Guidance Restructuring: More Harmful Than Helpful?

On June 6, 2025, a week before school let out for the summer, the DHS administration announced they were restructuring their guidance department.

The freshman class was assigned its own guidance counselor, Melissa Fitzgerald, and its own social worker, Kristianna Fontes Callahan. As a result, a number of students in each grade had to switch guidance counselors. Now, students with last names starting with A-E have Erica Thibodeau, F-M have Nicole Heath, and N-Z have Cassie Levesque.

However, the freshmen will not have Fitzgerald as their guidance counselor for all four years. Instead, Fitzgerald will stay as the guidance counselor for all incoming freshman classes. Once the freshmen become sophomores, they will have to change guidance counselors. 

This restructuring could negatively impact upperclassmen who are trying to get letters of recommendation or have already built a connection with their guidance counselor over the last two to three years. Students need a recommendation letter from their guidance counselor when they are applying to college. Thus, students can begin to set themselves up for success by building a relationship with their counselor. Fitzgerald is, however, writing letters of recommendation for the seniors that she previously advised. Though this defeats the purpose of making her a guidance counselor only for the freshmen if she is still dealing with seniors’ needs, it is still beneficial to the seniors themselves.

Senior Ava Dusoe said, “The people who need [their guidance counselors] the most are the seniors who are about to apply for college, while the freshmen only need to know where their classes are. It’s also terrible that they’re making me work on college applications with a guidance counselor I just met like a week ago who knows nothing about me.” 

I’m someone who likes to be as prepared as possible. So, during my sophomore year, I was already planning the classes to take for the next two years, thinking about the courses I would need to take in college, and what AP credits would convert at each college. Personally, I have had to change my guidance counselor, and I was frustrated. Not because of anything about the counselors specifically, but more so with the principle of the restructuring.

Not only does this affect the people who already had been with the same guidance counselor for two to three years, it also will end up affecting every freshman class. Freshman year is difficult. However, during freshman year, students are usually able to start building a connection with their guidance counselor. But now, any connection students build with their guidance counselor freshman year—which, hypothetically, should be even stronger, because said guidance counselor isn’t dealing with college applications but rather focusing on making that first year as good as possible—is erased once they enter sophomore year.

The idea of having a guidance counselor specifically for one class is a great idea. It will allow all students, but especially non-seniors, to meet with their guidance counselor without having to wait for college application season to be over. Sophomore Lia Cojocaru acknowledged this, saying, “It’s better that way, because then the freshmen get their guidance, and the freshmen don’t have to fight with juniors and seniors because they need the time for their college applications.”

However, this would only be beneficial if that specific counselor is assigned to the whole class for all four years. That way, that connection is still being made, while also creating a more welcoming environment for students to schedule meetings with their counselors. These four years of connecting with a guidance counselor is crucial—not only because of things like college recommendations, but also because students make a plan with their counselor; they decide how they want to go about the rest of their years here and about what comes after.

Having something consistent in a student’s life can help them deal with the number of changes that happen during high school. Maybe these students aren’t even close with their guidance counselor, but knowing that something stays the same over the next four years can be extremely beneficial. Or, perhaps, we should just revert back to the system we had to start off with, where all grades were split by alphabet to determine their guidance counselors. However, for the sake of all DHS students, we should not continue with this new system.

Each school year comes with many changes. This 2025-26 school year is really exemplifying this fact, whether it’s the pass system, the restrictions on personal devices, the phone policy, the grading and retake policy, or the general adjustments that come with a new grade and new classes. With all these changes, this was not the proper time or way to restructure the guidance department.

As someone who hates change, all of this has been overwhelming and has started the school year on a more stressful note than it already was. Whether we go back to how things were, or create a system so each class has their own guidance counselor for all four years, one thing is evident: students need to be involved in the conversation when changes like this are being considered, and students need more of a warning before such changes are implemented. By doing this, a controversial and complicated change could have been an easier transition for everyone involved.