attended class. “If you don’t bring it back, I’ll be disappointed,” he says.

The girl offers a shy smile.

“It makes me think it’s cool you’re trying to help me, ‘cause nobody tries,” she says.

The girl skips school the next day. A month later, she is kicked out for poor attendance.

Rare Moments of Triumph

For any counselor, there are moments of triumph that make the job worthwhile. They are brief and few. Parada lives for those moments.

One day he gets an unexpected visit from senior Mario Tabares. The 17-year-old has great news: He has been accepted to UC Berkeley. And he’s going to study environmental science.

“That’s really good to see you go to Berkeley,” Parada says, his eyes lighting up, his smile wide like a little boy’s. “I’m sure you’ll do well there.”

Parada reminds the student to order his cap and gown for graduation. He offers one last thought as they part.

“You make my life easier,” he says.

Tabares is the exception in an almost thankless job. To be a high school counselor means solving everyone else’s problems. It means covering classes for sick teachers, staffing the tardy room, proctoring exams, supervising lunch periods. All the interruptions add up to less time for counseling each day.

One day, for example, Parada is talking quietly with a teenage mother when a secretary from the principal’s office pokes her head in.

“Emergency, emergency,” the woman says, asking Parada if he can cover a math class for a teacher who has been called away.

“There’s nobody else?” Parada asks.

He rushes through his meeting with the student, who is worried about having enough credits to graduate, and hustles across campus. It’s a pre-calculus class.

It might as well be Greek. Parada’s academic specialty was social studies.

“Baby-sitting,” he mumbles to himself. “There’s not a whole lot I can do here.”

At Jefferson, counselors have one other unofficial job: They are peacemakers. They defuse campus quarrels, calm angry parents and soothe temperamental teachers.

One morning, Parada is preparing his fail notices--the ones that have been sitting untouched for days--when a mother appears in his office. Her son is failing most of his classes, and she blames his teachers.

Parada immediately recognizes the last name--it’s in his stack of fail notices. He hands the woman an envelope with a copy of her son’s latest report card.

“All these Fs--my God,” she says.

“He’s almost a year behind,” Parada responds.

“He doesn’t like school. They have really mean teachers here. They don’t let them go to the bathroom.”

“Have you been involved?” Parada asks.

“I can’t. I work the graveyard shift,” she says, referring to her job at a cosmetics factory miles away.

“I care about my kids,” she adds, a large silver cross dangling around her neck. “That’s why I’m here.”

Parada asks the woman to come back the following morning to meet with her son’s teachers. She returns then with the stocky boy in tow, and Parada escorts them to an empty classroom, where a math teacher is cordial but firm: The boy is failing because he skips class, doesn’t work and has a bad attitude.

The mother won’t budge. “I really want the teachers to change their attitude,” she tells the instructor.

“What’s happened with you?” the teacher asks the boy.

“I don’t like the school,” he says.

“You don’t have to like a job to get there every day and perform your responsibilities. It’s a matter of swallowing your pride and moving on with your education,” the teacher says.

Parada underscores the point: “When you turn 19 and you’re out of high school, boom, life is going to hit you in the face.”

The mother has kept her arms crossed all morning. But after a second instructor says her son is “very smart but very lazy,” the arms unfold. The mother turns to her boy.

“You want to be a dropout in life?”

“No,” he mumbles.

As they head back to the counseling office, she tells Parada: “It’s not the teachers. It’s not the school. It’s him.”

Parada has spent nearly 90 minutes escorting the woman and her son around campus. He wishes he could spend that much time with every one of his students. He wishes he could get to know every parent.

But when he returns to the counseling office, there’s a line of students waiting, along with that stack of fail notices still on his desk.