Wheatley School Principal Sean Feeney reassured parents at Monday night’s East Williston School Board meeting that the Wheatley School is working to find guidance counselors to fill two vacancies in a department that has had a series of personnel changes over the past two years.
The resignation of Wheatley guidance counselor Jeremy Wang announced at Monday night’s meeting was the latest change.
Wang is the third guidance counselor to leave Wheatley in the past two years. His imminent departure follows Mary Harrison’s sudden resignation last month from her position as the school district’s director of guidance.
“We’re all concerned. We stress the relationship between the student and the guidance counselor,” Feeney said. “We’re confident we’ll find the guidance counselors.”
His comments were prompted by concerns expressed by past Wheatley PTO President Jamie Cutinella, who said her daughter, a Wheatley senior, and her son, a sophomore, have had three different guidance counselors in the past three years and are now assigned to a fourth counselor.
“We kind of feel like our kids are being lost in the shuffle,” Cutinella said.
She said other parents in the school district are also concerned about the guidance department changes.
Feeney acknowledged that turnover in the guidance department over the past two years has disrupted relationships between Wheatley students and their guidance counselors.
“Each year has seen the replacement of a guidance counselor and their case load,” he said.
He said each of the four counselors who normally staff the department have case loads of approximately 200 students.
Feeney said Wang, who started at Wheatley this fall, was returning to a position in the school district where he previously worked. .
Feeney called Harrison’s departure a “tremendous blow.”
Mark Kamberg, president of the East Williston Board of Education, said after the meeting that Harrison’s resignation after five years to take a job in another school district had not been anticipated.
“Mary Harrison was a great asset to the East Williston School District. Her resignation was a disappointment,” Kamberg said.
Kamberg said Wheatley guidance counselor Greg Wasserman will take over as director of guidance in February. An interim district guidance director, Diane Johnson, was hired through December.
Wasserman’s appointment as director of guidance was delayed until February, Kamberg said, so he could continue assisting students he currently counsels through the end of the current semester.
Feeney said the high school is actively soliciting candidates for the two open spots in the Wheatley guidance department.
He said the turnover began with the retirement of guidance counselor Wes Berkowitz at the end of the 2011-12 school year. He said that was followed by the departure of Rick Posner, who took the spot left vacant by Berkowitz. Posner left at the end of the 2012-13 school year to return to a job he previously held in another school district, Feeney said.
“They’ve had a big turnover. I’m just concerned they hire the right person,” Cutinella said.
In other developments:
• The school board voted to repair the roof of the North Side School at a cost not to exceed $50,000. Board said the approval was made as an “emergency condition” after slate roof tiles fell from the school’s roof earlier this month.
