Going Home: Fort Lee’s Counseling Director Prepares to Leave District

The Fort Lee School District’s loss will soon become another Bergen County school district’s gain, when Fort Lee Director of School Counseling Services Jamie E. Ciofalo takes his talents to Lodi.

On the surface it would seem like a puzzling move on Ciofalo’s part, given some of the exciting changes going on with Fort Lee’s guidance programs and initiatives he played a big role in developing just coming to fruition—initiatives like restructuring guidance counselor assignments to maximize student/counselor contact time; developing a new, comprehensive Postsecondary Planning Guide and a new Postsecondary Planning Curriculum for grades six through 12.

But for Ciofalo, who wraps up slightly more than two years with the district on Dec. 9 and starts in Lodi on Dec. 12, the move is more of a homecoming than anything else. He grew up in Lodi and lived there until 2007 when he got married, his wife works in the district and he’s taught Special Ed. and coached football there.

“Lodi is home, absolutely,” Ciofalo said. “It’s going back to my hometown. It’s a place that I’m so familiar with, and people I’ve known since I was a child. The Superintendent of Schools was a coach on the same football staff with me. He was my football coach; he was my gym teacher. He’s known me since I was 13 years old.”

And the opportunity to return to his hometown, where Ciofalo will serve in a position very similar to what he’s been doing in Fort Lee, was one he just couldn’t pass up when it rather suddenly presented itself, although he said he wasn’t necessarily actively seeking a new job.

“The current director [Frank Longo] decided to retire, and it happened really fast,” Ciofalo said. “They appointed me and approved his retirement in the same meeting.”

He said Longo is the fourth counseling director since 1938 for Lodi High School, “so these people tend to stay there a long time and have a full career before they retire.”

“It was just a matter of him deciding when he would choose to leave, and he decided that this would be the year,” Ciofalo continued. “And I knew that if I didn’t take this opportunity, the next person would have probably stayed for 40 years … that’s why I knew that window was going to open and close very quickly so I had to scramble and put together a resume and get everything together.”

He added, “This will be it for me. God willing, if they keep me in, that’s where I’m staying. It’s my intent to retire from Lodi.”

Speaking in his office Tuesday, just a week-and-a-half before he leaves to pursue that goal, Ciofalo reflected on his relatively brief but eventful time with the district, saying he hadn’t really been counting down the days until it struck him just the previous night that, as he said, “Wow; this is it. It’s coming up fast.”

“Now I’m starting to reflect,” he said. “It all went so fast when I look back.”

Ciofalo said he believes the guidance department has made “a lot of gains” during his brief tenure.

“The restructuring of the high school department was a big step for us, where the counselors are re-assigned now with a Freshman Academy counselor, a grade 10 counselor, and then three counselors that deal strictly with 11th and 12th graders,” Ciofalo said. “And it’s running very smoothly now. It’s college application time, and it’s working out very well because the seniors are with their grade 12 counselors; those counselors are not being interrupted ninth, 10th and 11th grade issues right now. They’re focused on those grade 12 kids and getting their applications processed and done, and it’s a lot less stressful for the kids, I think.”

Ciofalo said such a counseling structure is not only new to Fort Lee this year, “it’s new to counseling.”

“There may be other districts doing this, but I don’t know of any,” he said. “It was born out of necessity because the Freshman Academy model had us assign one counselor to the freshmen—the entire freshman class—so really then you’re left with four counselors for 10th, 11th and 12th.”

Ciofalo is a firm believer that everything in high school guidance is seasonal because of the college application process—a process he said is ongoing throughout much of the school year.

“This way, they really get to focus on the seasonal events of guidance,” he said. “I’m noticing since September that it seems much more relaxed. It’s getting done, but it’s not as chaotic as most places may be at this time of year, with the early decisions and applications.”

In fact, Ciofalo said, things are getting done ahead of time.

“I definitely think it’s more efficient,” he said. “I went into it with my fingers crossed though because, as with anything new, it’s a bold move. Not every district could do it because you do need X number of counselors to pull it off based on your student-counselor ratio. We’re fortunate to have five counselors. Some [districts] are four, some are three, some districts don’t have elementary counselors, so we’re fortunate.”

He added that the high school has a high number of students applying to four-year schools, many applying to several schools and for early action, which he said, all of which presents a challenge for guidance counselors.

“Sometimes you get more out of less if you just tweak the system, and everybody seems to like it now,” Ciofalo said.

He’s also gratified to see the high school's new going so well, calling it “a great idea and concept” and “a good plan.”

“Things look good on paper, but in practice, it’s doing very well,” Ciofalo said. “[High school principal Priscilla Church’s] leadership has made a great impact on that because she’s making sure that there’s follow-through from the administration. They’re going to see long-term, positive effects, and it’s so important. That’s an idea or program I might ‘borrow’ from here.”

Ciofalo said he “hit the ground running” in November 2009, when he started with the district after having served as principal of the South Bergen Jointure Commission (SBJC), a public Special Education, shared services district of Southern Bergen County school districts, for about the three years prior and having starting his career teaching Special Education in Lodi in 1992. And he said it has been “full speed ahead” ever since—right up until Monday evening, when he submitted a 190-page “Crisis Plan” to Acting Superintendent of Schools Steven Engravalle, likely his last major act in his current role.

The crisis plan he developed for the department is specifically for guidance and special services to deal with traumatic events, providing step-by-step guidance on what needs to be done in the event of what he called a “severe trauma” like a car accident involving multiple kids, a suicide or the death of a staff member.

“This was the last thing that was on my mind that I wanted to get done,” Ciofalo said. “I’ll sleep better at night knowing if, God forbid, something happened, that they’ll have a plan in place.”

The remainder of his dwindling time with the school district, Ciofalo said, will be spent “transitioning.”

“When I announced my resignation, I started right away preparing for the next person to transition—cleaning out files, putting together to-do lists, timelines, making sure that information is easily accessible—I’ve changed jobs several times now, and I know what it’s like to step into a new position. At least I feel that my successor will have things in place, and they’ll be able to go with it. That was important to me.”

Ciofalo said he feels pretty comfortable making his own transition to the Lodi School District. He’ll have a chance to work with Longo, who was his teacher in middle school, until Christmas break, and he said, “The basic framework [of the job] is the same,” although his official title will be “Supervisor of Guidance, K-12,” as opposed to “Director of School Counseling Services,” as it is in Fort Lee.

“When I go to Lodi, I know what needs to be done in December, January, February and March,” he said. “The needs of each district may be different, but the job descriptions pretty much are across the board—I would say about 80 percent the same, depending on the district.”

Ciofalo will however be going from a staff of five high school guidance counselors to just three with nearly the same number of students. But he says his involvement with the Bergen County Directors of Guidance, a group he describes as “very active,” and one he says communicates with one another almost daily, will be a great help.

“It’s definitely not going to be easy to say goodbye, but being in the same county, and being part of that association, whoever takes my place, I’ll have contact with them regularly … so it’s good to know that,” Ciofalo said. “You leave hoping that you made a positive change and you made a difference for the best. And you want your district to continue to succeed.”