AWSP Blog

The purpose of any evaluation process is to improve. Sure, you can use evaluation to make judgments and inform program decisions, but essentially the main reason for evaluating your Comprehensive School Counseling Program (CSCP) is to improve your program. Establishing an annual review and assessment process, as required for the CSCP written plan, fundamentally establishes a continuous improvement process.

Conducting an annual Comprehensive School Counseling Program (CSCP) program review, as required in the CSCP written plan, should include feedback from school administrators and other educational partners. SSB 5030 requires each school to develop a process for conducting an annual CSCP review, but it allows schools to develop their own process. If you have not yet established a process for collecting feedback, allow us to make a suggestion: consider a simple open-ended survey.

This week, we would like to spotlight Hazen High School in Renton, WA. Principal Ashley Landes created this auto-reply email in collaboration with her counseling team and shared it with her staff at their meeting before the break to help staff understand the additional community resources to support students while school wasn’t in session. Knowing that their students had access to support beyond school allowed many staff to disengage from email and enjoy their time off.  At Hazen, this auto-reply was added to staff email over the holiday; however, a similar message could be used after school hours and on weekends to ensure access to available resources. Thank you, Team Hazen, for this great idea and powerful inclusionary practice, which allows students with diverse needs to access community resources.  This template was adapted from their resource list so our members can add their local resources.

Substitute Senate Bill 5030 passed last year. I know a lot of leaders are asking what this means. How does this impact your leadership? Does this change the role of school counselors? We are here to support you and your CSCP through the process, which is going to take time. It can take up to three to five years to truly change systems, so give yourself grace! AWSP is working with OSPI and Hatching Results to provide resources, videos, and tools to support you and your team through building the best possible partnership between building leaders and ​the school counseling team. In the meantime, check out this primer for understanding the role and working effectively with school counselors.

In partnership with AWSP, OSPI would like to hear directly from building administrators about how to best support you and your colleagues with beginning the implementation of your district’s SSB 5030/Comprehensive School Counseling Program (CSCP) plan this coming year. Your feedback will inform our collaborative work with AWSP to develop resources, tools and training that can help you to feel inspired, hopeful, and ready to leverage SSB 5030 to support improved student outcomes through the CSCP.