Assembly Standing Committee on Education

With student needs such as high unduplicated pupil counts, elevated rates of dropout, homelessness, foster youth, or justice involved youth. We have the implementation grants which started in 2022 and will conclude in 2030. Depending on the cohort, these provided up to $500,000 annually for five years.

The LAS here must demonstrate strong community engagement, commitment to integrated student support, early learning, access, trauma, informed services, shared governance, and a plan for long term sustainability. The CDE awarded planning grants in the amount of 82.7 million to 419 LEAs district schools in two cohorts.

The CDE also awarded implementation grants in the amount of $3.3 billion to 524 LEAs across four cohorts, so that is supporting 2,495 schools. So nearly one out of four schools are now a community school. We also have the extension grants scheduled to begin in 2027 and and will conclude in 2032.

They will provide up to 100,000 per year to help established community schools to continue and strengthen their work for up to two additional years. So now let's talk about the robust technical assistance infrastructure. This is essential to the success of community schools.

California's approach includes a comprehensive statewide technical infrastructure design to support implementation, ensure quality and build long term sustainability. Support is provided by our STAC, the State Transformational Assistance Center, RTACs. Those are eight regional technical assistance Centers, County Offices of Education, and ongoing leadership from the California Department of Education.

The CDE plays an active role in this technical assistance effort. The CDE staff conduct site visits, support LEAs in moving from planning to implementation, host statewide webinars, and provide direct guidance to help grantees operationalize those four pillars of a community school.

During site visits, we hear from educators that this support has helped them better coordinate student services, strengthen family partnerships, and align school practices with student needs. These local engagements inform CDE's continuous improvement efforts and strengthen collaboration with both the state and regional technical assistance centers.

The State Transformational Assistance center, led by the Sacramento County Office of Education in partnership with UCLA's center for Community Schooling, the National Education association and and Californians for Justice, provides statewide leadership and guidance. This is complemented by the eight Regional Technical Assistance center that serve every county 58 counties in California.

They help LEAs develop high quality plans, build strong partnerships, access mental health and social service supports, and use data for continuous improvement. In counties with more than one grantee, CDE awarded a coordination grant to the County Office of Education which plays an important role in aligning resources and supporting consistent implementation.

Coordination grants began in 2022 and will continue through 2030. A total of 140 million have been allocated to the county offices of education to help coordinate county level services. The technical assistance infrastructure created within the California Community Schools Partnership program ensures that community schools do not simply receive Grant Dollars.

They receive expert hands on support to transform systems and outcomes. This technical assistance actually serves a broader purpose as well. While grant funding is targeted to specific LEAs, the grantees, the strategies and learning generated through this work benefit districts and schools statewide.

All LEAs, regardless of whether they receive community schools grant funding, can access the professional learning tools and resources. This ensures the state's investment strengthens the overall education system, not just individual grant recipients. In just five years, the California Community Schools Partnership program has grown into one of the nation's most comprehensive community school initiatives.

It reflects the legislature's commitment to addressing both the academic needs and the full set of conditions that our students need to be able to thrive. With almost 25% of California schools engaged in this work, we are setting a national standard for whole child, whole community education, a core value of what it means to be a Californian.

Thank you for your leadership in this area and for your ongoing support of this critical transformational shift in how we deliver education throughout California.

Thank you. Just a reminder, we're going to try to keep everyone in five minutes. We have three very full panels and we have lots of questions. I will interrupt you. Yes, of course. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be joining the budget Subcommitee to hold this joint hearing. And I'm really excited about being able to focus on community schools because clearly this has been one of our major investments and initiatives for the state of California.

I've had a chance to visit a number of community schools over the fall break and really look forward to, you know, hearing how the districts are making it work, not only, you know, to provide the wraparound services, but really to promote that mindset shift in terms of transforming our schools with the community engagement, with the student and family engagement.

