Minnesota is near the bottom of the country in the ratio of school counselors to students.

There’s good news and bad news on the school counselor issue in Minnesota. The good news is that $12 million was just allocated to 77 schools in Minnesota to add school counselors or other social work support staff. The bad news: Minnesota still remains near the bottom for its counselor to student ratio.

The $12 million was approved by a bipartisan Legislature and Gov. Mark Dayton to help solve the problem of low counselor ratios. The 77 schools will use the funding over six years to hire 114 support professionals. Schools in Madelia, Mankato, Waseca and Le Sueur County received funds.

But Minnesota currently has one counselor for every 743 students, according to the American School Counselor Association. That is triple the recommended ratio and second worst in the country. Minnesota can and should do better.

Spending on student support services is Minnesota about 2.6 percent of school budgets compared to a national average of 5.5 percent.

The $12 million allocation was set up as a matching grant program. Schools applied for the money and the state matched school dollars one-for-one in the first four years, and one-third to one in the last two years.

Sen. Susan Kent, DFL-Woodbury, had proposed $75 million in funding for the program during the legislative session this year. But Republicans did not go along with that and the compromise plan eventually set up the $12 million competitive grant program.

Experts like Minnesota State University education professor Walter Roberts note the importance of school counselors in making sure students are not only mentally prepared to learn but feel secure emotionally and have counseling available to them with family situations.

And Minnesota still lags behind what it invested in school counselors from the early 2000s. The state would have to spend $75 million annually to get back to that level, according to a report by Minnesota Public Radio. To bring Minnesota’s counselor ratio to the national average would cost an additional $250 million a year.

But Kent’s plan is worth considering again as Minnesota enters a budget year and Republicans are in charge of both houses. Many of the biggest shortages of counselors are in outstate Minnesota, many areas represented by the new Republican majority.

We urge them to join with Democratic leadership to help support those schools in outstate and elsewhere that desperately need the help of counselors, social workers and other social support staff.

— Mankato Free Press, Nov. 26