Actually, the main job of school counselors is to provide mandated related services counseling (as to how the student’s social emotional is affecting their academics) to students with disabilities who have counseling as part of their IEP. Everything else is secondary and does not trump the school counselor’s first and foremost role ** to provide related service counseling and transition planning** it is actually not their job to stick transcripts in envelopes and mail them.
I know plenty of counselors who don’t even do college related activities, because their day is literally filled with mandated individual/group counseling and the reporting that has to be done and the transition goals that have to be written based on the student’s progress and transition plan.
You will never have a counselor getting reprimanded/a letter to file for not providing college counseling or sending a transcript, but let a counselor not provide mandates for students with disabilities.
If you go to a school where your GCs job is mostly college counseling then you are in a privileged minority. As in common with many posters here, my kids GC has at least 400 kids.
Public universities charge tuition and fees as well. This is no different, though I understand OP would prefer unlimited free services. Taxpayers don’t need to provide them for an optional service such as transcript forwarding.
@thumper1 I am not looking into whether the state will intervene or not as I will find out if and when I decide to escalate further. However, I want to educate myself on how the process works and how the school district may incur incremental cost for each additional college a student applies to, hence I want to find out
Do you know?
@sybbie719 I did not ask you because, IMO, there were some errors in your posts, but I think you brought up a point on post #52, “the reasonable and customary charge”, the question is how to determine “reasonable and customary” . I assume one way to determine is what other school charges… I have yet seen one charges over the SAT/ACT combined.
No, In my case, they haven’t charged $200 per transcript yet, it was a hypothetical number because if there is no basis on how the number is calculated, a school can theoretically charge any number they feel right. As I wrote earlier, it was more than SAT/ACT combined, but less than $50 as of now. I am not saying the transcript should be free, but I think the fee is unreasonable.
The charge is per college, and they use the same mechanism whenever they can, therefore, if it were truly upload to accomplish all the schools a student applies to, the policy was wrong.
@roycroftmom I don’t think it is a “good” deal" as my tax dollars are supporting after school sports.
@Sportsman88 If I have to choose, I won’t be paying $35 per hour for the GC’s rate. LOL. I don’t think the school is hiring seasonal worker to handle the transcript nor the GC is paid by the hour.
@NYmommabear and @CottonTales Thank you. I read for CC that some students need to case a wider net.
What is it about my posts that you find erroneous?
If schools set their individual policies as to how much they charge for transcripts, it does not matter what another school charges. You must deal with the situation at your school. If you feel that your fees are exorbitant, did you address this with your school?
While you state what other schools charge, you don’t know the resources they have available. Some schools only have one counselor servicing 500 students on everything. There is a great likelihood that you will pay for transcript services, because they will have to pay someone else to do this work
@roycroftmom I am not expecting unlimited free services, I googled before I posted, I knew many schools charge between $2 to $7 and some use a third party transcript services. Colleges charge for transcripts as well, but I think they are using their monopoly status to make money.
Your comment on post #47, in my case, it was a school board issue. Then your comment on FAPE, I am not going to debate with you on FAPE, then your further explanation on unofficial and official transcript.
Some schools do print out transcripts for their caseload, sign and stamp each transcripts and create individual pdf files for each student before uploading to the common app.
Even if they are not printing and signing, the transcript, they must pull each transcript individually and create a pdf file for each student before uploading to the common app/send edu, etc.
The issue on FAPE refers to students with disabilities.
FAPE is defined as “the provision of regular or special education and related aids and services that are designed to meet individual needs of handicapped persons as well as the needs of non-handicapped persons are met and based on adherence to procedural safeguards outlined in the law”.
regarding unofficial transcripts I wrote
I should have clarified this statement at my high school and at schools where I have worked and partnered with. If your school does not provide your child with a copy of their unofficial transcript once a year, my apologies and that is a policy issue at your child’s high school. If your child’s school does not use Skedula or engrade, where students can pull their high school records, than that is an issue with your child’s high school. If your school system and high school does not have a mechanism where parents can pull up their students grades including grades year over year, than that is a function and decision of your child’s school. Please forgive me because the NYC DOE makes all of these things available to their students.
Again, does your child attend a public or private high school?
Well, this thread was eye opening. Our public HS didn’t charge for transcripts for students (after you graduate, it’s a minimal $5 fee). I have no idea if there was a limit (if there was, they never advertised it and we never reached it). I think the $25+ the OP is is facing is too much. Heck, even for college transcripts my kids only pay $5.
I noticed most people seem to focused on transcripts for colleges, but someone who is applying for outside scholarships may need more transcripts as well.
My daughter had a limit of applying to 8 colleges and this was over a decade ago. One of the challenges is parents are only looking at this through their own lens and how it affects their child and the school should do whatever needs to be done.
