Summary/Overview

Created in 2014, the legislative committee’s mission is to strengthen the School Counseling profession in New Jersey by advocating for the presence of ASCA trained School Counselors who will provide a Multi-tiered System of Support for every student, thus educating the Whole-Child.  An important goal is to ensure that all administrators fully understand appropriate use of time and duties of an ASCA trained School Counselor.

From 2014-2018, team members provided testimony to the Department of Education, the NJ State Board of Education, and were invited to attend The White House Convening studies under Former President Obama’s for Every student Succeeds Act and Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher Initiatives. 

Through the years, legislative members revamped the NJDOE endorsed School Counseling Evaluation Model and created the School Counseling Mentor Program Pilot along with the Intern/New Counselor Guides. Invited to attend Professional Development committee meetings of the NJDOE, members also highlighted the RAMP program model application process as a guide to assist in educating Administrators on Appropriate duties for School Counselors. 

In February 2020, Assemblywoman Angela McKnight contacted NJSCA. Moved by personal experience with her child’s School Counselor and the recent legislation in MD of Lauryn’s Law, she wanted to team with NJSCA to create a bill to strengthen the School Counseling Profession in NJ and provide accessibility of all students to School Counseling services; especially since so many are dealing with mental health issues, depression, and/or trauma.

Since that time, NJSCA’s legislative team has worked to help pass legislation that defines the role of a school counselor and establishes a school counselor liaison in the NJDOE. Providing testimony in state hearings, the team has gathered support from all other associations including NJEA, NJPSA, NJ ASA, Garden State Coalition, and several community groups. See our timeline and current status below.

February 2024

During the 2023 legislative session, bill S2323/A1516 was released from the Education committees in both the Senate and the Assembly. It was stuck in referral to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee for quite a while.  Thankfully, so many members of our legislature have made students' mental health and wellness a priority, however, before the year’s end, there was no movement of the bill.

In her new role as Senator, Angela McKnight still considers the School Counseling bill to be a high priority. As of January 2024, she re-introduced the Bill as S-1784 with an Assembly Companion Bill A-3424, sponsored by Assemblywoman Reynolds-Jackson, Assemblywoman Katz and Assemblywoman Morales.

June 2023

March 2023

Jessica Smedley, NJSCA Past President and current Communications Chair, represented our organization at the March 3rd State Senate Education Committee hearing, focusing on suicide prevention efforts in our schools and highlighting the unique qualifications of #schoolcounselors to do the job!

Legislator Comments on the Topic:

Chairman Vin Gopal (D-11) said that purpose of today’s testimony is to understand the state’s current resources to treating mental health and teen suicide and identify opportunities to improve student services. He also said that:

Following the tragedy in Ocean County, we must ensure it never happens again;

• To the Superintendent of West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, how much does a school-based youth services program cost the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District?

• To the Superintendent of West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, are there any laws or reporting requirements that would have prevented the tragedy in Ocean County?

• To the New Jersey School Counselor Association, are districts required by law to offer school counselors?

• To the New Jersey School Counselor Association, what are the roles of a school counselor?

• To the New Jersey School Counselor Association, what are the number of school districts without school counselors?

• To the New Jersey School Counselor Association, what are the educational requirements to become a school counselor?

New Jersey School Counselor Association said that school counselors are limited in the scope of their practice, but training has helped them assume a dual identity in their unique capabilities. They also said that:

• School counselors receive extensive mental health training while still assuming an educator role, and thus are uniquely positioned to deliver youth-empowerment programs;

• There are opportunities for school counselors to make partnerships with school-based services when districts make the investment;

• There must be an increase in school counselors and school counselor administrators;

• There is an inadequate number of school counselors due to budget constraints, as a result thousands of students do not have access to school counselors;

• Students benefit from school counselors’ role in training staff and implementing student support services;

• Administrators and school counselors can better collaborate on processes and protocols to increase student services;

• Appropriating in-district services through school counselors will increasing relationships with students and provide mental health care;

• School counselors can make community connections while also providing social and emotional support to help kids feel connected and ready for learning;

• In response to Chairman Gopal, school districts are not required by law to have school counselors;

• In response to Chairman Gopal, school counselors address three counseling domains: academic, college and career planning, and mental health support and emotional wellness. They are also the only mental health professional in schools charged with serving all students;

• In response to Chairman Gopal, they do not have data on the number of school districts that do not have school counselors; and

• In response to Chairman Gopal, school counselors’ training require a 60-credit graduate degree and it mirrors that of a community-mental health provider.

