This web page was created by Luis South, an education counselor in Los Angeles Unified School District. The purpose of this web page is to chronicle the kinds of specialized education counseling services that were made available to students as a result of communications with stakeholders since 2003. Each year in the Los Angeles Unified School District has demanded specialized services that go beyond mere individual and group counseling in order to reach out to our at-risk students systemically. In alignment with this idea is the realization that evolved over time where it became essential to formulate strategies from the community level.

Sometimes the needs of the students within a system-wide education context has even required high level communications with school district administration, police, Department of Social Services, elected officials, and a variety of other agencies and individuals. The ongoing dilemma is to keep focus of the primary purpose of interacting with students as communications continue with policy makers who typically function on levels that are more abstract than they are three-dimensional. Though daunting, such are the modern day demands of education counseling, a profession still being defined within the realm of public school education systems in America and a growing number of other countries throughout the world.

I especially want to recognize the importance of the professional organizations that serve as viable clearing houses of information for the school counseling profession such as American School Counselors Association (ASCA), Western Association of College Admissions Counselors (WACAC), and National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC). These organizations offer the most critical analyses and training neccessary to advance the education of American students.

Also, the Los Angeles Unified School District school board members (between the years 1997 through the present) have served as excellent information sources and supporters of progressive ideas. Their ability to maintain---sometimes under extreme pressures--- a truly viable democratic public forum deserves recognition and praise. Among other school institutions that have been helpful to the development of my education counseling programs are Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Celerity Nascent Charter School (a k-6 environment as of this writing).

In closing, I ask the visitors to this web page to please understand that there is an ongoing process to update and improve the contents in the present year. We do not go into past years to change anything so that the documentation remains relevant to the time it was written. Please contact us via email if there are any questions related to accuracy of information or possible corrections in the content of the present year.

Respectfully,
Luis South