"There's certainly more issues they're facing than they did 15 to 20 years ago. In terms of social networking and the pace of things and the pressures on families and economic pressures -- I think there's more coming at them and they need more support," she said.

Not only that, but the amount of students who need special education or ESL services are increasing, with less of those specialists to be found in schools as well.

"Our school population is quite skewed in terms of demographics. We probably have about 70 per cent of families that are either first-generation Asian or newly landed immigrants to Canada," Easton said.

"Those are big challenges there. They're international students, their parents are in Asia, they see them twice a year, there's all of that. That brings a whole layer of issues with it. As well as having to succeed in the pressure that's on them in terms of their cultural expectations to excel academically."

Digital stressors

Vic Gladish said that with the advent of social networking, cyberbullying and the proliferation of cell phones, it's hard to keep up with the types of problems kids are facing.

"When I started, that wasn't an issue. You didn't have 98 per cent of kids with a cell phone and there was no Facebook. So that has created a whole new category of issues that we deal with at school.

Numerous classroom resources have been developed to combat cyberbullying in recent years. The Canadian Teachers' Federation along with the national government developed their own source, Cyberbullying: Encouraging Ethical Online Behaviour.

They write, "Cyberbullying can be much more severe in its effects than offline bullying because the targets feel they have no escape. Also, given the wide scope of the Web, there can be many more witnesses to the bullying.

"School administrators and teachers are struggling to address this issue with students."

In a 2008 University of Toronto survey, one in five Canadian students surveyed reported having been bullied online in the past three months. And 44 out of 50 states in the U.S. have now passed anti-bullying legislation in part because of the damaging effects of online harassment.

"We have kids in our office, in distress because of a flurry of things that have been said over the last 24 hours," Gladish said. "Or we have a parent coming in to withdraw their child, because their child has been cyberbullied and they're getting further fallout in the school itself. I think that the bullying has always been there but it's coming at us from a different way now.

"A kid who said something to somebody over the internet the night before and looks the wrong way at somebody in the hallway, and all of the sudden, bang, there's a whole issue," he said.

Breaking point

Everybody has more on their plates these days, parents, teachers and kids alike. More kids, a host of new issues, less services and a decrease in overall enrolment is a trend that has been hitting schools over the last 10 years. And when enrolment is down, schools receive less money, because funding is based on per-pupil.

Jameel Aziz is president of the B.C. Principals' and Vice Principals' Association. It changes district by district, but generally principals are the agents who allocate school resources. They decide how many counsellors and teachers to have in one school.

He said that over the last 10 or 15 years, counsellors' "biggest change has been that their personal counselling role has been diminished by administrative tasks that are now being expected from government and ministry levels, which of course through the school system, eventually get downloaded to them.

"In the end, it's probably going to be no doubt that they don't know the student as well as they did at one time."

Although he thinks kids are getting adequate counselling services and that counsellors do a fantastic job, they like anybody, could do more with more time.

The luxury of time and resources comes with more money.

Ministry of Education funding made up 15.34 per cent of the provincial budget in 2009–10, down from 19.67 per cent in 2001–2002 and 26.36 per cent in 1991–1992 according to a research report by the BCTF.

"We can't keep being asked to do more with less people," Gladish said.

"I know in my school all three counsellors spend at least nine to 12 hours a day doing their job. At this time of year and in early September we'll be putting in 10 hours a day for a week or so. I'm here often from seven until seven in the early weeks of the semester."

He said he has had to turn away new students this year because their school is already too full.

'A school is a community'

The Ministry of Education announced in March that B.C. schools will receive a record high of over $4 billion in operating funding for the 2011-2012 school year. Per-pupil funding is at an all-time high of $8,357.

Critics say that the increases in funding are not adequate because they aren't keeping up keeping up with inflation.

Enrolment may continue to decline for a few years according to B.C. Stats, although the BCTF said that Kindergarten enrolment has increased this year and will be expected to do so over the next few years.

Immigrant students account for a big portion of new enrolees in public schools, but they often need specialized services and those services will continue to rise in demand with fewer resources to meet them.

Private schools are an alternative, but only for parents who can afford to pay $16,000 for a year of secondary at the top-rated school in B.C.

The most needy kids are the first to be affected by cuts to teachers and education. But as Connie Easton said, "We take everybody. We don't have the right to say no and we take them all.

School counsellors have an important role to play, said Easton, in making sure every child has his or her best chance to succeed.

"You know, a school is a community," she said, "and it's about way more than just the building and the marks. There's a lot more going on in schools and so many kids are success stories, but they're not in the top 10 of the percentile. That doesn't mean that they're not amazing young people that are going to make a difference in the world."