By Starly Richards,
Social Media Editor.
The roles of all counselors in the Santa Rosa City Schools District is currently at risk due to the district’s budget crisis. In the last school board meeting of 2025, the district office revealed that the board may be forced to cut school-based therapists and counselors out of the budget.
Our district is in a continuous plunge into debt, and the board states that cutting mental health and counseling services is necessary to reduce the crisis. The cuts and consolidations last year were done in an attempt to save $12.5 million to cover payroll for the following school year. Despite the board’s extensive budget cuts and consolidations, they have so far only managed to save $7 million, nowhere near where we need to be.
In order to avoid state receivership, the district must now find ways to cut $2.8 million by June of 2026, and identify $23 million more in cuts by next school year. In the last weekly board meeting of December, the district decided the elimination of 75% of all school-based-therapist positions would be a priority.
After the California wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, the mental health and well-being of students nosedived and one-time funds were created to help schools implement wellness centers and provide school-based therapists and counseling staff. Now, about four years later, these funds are dwindling and many Sonoma County schools are no longer able to fit these mental health and counseling services into their budget.
The solution to this should not be cutting these resources which have helped thousands of students get help that they need and either can’t afford or don’t have time for outside of school. We should be working to find a sustainable way to keep the support system that countless students rely on.
School-based therapists are necessary to the functionality of our school. They provide free therapy services to students during school hours and give students the tools to work through issues in an effective manner. A staff member who wished to remain anonymous said, “We teach children and teenagers distress tolerance, emotion identification, coping skills, social skills, communication skills, self regulation, all of which are vital to being a well-rounded adult.” If our school is left with one or two, or worse, zero, Wellness Center staff, hundreds of students will no longer have access to the help they need which will ultimately be detrimental to not just their education, but their overall lives.
School-based therapists are not the only group affected by these cuts. In addition to them, we will also be losing college and career counselors, elementary school counselors and peer counselors. Counselor Jita Parekh is a strong believer in having school-based therapists in schools: “I think that it’s problematic that school-based therapists and counseling staff are the least priority when it comes to staff cuts,” Parekh explained. “We’ve already had issues in the past with getting kids transportation for and. . . access to therapy services.” This is a point that supports keeping these services on campus and available to those who need it.
If the board continues to cut and shuffle around necessary staff within our district, we will fall further into decay. Our district leaders need to consider finding a sustainable solution that doesn’t disadvantage the students who depend on their decisions.
