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Hard-hit New York State may ax veteran school drug counselors

By MEREDITH KOLODNER
Daily News Staff Writer

Sunday, March 8th 2009, 2:48 AM

Several hundred school-based drug counselors will be out of work at the end of the year if the state has its way, stimulus money or not.

The state has decided to get rid of more than half of the counselors, who have worked in the schools since the early 1970s, and put their jobs up for bid.

State officials say they will save $2 million with the cuts, paying less to outside contractors.

"There is no dispute that the workers are doing a good job," said Karen Carpenter-Palumbo, the commissioner of the state office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. "But we have to focus on the increasing evidence that shows prevention is most effective when there is cooperation between the community and the school system."

The state plans to contract out the jobs to nonprofits through a competitive bidding process.

Experts say that all aspects of a child's life must be addressed in drug programs, since factors like domestic abuse, peer pressure or financial problems are involved.

The school-based counselors say that they are best able to make those connections.

"Most of us live in the community. We know the parents and the children," said Cynthia Dowdy, a 30-year veteran counselor at PS 299 in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Others say that their ability to intervene with children at school gives them an advantage.

"This office is a sanctuary for the students," said James Hayward, a counselor at Brooklyn-Collegiate in Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn, sitting in his office with six students one recent day.

The students said they were too scared to go to lunch because of pressure from other students. They said some of them were connected to gangs.

"We give the kids somewhere to go to vent, instead of acting out, and that allows the teachers to teach," said Hayward.

The state found that only 30% of the city's current school-based providers could prove they were effective under guidelines that critics call numbers- crunching.

The Legislature must approve the change as part of the governor's budget.

The city opposed the change. "We are working closely with state legislators to restore funding for prevention services," said Education Department spokeswoman Ann Forte.