January 2022

Unfortunately, A-4860 did not get acted upon in the lame-duck session of the state legislature. Assemblywoman McKnight plans on re-submitting a substitute bill, A-1516, in the new session.

December 2021

NJSCA IS REQUESTING YOUR SUPPORT AND HELP FOR S-3482/A-4860. A BILL TO SUPPORT SCHOOL COUNSELORS!

The Bill

December 8, 2021

Dear NJSCA Members,

Thank you so much to all of our members who have already responded to the plea to reach out to our state legislators about proposed legislation S-3482/A4860. We’ve received some questions about the language regarding professional development, so we’d like to try to clarify the language of the bill. Please know also that the members of the NJSCA Legislative Committee are available to help answer questions about the bill and discuss any concerns you may have. 

Let me begin by reiterating that this bill is designed with NJ School Counselors’ best interests and their needs in mind. Assemblywoman Angela McKnight, on a call just last night, stressed how important it is to her that this piece of legislation supports your work as a professional school counselor, advocates for the profession as a whole, and helps the public understand the complexities of the role of a school counselor. 

Our initial email to the membership this morning contained a link to NJ Leg to view the bill. Allow me to provide some additional history and context to the bill. Assemblywoman McKnight first contacted NJ School Counselors Association in 2019 after speaking to her own son’s school counselor about the tremendous burden of varied work responsibilities (including inappropriate duties) he was juggling and just how common that was across the state. The Assemblywoman wanted to do something about it and she enlisted our support in crafting a bill that supports school counselors and aims to educate district and state administrators to allow for appropriate professional development and ongoing learning. The spirit of the bill from the beginning has been to ensure that school counselors are given access, permission, and the resources to attend professional development that is appropriate to their job title and duties. This need stems from the fact that we heard from our membership that oftentimes when there is not a local advocate for the school counseling department, school counselors end up getting lumped into other departments’ professional development seminars on local PD days (Consider how many of our NJSCA members, at some point, had to sit through a different department’s meeting because they couldn’t figure out what to do with the school counselors on a PD day???) The original language of the bill, which still appears on the njleg.org website, discussed re-certification. The language has since been substituted. We heard the feedback from our members when we initially floated the language of the bill to our membership in the summer of 2020. The Assemblywoman has been and is supportive of our continued feedback on the bill and immediately made those changes to the wording. This new wording, attached to this email, is not available on njleg.org because it cannot be at this time. Once the bill is introduced into committee, the substitution language will be inserted. The education committee will only discuss the substitution language. We’ve attached the substitution language to this email but will provide a brief summary of the entire bill here. 

The components of the bill are the following:

1. The role of the school counselor and appropriate duties.
   By defining appropriate duties for school counselors, this bill seeks to educate policymakers at the NJDOE as well as county executive superintendents, superintendents, and curriculum directors on all the ways in which our school counselors help to support the overall mission, vision, and goals of each school district and how critical our role is in the school district.
   

2. Colleges/universities incorporating the ASCA model within CACREP/ school counselor endorsement.
   This portion of the bill supports the need for graduate training programs to incorporate the teaching of the ASCA National Model in order for graduates of our state’s programs to be eligible for the standard school counselor certification. This piece of the bill does not impact any person already holding a standard School Counselor certificate. This section of the bill is important because it will help ensure that new school counselors entering the field will be trained in the ASCA National Model which, in addition to promoting the 80/20 direct service model, supports the school counseling program delivery by utilizing evidence-based mindsets and behaviors for both students and school counselors (See ASCA’s website for more information about the National Model). Additionally, mapping our programs to national standards follows suit with other instructional areas and is a precedent. Most school counseling programs’ curriculum or program documents rely on NJ’s social-emotional learning standards, health, and physical education standards, or social studies standards, however, we believe that mapping our programs to the National Model provides more support for our counselors doing the work each and every day in the field.
   

3. Clarification of job-specific professional development training (removal of “recertification” language and addition of 100 hours of PD training over 5 years). 

