Giving Compass' Take:

• According to the author, school counselors are stretched thin due to the number of students assigned to them. The average number of students per counselor is 482, even though the recommended number is only 250. 

• Why are counselor's needs prioritized less than others in the school system?  In a recent poll, only 6 percent of respondents said that education spending should include counselors. 

• Read about the success of school counselors to keep kids on track. 

When counselors in Indiana's Beech Grove City Schools began tracking their time as part of a planning grant from the Lilly Endowment, they discovered they spent less than half of their day actually counseling, according to Chalkbeat. Instead, they were doing administrative busywork.

In the district's grant application, many school leaders noted that counselors were bogged down by simply helping students with urgent, basic needs. Many of the students in the district are poor, or come from families affected by the opioid crisis. That leaves little, if any, time to work on students' long-range plans, including college.

The American School Counselor Association recommends that a school counselor's caseload be capped at 250 students. The national average is 482. Counselors in Arizona are most overburdened of all, each with an average of 924 students to manage. In a 2016 poll, only 6% of respondents named school counselors as a key priority for education spending.

An increased focus on counselors is an extension of the call in recent years for more attention to the whole student and social-emotional learning. Strategies such as mindfulness instruction, identifying feelings and how they impact relationships, as well as increased mental health support in schools, can go a long way toward making students feel cared about, welcome and included in school.

Read the full article about counselors and social-emotional learning by Christina Vercelletto at Education Dive