And so I very much look forward to hearing all of the testimony today. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So we'll continue. We have a list, but I don't know if you want to go in a different order. It's up to all of you. We do have Anna Maier as the next. And again, please keep those microphones really close to you as possible. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Anna Maier. I'm a senior policy advisor at the Learning Policy Institute. Very honored to be here with you today I wanted to share the positive impacts that we see emerging for students attending schools that are part of the California Community Schools Partnership Program.

And I think it's really important to kind of take a step back when we have an investment like this to say, what are we learning about the impacts across the state? The Learning Policy Institute recently released a study examining the first cohort of schools to receive these grants, approximately 450 in total.

There was a printout of the brief for this report included in the packet. And our research question was what is the impact on California student outcomes when a school becomes a community school? So we use data from the first cohort of grantees to help answer this question.

And we specifically looked at outcomes for Cohort 1 community schools that were newly implementing the strategy. And if you take a look at Figure 1, which is included in the packet, I included a few summary figures to make it easier to follow along.

We found significant reductions in chronic absence and suspension rates, along with improvements in student achievement, especially for historically underserved students.

Our study employed a robust analytics strategy that involved carefully matching each of the Cohort 1 community schools with a similar school in California that did not receive the grant and then comparing how those two groups, the community schools and the very similar non community schools, performed over time.

So we looked before the grant investment and after, and we looked for changes in trends over time. So you can see this captured in Figure 2, which shows these two groups of schools, the grantees in Cohort 1 and the similar non community schools.

You can see that they were on very similar trajectories prior to the first full year of grant program implementation, which was 202324. So you can see for both groups, absence, chronic absence was going down and suspensions were on a slight uptick. And that's reflective of broader patterns that we've seen in the state.

After a full year of implementing the grant program, which was two years of funding, and I'm happy to get into that later if it's of interest. You can see the two groups started to vary in meaningful ways.

In both groups, chronic absence continued to decrease, but the community schools reduced chronic absence rates by about 30% more than the comparison schools.

Also in figure 2, you can see that after a full year of implementation, community schools decreased their one day suspension rates by 15% on average, while the similar non community schools continued to see a slight decline increase. So we see a meaningful variation in those outcome trends after after the investment took place.

Figure 3, and I hope I'm not racing through figures that Are too hard to follow. But Figure 3 shows that students at the community schools also showed notable learning gains compared to the similar non community schools, with an improvement in math test scores, roughly equivalent of a quarter of a grade level in additional learning.

And also showing larger than expected gains in English language arts test scores, roughly the equivalent of one fifth of a grade level in additional learning. Yeah. Importantly, and I think to me this may be the most important figure of all.

Figure 4, which is showing that California's community schools are helping to close opportunity and achievement gaps in the state. So we found that students from all backgrounds benefited from the community schools investments. And of course it was targeted to the highest need schools in the state.

But we found larger than average effects for black students as a subgroup. They benefited the most across all outcome areas, the equivalent of roughly 130 to 150 days or 2/3 of a grade level in additional learning. For both math and English language arts.

We saw for Hispanic students, the area of largest impact was chronic absence for English learners. The largest impact was on English language arts test scores. And we also saw benefits for socioeconomically disadvantaged students as a group. And again, that was pretty much the whole group in the. In the treatment group.

We also looked at outcomes broken down by school size and type. And we found that all students benefited from the intervention. There were larger impacts for students in elementary schools compared to secondary schools and larger impacts for students in small schools compared to large schools.

We found also that community schools seem to get more bang for their buck, so to speak, in terms of test score improvements with increasing attendance. And you can see that in Figure 5.

So if you compare the community schools and the similar non community schools, as both groups increased daily average attendance rates, you can see that test scores improved at a much faster clip in the community schools.

And I think that that suggests that it's not just students coming to school more regularly, but something different and positive is happening for them while they're at school.

We got about 30 more seconds.