Schools are looking at if from the perspective of limited resources and the number of things that the school needs to get done and how to best use those resources to benefit every child in the schoool. There is often a disconnect to the extent that some schools do pay for CBOs (community based organizations) come in and handle the college process. I personally am not a fan of this and think that there should be more resources provided to counseling and postsecondary planning. Unfortunately most school districts are not walking their talk when it comes to this issue (by the plain and simple fact that they see nothing wrong with 1 counselor for 500 kids)
I used $35 per hour cost. That’s not the same as wage. Employer pays FICA, insurance, retirement, etc. I also think it matters that the fee is only after a certain number free, presumably close to ten since you refuse to be specific.
Your cost is easily $100 per school with score sends, application fees, etc. If that doesn’t encourage you to limit the schools your kid applies to, then why worry about this fee? 5-7 is a reasonable number of applications.
And my D plays sports and band for a public HS. There are a lot of parent funds plus fundraisers for sports. Tax payers do not foot the whole bill.
And remember, adults with no kids from young to old pay taxes for the public school with only the societal benefit of public education. I’m ok with some costs being transferred to the user.
If you have fee waivers, you should still limit the number of applications.
My sons’ high schools charged $5 per transcript. At least at the time, there was no limit on the # of apps. DH went to a HS in NYC and the limit then (late 70s) was six. The transcript fee basically paid for a clerical person to process and mail the transcripts, at a time where there was not other funding for that position. For obvious reasons, parent volunteers or student office workers could not take on that job, as they could with other office functions within the school. There were fee waivers for students who qualified.
We had 400 kids per counselor; the parents and student were expected to write a profile and answer a questionnaire to help the counselor write a rec letter. Those letters are on top of dealing with kids who are homeless, speak a different language, are in abusive situations, don’t get enough to eat, have a critically ill parent, etc. We didn’t expect the counselor to have time to help our sons get into their reach schools. The letters the counselors wrote seemed to help my sons’ cause; other than that, we stayed out of their way so they could do the really critical parts of their job.
The number of kids that need to apply to a whole bunch of colleges because they need to find the biggest discount possible because of the structure of the family finances is a drop in the bucket and among that group is a small number of families that are just looking for the best bargain. The vast vast majority of kids apply to a handful of colleges they feel they will probably be able to afford and pick one. Applying to ten or less colleges is not cheap but it is reasonable given the total expense of a college education. Providing help for college bound students is a service that guidance offices offer but is just a small piece of their job each year. Charging for transcripts or charging for excessive transcripts does not feel unreasonable to me. And my guess almost every high school would waive that for a promising student whose family is poor just as many colleges and testing services waive fees for poor families. Schools, especially public schools, tend to know who those families and kids are because they have been receiving free or subsidized support all along and public schools track that sort of stuff for reporting.
Each unique recommendation is extra work for the teacher or counselor, with a deadline and time frame set externally. That is why there have been some previous threads where there are school or teacher policies to ration recommendations, and that students may face very early deadlines to ask for recommendations. Imagine if you are a teacher, and 30 students ask for college recommendations a week before they are due to the colleges.
Guess what? In the jurisdiction where one of my parents died, every death certificate cost $50. And no- you can’t get away with ordering two death certificates- you need one for every bank, the life insurance company, the health insurance/Medicare supplement company, even the landlord insisted on one in order to terminate the lease before the year was up. In the jurisdiction where one of my in-laws died, every certificate cost 10 bucks but if you show up at the county records office yourself and make your own copies, the clerk will notarize each copy for 2 bucks each. What a bargain. Except who can take a day off from work to drive to the county records office, get a certificate and drive to Staples, then head back and wait in a line for two hours to get your copies notarized?
This is life, OP. These clerical activities cost SOMEBODY money. Time, attention, ensuring the accuracy that each transcript goes to the right college. If you don’t like the policy, figure out who was responsible for imposing it and what the tipping point was (probably a kid a few years ago who applied to 30 colleges, tying up the guidance staff for three days before the Xmas break).
My guess is that the HS is willing to waive the fee when it gets a reasonable request in writing stating that the fee is a hardship. And they probably won’t ask for documentation- you write a letter, they waive the fee. But for most people, this is a nuisance fee (like the death certificates for $50). If they charged nothing, their employees would have time for nothing else.
And I needed a copy of my parents marriage license for the surviving parent to get a survivors benefit from a pension. After 55 years of marriage, from a county whose records office was destroyed in a fire in 1959. Don’t ask…
Thousands of people are subsidizing your child’s education, speechless, including those who don’t have kids and those whose kids don’t attend public school. I’m not sure why you would object to paying relatively small amounts in support of optional activities your child wishes to pursue, like higher ed. If you would like your school to charge for extracurriculars as well, pursue that. My guess is there are already some costs associated with those participating. Perhaps you can fundraise for your PTA to pay transcript costs if you object that much.