Is your District prepared to meet the requirements in HB 18 regarding the District Counseling Program?

HB 18 was passed in the 86th legislative session and encompasses many topics dealing with mental health. This newsletter addresses the requirements of HB 18 for a District to plan, implement, and evaluate a Comprehensive Developmental Counseling Program by the 2020-21 school year.

Contact us if you would like TxSP to provide training for your district.

School Counselors in 2019

The role of the school counselor and the structure of the school counseling program has been defined in the Texas Education Code, Chapter 33 since 1995. TEC Section 33.007 was added to address additional responsibilities when HB 5 was passed by the Texas Legislative Session. And yet many of Texas School counselors are spending a third or more of their time being responsible for non-counseling duties such as coordinating state testing, fulfilling requirements for unfunded mandates such as 504, RtI/MTSS, filling in as a substitute, and/or being called on for administrative and discipline responsibilities. This bill provides hope that counselors can do what they were best trained to do - support and provide direct services to ALL our students, families, and staff in the areas of social/emotional, academic, and career/college/military readiness.

HB 18 and a Comprehensive Developmental Counseling Program

The modification to several sections of the Texas Education Code states districts must have a Pre-K through 12 comprehensive counseling program that must be established on each campus. The law requires that the development of this program must be done on campuses with administrators, counselors, teachers, students, and community members based on the updated Texas Model for Comprehensive School Counseling Programs, 5th Edition (developed by the Texas Counseling Association). The planning is to begin in January 2020 and be ready to implement for the 2020-21 school year.

 Both the ASCA and Texas model (based on TEC 33.005) has four basic components for the counseling program that must be the basis of a campus counseling structure:

  • Guidance/classroom lessons
  • Responsive services
  • Individual Planning
  • System Support

NOTE: The Texas House of Representatives posted 11/15/19 and updated on 12/5/19 – A list of charges were released for the 2021 legislation including: “HB 18 – monitor the process by which state agencies coordinate to implement the legislation and their compliance with various requirements.”

HB 18 and the Duties and Responsibilities of the School Counselor

TEC §§33.006 and 33.007 (along with coordinating board policies FFE and FFEA) define the role of the school counselor in implementing  those four components of a comprehensive program defined above. The primary responsibility in law is to counsel ALL students for social/emotional needs, to develop skills to thrive in school, and to prepare for post high school success. The Texas Education Code and board policy lists specific responsibilities. HB 18 and SB 11 has focused additional responsibilities for counselors to support the safety and mental health of all students.

Additional HB 18 District Requirements regarding the District Counseling Program

District Improvement Plans and SHAC (school health advisory council) must include a section on implementation of a comprehensive school counseling program.

Training and Continuing Education must include training for campus administrators and school counselors on planning, implementing, and evaluating a comprehensive counseling program under TEC §33.05.

District Websites and Student Handbooks – TEC §28.004 (k)(5) “ The school district shall publish in the student handbook and post on the district’s Internet website for each campus in the district, a statement of whether the campus has a full-time nurse or full-time school counselor.” Full time counselors are those that are full-time doing the work of implementing a comprehensive developmental counseling program and not performing other non-funded mandates and administrative responsibilities.

Transition Plans must be written for students returning from hospitalization or residential treatment for a mental health condition or substance abuse, including procedures, intervention, and “postventions.”

TxSP Resources for Implementation of HB 18 Coming in January!

Protocols, documents, and training will be posted to prepare your district for planning, implementing, and evaluating a Comprehensive Developmental Counseling Program based on the Texas Model.

Current TxSP Counseling Documents to Support a Comprehensive Counseling Program

10+ mandated student lessons 

District resources such as internships, district counseling calendar, hiring tools, evaluation tools, and program-planning – being updated in January!

New section on Comprehensive Developmental Counseling Program coming in January!

25+ resources for all counselors

15+ resources for high school counselors

10+ resources on statutes and ethics for professional school counselors

Spread the Word!

Many of our new districts are coming to us from referrals from our current subscribing school districts! We appreciate those referrals!

Debby Moore December 5, 2019 0 0

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Debby Moore

CEO. Trainer & Product Developer

Debby Moore has had over 32 years’ experience in Texas Public School Education as a district administrator for Administrative and Student Services, as a campus administrator for elementary and secondary levels, as counselor for special and regular education at all levels, as a behavioral specialist, and as a regular and special education teacher. Although Debby retired in December of 2010, she continued to serve in several interim school district positions such as Director of Elementary Operations, COO of Human Resources, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, and Director of Student Services. In June 2013, Debby formed Texas School Procedures, LLC.

