Special to KPEL from Seth Hulin

The Lafayette Parish School Board approved two measures Wednesday that may affect guidance counselors in Lafayette Parish schools.

First, the board approved a job description for a high school college and career coach in hopes of reducing the number of children failing to graduate. Approval of this job description is the first step toward getting the job approved and allows school system staff to begin writing for grants, according to Director of Student Services Beverly Breaux.

“The Federal government is really looking at putting higher initiative on outreach and college opportunities,” said Breaux.

The job description in full can be found here.

The board also approved a new formula for the staffing of guidance counselors at schools. The new formula does away with half-counselors so that no school is without a guidance counselor. It does not, however, increase the number of counselors at this time.

District 9 representative, Rae Trahan had hoped to move to the maximum formula, which would yield a surplus of counselors.

“If we moved as a district to the state formula, we would be then overstaffed,” said Trahan. “My hope at that point was not to remove counselors from schools, but to implement this new college career coach job description and put some of those excess counselors in that position.”

Breaux hopes to get a grant to cover the costs of hiring new counselors to fill the career coach position.

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