Here is the critical change from the original bill to the substitution language.  There is absolutely NO need for recertification, applications, test requirements, etc. for school counselors in the field--that language was removed from the original penning of the bill. The spirit of this portion of the bill was to require school districts to provide the ongoing professional development that school counselors need and remove any barriers from providing for this professional development. Consider, for example, how many districts have told school counselors they cannot travel to professional development events, even those that are at no cost, such as the critical annual workshops about financial aid opportunities hosted by the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, College Board workshops, or Traumatic Loss Coalition county meetings just to name a few examples. How can we expect our school counselors to provide the best services to our students when they are prevented from attending the learning activities that help support and encourage our good work? This bill seeks to remove the barriers for our members to be able to receive the kind of training they need to keep their skills relevant for the myriad of tasks they are charged with. The new language reads in this section reads:

“The State board shall require, as part of the professional development requirements, that each school counselor complete 100 hours of professional development training every five years in areas related to the duties of a school counselor, including but not limited to, the promotion of mental health awareness, suicide prevention, crisis intervention, trauma-informed counseling practices, cultural competency and responsiveness, the NJ Tiered Systems of Support, delivery of social and emotional learning programming, and college and career readiness.

Again, this language is designed to support our members. Our goal is to never have a school counselor sit through inappropriate yet mandated training while missing out on the opportunity to hone their skills and develop new ones in the areas most needed. Also important to note that the 100 hours referred to in the bill are the same 100 hours over 5 years that are required of all NJDOE certificate holders. This language about professional development is not above and beyond that which is already required by code; it seeks to codify the kind of professional development our school counselors need. Finally, the language of “included, but not limited to” is critical because it provides leeway for LEAs (school districts) to retain some control over professional development decisions for their employees. 

1. Removal of 250:1 ratio mandate and explanation of cost (highlight that having additional counselors in schools is still a priority and we will continue to work on this, separate from this legislation
   The original bill had the mandate of a 250:1 student to counselor ratio as recommended by our national association (ASCA). In initial conversations with the people who work on estimating costs for legislation, the amount of money it would take to fund this legislation was nearly $150 million dollars. Had we kept this in the bill, it surely would have been dead in the water because the bill has no appropriation of funds attached to it. Assemblywoman McKnight and other legislators have already given early support for revisiting the facts around the high caseloads for some school counselors and the fact that not every public school student has access to a school counselor. This is our next level of work and advocacy!
   

2.  Establishes a School Counselor liaison within the Department of Education
   In the simplest terms possible, we know that we need a seat at the table at the Department of Education. Nearly every other professional that works in our school, be it teachers, RTI, CTE, special education professionals, and most recently our school nurses, has a seat at the policy-making table in Trenton. We know that professional school counselors have immensely important, varied, and critical work functions in our school districts. We also know that not all of our education partners understand the scope of our work, particularly how each part of what we do, interacts with the whole. This is a critical piece of the legislation and our pathway to continued advocacy efforts over time. 

Thank you, on behalf of NJSCA’s Legislative Committee, for voicing your concerns, asking questions, and advocating for all of our members across the state of New Jersey. I am honored to serve as the President of such a dynamic organization at this critical time and welcome conversations from any of our members at any time. 

In solidarity and thanks,

Jessica Smedley, Ed.S., LPC, NCC
President, New Jersey School Counselor Association, 2021-2022

Click here for the Substitution Proposal

October 2021

Pictured at the NJSCA Fall Conference on October 8, 2021, the NJSCA Legislative Committee has worked tirelessly to help support Assemblywoman Angela V. McKnight’s bill to define the role of a school counselor, ensure school counseling services for all of New Jersey’s public school students, and to establish representation and advocacy with the NJDOE. Thank you, ASW McKnight, for attending our fall conference! We look forward to continuing this work together! Please contact your legislators and tell them you are in support of A4860!

May 2021

ASSEMBLY BILL #4860

We are excited to announce our support for Angela V. McKnight’s sponsorship of Bill A-4860 introduced into the New Jersey Assembly. As we experience changes dealing in these uncertain times, know that your voice counts. The following will give some background on the inception of the bill and address items of concern. Please note that A-4860 can still be modified and we are in constant contact with Assemblywoman McKnight’s Office of Legislative Services to consult with her team regarding the language of this bill. We look forward to our continued partnership with Assemblywoman McKnight as A-4860 evolves. NJSCA will be strongly advocating for the bill’s passage into law.

Read more

October 2020

July 2020