Okay. And the last thing I wanted to note is that we also look specifically at Los Angeles Unified because they had a pre existing initiative that predated the grant program. And you can see impacts there emerged earlier.

You see dramatic gains in both math and English Language arts test scores for the community schools in Los Angeles Unified compared to simiLar high poverty schools in the district that were not community schools. And you see those impacts hitting earlier, which aligns with the timing of when the initiative started in La.

There's so much more research that needs to be done. Including what happens with Cohort 1. What about the additional cohorts that come online, Additional student subgroups, additional outcome areas? There's a lot more that we want to investigate. And we're also excited about the research that our partners at UCLA are working on as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Go on to Our next presenter, Dr. Marisa Saunders.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm Marisa Saunders. I'm the associate Director for research at the UCLA center for Community Schooling. We're part of the state's Transformational Assistance Center for the Community Schools Partnership program. So you just heard about outcomes, something we all care deeply about.

My role today is to share how the annual progress report, what it tells us about how schools are implementing the community school strategy and how implementation influences these outcomes. So the annual progress report, something every grantee has to take every year, it's more than a compliance tool.

It's a statewide reflection and improvement system that helps schools monitor their progress, identify needs and strengthen their implementation, while also allowing the state to understand how schools are building the conditions that drive results. The annual progress report captures progress across four key areas.

The first section, the Capacity building Strategies, examines how schools are building the core organizational, relational and leadership foundations required to reshape how they do. Schools sites reflect across a developmental continuum from visioning to engaging to transforming. And as you can see in Figure 1 of your handout, it's a handout with all the blue colors.

Schools are indeed building this foundation. Across each of the five capacity building strategies, we see that schools are moving beyond the planning and visioning stage to true and enduring transformation.

We're especially encouraged to see that schools are moving beyond the provision of supports and and services alone and embedding the work deep into the classroom, expanding community based learning opportunities through college and career pathways, through real world projects and partnerships that connect students learning to their communities and to their futures.

The second section examines how deeply students, families, educators, staff and community partners participate in shared decision making and implementation. In Figure 2, you could see that grantees are experiencing steady increases in engagement across all groups, especially families and community partners, signaling stronger relational infrastructure. Research tells us that these relationships are not peripheral, but they're at the center.

They're central to sustained implementation, to equitable decision making and to long term success. The third section of the annual progress report assesses the provision and integration of critical whole child and family supports.

We ask grantees in this section to identify what supports and services they're providing and if California community schools funding has increased their capacity to provide these important offerings like before and after school programming, health and mental health services, home visits, and more. We actually asked about 27 offerings.

Year three findings for cohort one, shown in figure three, demonstrate a clear progression. The upward trend across all domains suggests that schools are moving beyond isolated program offerings toward coordinated systems level approaches, a key marker that implementation is maturing.

The final section of the APR captures how schools translate needs into strategic goals, how they monitor progress and adjust through continuous improvement. Our analysis of these data show that grantees are identifying the measures that matter most to their communities.

Almost one third of grantees in year three indicate that they're using locally developed metrics like tracking service participation, seal of civic engagement attainment rates, family engagement, staffing stability to gauge their progress. They're also tracking school climate measures, proficiency rates, and chronic absenteeism with high frequency. And this is where the annual progress report becomes especially important.

It allows us not just to see what schools are doing, but how they're learning, adapting and strengthening their implementation over time. So why does studying implementation matter? Because outcomes, those that Anna just shared, do not emerge in isolation. They reflect the depth and the quality of implementation.

The annual progress report allows us to see how schools are building the conditions that make outcomes possible and where targeted supports and and resources can accelerate progress across the state. Building on this foundation, we're currently conducting a comprehensive statewide outcome study scheduled for release in June that will examine outcomes alongside implementation strategies.

The goal is to better understand not only what outcomes are improving, but which implementation practices are driving that progress across school.

Yeah. 30 seconds, please.

