Board weighs "looping" student-services model after site visits to Lyons, Lake Park

At the March 4 Committee of the Whole meeting for Warren Township High School District 121, counselors and district staff summarized visits to Lyons Township High School and Lake Park High School and discussed a proposal to change how student-services staff are assigned so they follow a cohort of students for multiple years, a practice often called "looping."

The proposal under consideration would assign counselors, social workers and deans to a graduating class so those staff travel with the same group of students from freshman through senior year. Daniel Heifel, one of the district counselors who participated in the visits, told the board that Lyons places heavy emphasis on the staffing and execution of that model. "They put an enormous amount of investment into this looping model," Heifel said, recounting what the team observed.…