Tacloban City to Hire More School Counselors After Fatal Shooting

TACLOBAN CITY, LEYTE, Philippines — The Department of Education has opened plantilla (permanent) positions for guidance counselors and assistant guidance counselors in Tacloban City, following the June 22 mass shooting at San Jose National High School (SJNHS), as education officials acknowledged the urgent need to strengthen students’ mental health and psychosocial support services. The shooting, allegedly carried out by Grade 9 and Grade 10 students, claimed the lives of three students and wounded and injured 20 others, prompting calls for stronger campus security and improved mechanisms for identifying students experiencing emotional or behavioral difficulties. Nilo Eder, information officer of the Tacloban City Schools Division, appealed to licensed guidance counselors to apply for the newly opened positions, saying the division is severely understaffed. “At present, we only have two licensed guidance counselors, which is clearly not enough for more than 50,000 students in the city’s school division,” Eder said in an interview on Monday. The Tacloban City Schools Division supervises about 60 public elementary and secondary schools. “We welcome this development because we will finally have additional guidance counselors and assistant guidance counselors. We only hope there will be applicants because even if the positions are available, they cannot be filled if no one applies. We really need more counselors in our schools,” Eder said. Currently, only Leyte National High School and Sagkahan National High School—the city’s two largest public secondary schools—have licensed guidance counselors. Eder said the ideal ratio is one guidance counselor for every 500 students, a standard the division remains far from achieving. Because of the shortage, many schools assign teachers to perform guidance counseling duties despite their lack of the necessary training and professional qualifications. Some schools do not even have designated personnel to handle guidance services. Eder said the tragedy at SJNHS underscored the critical role of guidance counselors in schools. “It has now become very, very essential considering what happened at San Jose National High School. It could have been prevented if we had detected earlier that some students were already experiencing serious problems,” Eder said. He said school administrators have instructed teachers, particularly class advisers, to be more vigilant in identifying students who may be showing signs of emotional distress or behavioral changes. “Teachers should immediately report students who appear to be experiencing emotional problems—not to punish them, but so they can receive the help they need,” Eder said. Meanwhile, Eder acknowledged that some parents have decided to transfer their children to other schools following the shooting. “We cannot stop them if they no longer want their children to study at San Jose National High School. We understand and respect their decision,” he said. However, he noted that the school has become one of the safest campuses in the city because security measures have been significantly strengthened since the tragedy. “If there is one school in the division that is now among the safest, it is San Jose National High School because all security efforts are now focused there,” he said. He said Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez has committed to deploying additional security personnel to the campus. The Philippine National Police has also pledged to augment campus security by assigning police officers to the school. The school has likewise installed a walk-through metal detector and 16 closed-circuit television cameras throughout the campus as part of heightened security measures. SJNHS, which has more than 1,600 students and over 100 teaching personnel, resumed classes on Monday following the mass shooting.