Orchard Valley Middle School set to lose a counsellor and its full nursing cover

What happened

At the June 30, 2026 meeting a union representative for Orchard Valley Middle School told the board that two reductions were planned there for the coming year. The school's guidance department would go from three counsellors to two for about 500 students, moving the ratio from roughly one counsellor per 166 students to one per 250. The nurse's office would go from one nurse plus a nurse's aide working six hours a day to a single aide working three and a half hours a day. He asked the superintendent to reconsider both, saying students visit the nurse's office frequently and that counsellors also handle student scheduling alongside academic and mental-health support. The collected record describes these as planned administrative decisions; it does not show a board vote on them.

Why it matters to families

Counsellors and the nurse's office are the everyday safety net at a middle school - they are who a student sees when they are unwell, struggling or need their timetable fixed. Cutting a counsellor raises each remaining counsellor's caseload by about half, and replacing a nurse plus a six-hour aide with a single three-and-a-half-hour aide leaves most of the school day without full nursing cover.

The evidence

The district's own recording of the June 30, 2026 public meeting carries the union representative's statement setting out the current and planned staffing and ratios for both the guidance department and the nurse's office at Orchard Valley Middle School, and his request that the decisions be reconsidered.

The source