By Jonathan Friedman
Lookout Staff

July 21, 2010 -- In an unusual move during a period when the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) has been cutting costs, the Board of Education last week voted to add a college counseling position to the Santa Monica High School roster. The decision was made against the advice of Superintendent Tim Cuneo.

The new position, which was not requested by Samohi, will cost the SMMUSD approximately $80,000 to $100,000, Cuneo told the board. The board asked staff to recommend at the next meeting on Aug. 18 how the cost should be covered.

Also at the meeting, the board restored three full-time equivalent counselor positions (1 at Malibu High School, 1 at Lincoln Middle School, .5 at Olympic High School and .5 at John Adams Middle School). This will cost approximately $280,000 to $300,000.

The counselor restorations were recommended by District staff following communication with the school principals and others regarding the student/counselor ratios. These moves received unanimous support from the board.

The creation of a new college counseling position for Samohi was a divided decision. Ralph Mechur, Oscar de la Torre, Kelly Pye and Maria Leon-Vazquez voted in favor. Jose Escarce and Barry Snell opposed. Ben Allen abstained.

Mechur proposed the addition because he said the student/counselor ratio was too high, especially when compared to the ratio at Malibu High. There are two college counselors at Samohi, making the student/counselor ratio approximately 1,500:1. Malibu has one college counselor for approximately 700 students.

Escarce said this was a misleading statistic because only seniors at Samohi use the service, and of those only 60 percent see the college counselors. So the ratio is actually smaller by this calculation, although still higher than the one at Malibu High.

Escarce also noted this would be adding cost to a college counseling program that has been operating with two counselors for several years. Although he said he sympathized with the idea that the student/counselor ratio at Samohi should be reduced, he did not believe this was the appropriate time to do it. He failed to persuade Mechur.

"Just because we have been doing something that has been inefficient and substandard doesn't mean we should continue to do that," he said.

Cuneo spoke against Mechur's recommendation because the board was making this decision when, in his opinion, it did not have enough data and information on Samohi’s counseling services and whether such a change was necessary.

Snell said he supported Mechur’s concept, but he could not vote for the proposal.

"Although I understand your thought process on it, I just can't support putting in a counselor that we didn't have previously," he said. "And that's not to say there isn't a need, but there is a need in a lot of different areas."

One idea proposed for how to fund the position is to use money raised from the Save Our Schools (SOS) campaign. This is the effort by the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation (SMMEF) and volunteers to raise money for restoring positions eliminated as part of the District’s budget cuts.