Responsibilities at the District administrative level included developing and overseeing district guidance and counseling programs, writing district regulations, forms, and letters, training and overseeing district discipline guidelines and other operational procedures for administrators, overseeing district safety programs, handling parent complaints and grievances, and chairing expulsion hearings. Over her years of service to public education and during retirement, she has presented staff development for teachers, counselors and administrators at local, regional, state, and national levels.

Debby has been married for 30+ years to a very loving and supportive husband. Her immediate family includes two sons, three inherited sons, one daughter through marriage, and six very special grandchildren. Debby loves spending time with their pets (Bailey, a rescued cocker spaniel, and LiLo, a rescued calico cat), researching, writing, and reading. Binge-watching various detective/crime series (particularly British) on Netflix has been a well-guarded secret to this point.

Rich Claypool

CFO and Operations

Rich has served in customer service and sales positions in various industries before joining Texas School Procedures from the very beginning in June of 2013. Rich was instrumental in developing the behind-the-scenes core set-up and operations of the company with company attorneys and establishing business procedures to ensure smooth operations and functioning of the company. He continues to serve in the capacity of managing all operational aspects of TxSP and as liaison to subscribing districts providing all “vendor” documents.

Rich is the proud father of one daughter, Dilyn, and will tell anyone that she is his number one priority. They enjoy being outdoors and doing anything athletic together such as swimming, hiking, running, biking, paddle boarding, fishing, camping, and kayaking. He is a very involved parent and always attends any school activity or parent conference and has supported her outside activities of karate, dance, basketball, and softball, to name a few.

Rich is also an advocate of animals and rescues his fur pets from organizations that take in forgotten animals off the streets. He currently has Kong (a “pitte”) and Bruiser (a “chiweenie”) that he adopted from South Side Street Dogs, a non-profit vegan Animal Rescue out of Houston, Texas.

Nancy Rouse

Customer Service and Website Administrator

Nancy Rouse is a retired Texas educator and Technology support staff member with 35 years in education. Her roles in Texas schools have been varied and include teaching, mentoring, instructional specialist/designer, and management of technology systems. In addition to educating district teachers in current software, she also became a subject matter expert on teacher web page development using Lotus Notes and became the District Lotus Notes Administrator and Webmaster. During this time, Nancy helped transition to a new email system as the Microsoft Exchange Administrator and helped usher in and manage a new phone system for the district as Microsoft Lync Administrator.

It was Nancy’s stent as District webmaster where she first met Debby Moore, a colleague. Debby was developing policies, regulations, and procedures for the school district and Nancy created a website to house the “Regs” and became invaluable in editing and posting the documents. In 2016, shortly before retiring, Nancy was again approached by Debby, this time to join TxSP to edit documents and help manage the new TxSP website. So impressed by the regulations and best practices that were being developed, Nancy has continued to support her in this capacity as a valued customer service representative and document and website manager.

Nancy has three grown sons, two daughters in law, and four grandchildren – three boys and finally, a girl. She enjoys her most precious gift, her family, and the time spent with them vacationing, hunting, fishing and laughing.

Tracy Laborde

Customer Service & Project Management

Tracy Laborde has over 20 years of professional communications, project management and client relations experience. A University of Texas at Austin graduate, Tracy left Texas and started her career in Atlanta, GA. There she worked at Turner Broadcasting in their educational outreach department where she supported taking CNN, and other Turner programming, and developing course curriculum and support material for schools across the country. Her final years in Atlanta were with Coca-Cola Enterprises where she was a communications manager for their change management team; focusing on a system-wide software implementation.

Tracy returned to Houston in 2006 and worked for University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center until 2018 where she spent most of her years building a project management team to support the MD Anderson Cancer Network, a program that collaborates with hospitals and health systems in Texas, the nation, and the world to improve the quality and accessibility of cancer care and research.

Currently, Tracy is on leave from TxSP and is enjoying traveling full-time with her husband, daughter and dog anywhere that the wind blows; or that her husband’s job takes them. Embracing every adventure, small or big, is what she and her family enjoy doing these days; and they do it all across the country living in an RV (aka tiny house on wheels).

