Counselors are a close-knit group in the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, as evidenced by the hugs and misty eyes when Nikka Vaughan-Strivers and Rennie Simpson said farewell to each other last month.
"We're going to get through this," Vaughan-Strivers told Simpson, as they prepared for a school year without jobs.
Both women had been laid off as high school counselors – part of the Folsom Cordova district's reduction of about 48 full-time equivalent positions for the 2008-09 school year.
Shortly before school started last week, Vaughan-Strivers received word she had been reinstated to an 80 percent position at Cordova High.
Simpson was not so fortunate.
It would be easier for everyone involved if Simpson and Vaughan-Strivers were just numbers on a balance sheet.
But if that were true, one of Vaughan-Strivers' students at Cordova High would not have circulated a petition requesting her reinstatement.
And Folsom High School students wouldn't have appeared before district trustees to plead that counselors such as Simpson be retained.
Speaking of the nearly $6 million in staff and programs slashed from the Folsom Cordova budget, district board member Teresa Stanley said, "I hate to see any of these cut."
However, public school leaders in Folsom Cordova and districts throughout the state say they have had to make difficult choices caused by the state's budget crisis.
Vaughan-Strivers, 34, and Simpson, 27, were at the bottom of the seniority list among the Folsom Cordova district's high school counselors, with each having about 18 months on the job.
But that didn't make the layoffs any less hurtful.
"I love it … loved it," Simpson said of her former counseling job.
For Simpson, 27, the layoff also came at a difficult time financially: She and her husband had just bought a house.
"That's really scary. I'm hoping a couple of months of savings will cover us," she said.
In the interim, she's trying to build up her marriage and family counseling practice.
Vaughan-Strivers' roots run deep in the district. Growing up in Rancho Cordova, she attended Mitchell Middle School and later Cordova High, where her counselor was Cindy Evans.
"She truly inspired me," she said of Evans.
Vaughan-Strivers took a somewhat circuitous route before getting her first counseling job at Cordova High. It was a chance to reunite with Evans, the school's head counselor.
"I feel like I'm supposed to be at Cordova," Vaughan-Strivers said.
"A school counselor is really important, it's another support system for students," she said.
The recent cutbacks jeopardize the hard-won rapport between students and counselors, Vaughan-Strivers said.
"Just when they get to trust you, you're gone," she said.
Simpson also became interested in a career in counseling while in high school.
"I was close to my counselor, and it sounded interesting," she said.
Simpson, who was the counselor for 480 students at Folsom High, said she feels especially bad for students who have had a different counselor every year when they need consistency.
"There was nothing I didn't deal with," she said of the social and academic concerns students shared with her. "Those issues won't go away."
Call The Bee's Walter Yost, (916) 608-7449.
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