Chandler, Prague, North Rock Creek and White Rock Public Schools received a total of $418,800 in grant money from the Oklahoma State Department of Education to pay for a school counselor. Each school was given a sum of money to be used over the next three years. After each year, each school will submit a claim to be reimbursed with the grant money.
Chandler Public School received $189,000 to use to pay for a counselor and social worker. At the end of each year, Chandler will file a claim and a third of the money will be used to pay for counselor and social worker. The school currently has two counselors. The current counselors split the school in half with one working with Pre-K through eighth grade and the other working with Freshman through Seniors in the high school. The new counselors’ responsibilities will be to counsel students and various tasks that are outlined in the contract for school counselors.
“The social worker will help the families with outside sources like the Department of Human Resources. If there are outside resources that schools can help with, like outside counseling for families. They can set up better resources than we have. The social worker will work with dealing with families and the general impact will be for mental health,” Superintendent Melody Toma said. The board has not hired anyone to fill either positions.
Prague and North Rock Creek received $96,000 each. Prague currently has two counselors and will use the grant money to pay for an elementary school counselor which it just hired.
“In the past, we have consolidated our elementary and middle school. Now, we will be able to have two different counselors that are specific to one side. They will deal with students and will deal with small groups,” Superintendent Kevin Engle said.
North Rock Creek will use the funds to pay for a counselor at its school. It currently has two counselors: one which works with the elementary through fourth grade, while the other works with the high school students. The new counselor will work with fifth through eighth graders, and the board hired a counselor at the last board meeting.
“We actually found a counselor who is working on her Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) which we have never had at North Rock Creek,” Superintendent Blake Moody said.
The focus in hiring the new counselor is to help students adjust mentally, emotionally and physically after a year of distance learning due to the pandemic.
“We applied for it about a month ago. When the State Department opened it up, and we were one of the lucky schools who received it,” Moody said. By hiring a new counselor, North Rock Creek will have three counselors at the school to help its students.
White Rock School received $37,800 which it is using to increase the hours of its current counselor.
It increased her time to having two hours of counseling per day, according to Principal Alicia Ebers. Along with her duties as a counselor, the school counselor also teaches middle school reading and music to Pre-K through fourth grade.
“We had been trying to increase her services during the day. So, it just worked out that we could,” Ebers said.
The current counselor is a licensed LPC, and she is the only counselor at White Rock School.