Dr. Glenda Boyer

Contributor, Consultant, and Trainer

Dr. Boyer has worked as an educator, school counselor, student assistance coordinator, licensed counselor/supervisor, trainer/consultant, and adjunct teacher in DFW area with over 30 years of combined experience. She currently has a private practice in the Denton area, working with children, adolescents, and their families, as well as adults and couples. Consultation with educators, professional development for school counselors, and adjunct teaching at area universities are also a large part of her professional life. Glenda has been with Texas School Procedures from the beginning providing training and consultation to counselors and developing counseling presentations for the site.

Glenda’s passion is working with children and adolescents and consulting with others who share the same passion – sharing from her experience and learning the needs of counselors and their students in educational settings. Play interventions with children, hands-on activities for curriculum-based support groups, crisis response, suicide prevention, bullying prevention, and counselor self-care/burnout prevention are just a few of her current interests in working with counselors in school settings.

Personal time includes time with friends and family and a small family ranching operation. Glenda has two sons and one daughter as well as a daughter-in-law and son-in-law and five grandchildren. In her spare time, she maintains close to 400 acres in West Texas where she is the proud “parent” of 30 to 40 head of cattle.

Michelle Capener

Contributor, Consultant, and Trainer

Michelle Berry Capener, MS, LPC, is both a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Certified School Counselor and has twenty-four (24) years of experience in public education. She began her education career working for a non-profit organization at an elementary campus. She later served as a behavior specialist at a high school, a counselor at a middle school and has spent the remainder of her time at the District level supporting counselors and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) staff for a District with an enrollment of about 25,000 students. Michelle also facilitated twenty-six (26) Fifth-Grade Career Fair events during her tenure which featured 75 community volunteers and served 700 students per occurrence.

Michelle’s varied experience at all grade levels, coupled with her serving in both campus and district roles, has provided her with valuable insights. Her commitment to establishing consistency within the district and monitoring compliance to state mandates was designed to strengthen and support District initiatives at all levels. In addition, her attention to detail and exceptional organizational skills allowed her to successfully orchestrate large district-wide events while simultaneously providing critical support to staff.

Michelle has been married to her husband, Todd, for 22 years. She is a proud mother to her 16-year-old son, Jordan. She is also an animal lover and enjoys spending time with her two cats, Jake and Daphne, and her beloved pup, Maggie. Michelle loves spending time on and near the water and aspires to one day live near the ocean. Personal time activities include attending church, reading, enjoying live music, exercising, and spending time with friends and family.

César Castro

Spanish Translations

César I. Castro was born in Veracruz, Mexico and immigrated to Texas at the age of 12. One year later, he was the first in his family of four to become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He graduated from Plano East Senior High School and attended Tarrant County Community College.

Besides being fluent in English and Spanish, César is also fluent in American Sign Language and has volunteered teaching the bible in the deaf community since 2010. He has worked for various school districts in office assistance administration and translation. He now has his own translation business and continues to support districts and Texas School Procedures in providing accurate Spanish translations so that parents can be partners in their student’s education and students have access to documents in Spanish while they are learning English.

At the age of 26 he married his beautiful wife, Monique Castro, a certified A.S.L. interpreter, and moved to Fort Worth, TX. Together they participate in the Local Design and Construction Department of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which builds and maintains Kingdom Halls (centers of worship) and aids in disaster relief efforts in the U.S. branch territory. Together, they have two puppies Sonny (Mut) and Jojo (Yorkie Pomeranian mix). They love camping trips and swimming at a lake, river, or beach.

Dr. Sandra McCoy-Jackson

Contributor, Consultant & Trainer

In 2017, Dr. McCoy-Jackson became the Superintendent in Sanger ISD. Under the leadership of Dr. McCoy-Jackson: In 2018, all campuses achieved “Met Standard” while earning 4 Distinctions and earning a “C” rating: In 2019, the district received a “B” rating. In addition, Sanger ISD was selected by the Texas Education Agency to receive a Pre-K Grant for $750K.

Before becoming Superintendent, she served as an Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction in Duncanville ISD and Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning in Brazosport ISD.

Dr. McCoy-Jackson also held the position of Director of Elementary Student Services, Director of Student Community Partnership, Principal and Assistant Principal in Allen ISD. Dr. McCoy-Jackson received her under-graduate degree from East Texas State University, now Texas A&M – Commerce, in Elementary Education/English. Dr. McCoy-Jackson has also obtained 2 Master’s Degrees from National-Louis University – Chicago, Illinois one in Reading and the other in administration. Dr. McCoy-Jackson was awarded her doctorate in Educational Leadership in December 2008 from Nova Southeastern University – Fort Lauderdale, Florida.