The new attendance counselor, is Gabriella Morales but most people just call her Gaby.

Her position here at Venice High School is Pupil Services and Attendance for the Counseling Office. She as well helps to convince students who have dropped out in hopes of making them return and finish their education.

Before she had started working in counseling for Venice High, she was with Communities In Schools, at Venice helping students raise their grades and getting back on track.

She applied for the counseling position after she got her Master’s degree at UC Santa Cruz last year. “I thought I’d be a long shot to get the position here at Venice High.” ” With more than 150 applicants, I was surprised that I received the position at all.”

Before she had applied for the position she had ran into one other counselors that had told her she couldn’t make it into Venice. ” I remember once I received my Master’s degree I went back to Santa Cruz and entered a shoe store and I had seen one of them, and they told me if I worked here but told them I had gotten the position at Venice.

She has also wanted to get students to connect with the adults and make them feel that they have someone to talk when needed such as needing a service that a counselor can refer them to.

Gaby said that she’d like to see more vocational classes come back such as wood shop, metal shop and car shop although, she understands the issues for
safety reasons.

Although she would love to see a culinary arts class put into our school just for a variety and keeping our school days from being dull.

Last question I asked her was how she like being a counselor here at Venice she responded with “I like my new counselor position here at Venice, where I can work with real cases with getting students focused on learning for them to graduate high school. Gaby said