In short, if outcomes tell us what is changing, the annual progress report tells us how change is happening. And together they provide a roadmap for strengthening sustainable impact moving forward. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. Dr. Navdeep Purewal. Welcome.

Thank you. Good morning. Navdeep Purewal, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services from the Sacramento County Office of Education. We lead the state Transformational Assistance Center.

And as you've heard from my trusted colleagues here about the California Community Schools Partnership Program, about the quantitative and qualitative implementation outcome data, student level data, I'm here to share a little bit about the Transformational Assistance Center. You should have a one pager in front of you. It's an infographic that shows the state transformational. Thank you.

And the 8 RTX and our leadership within the state. So through the California Community Schools Partnership Program, we really are reimagining education. You've heard us talk about it here today.

This is really shifting from a mindset shift that this is about wraparound services to this idea that this is a transformational strategy to really reduce barriers to, to support and to inform and to really improve teaching and learning.

We know that our students are coming to school, yes, to build upon their social emotional learning, but ultimately we're sending our children to school to learn. And if we can use this strategy to reduce the barriers in which that learning occurs, we're really shifting and reimagining education.

And as Dr. Robison mentioned, not just for our grantees, but also for all schools and all students in our state. So this vertically aligned transformational assistance center includes the RTAC, sorry the S tac and the 8 RTACs and as well as the county Offices of education.

The STAC specifically, the state Transformational Assistance center specifically builds the capacity of the eight regional transformational assistance centers who then work with the counties within their region to also support, as Dr. Saunders mentioned, the five capacity building strategies. Really supporting grantees around how are they going to sustain staff and resources after this funding sunsets?

How are they going to, you know, really practice this idea of shared understanding and commitment and priorities? As was mentioned earlier, how important this strategy is to engage community partners, to really identify the assets of our communities and to bring our families and our students along on their educational journey. Also to think about centering community based learning.

We know we want students to connect. We know there's so much research out there about how students learn best when they can actually connect. Also the adult learning theory, we learn better when we can connect to the material that we're learning. So how do we engage communities in supporting their students in accelerating and improving student outcomes?

Also collaborative leadership. And as I'm listing these and reflecting in all honesty, as we're thinking about county offices of education, I've led in the county Office of education for 11 years now and all five of those capacity building strategies can also be strengthened within county offices of education.

And so that vertical alignment and also the state Transformational Assistance center and eight regional Transformational Assistance Centers are all county offices of education. So. So as we engage with our grantees, as we engage with school sites, we're trying to align and cohere all the programming we have in county offices of education.

We know that there's expanded learning opportunities program, there's universal pre kindergarten, we know there's Children Youth Behavior Health initiative. Our Ta system helps to really think about collaborative leadership at the county office of Education level. And one way we're actually modeling that is we're partnering with the CDE team to facilitate and co plan coherence and sustainability webinars.

And these webinars are to really to model at the statewide level how are we aligning? How are we aligning and cohering in service of sustainability. We can ask our LEAs and our grantees to do that, but how are we modeling that ourselves? And so we've held several webinars where grantees.

We've had several grantees join us, over 300 at times. And we're modeling this. What we're learning is the mindset shift, right? That's happening. So we invite LEAs who are community schools grantees to come share how they're doing this work. And so a few that stood out to me how they're engaging community partners.

We actually had an local education agency recently come to us in one of our webinars around early education and community schools implementation, share how their community schools coordinators are going out to local preschools and they're sharing about the schools that they're, that the children are going to be transitioning into and ensuring that there's this warm transition happening.

They're engaging with the parents early in the community. Those parents in the preschools are actually a part of the cite community school steering committees at the elementary when their students aren't even there yet. And if that's not a mindset shift, if that's not engaging community, if that's not collaborative leadership, that's not reimagining education.

With this transformational strategy, I think we're really getting there. And I firmly believe we're scratching the surface. I mean, there's so much more here for us to delve into. The other example I'll also give is we had also another webinar when we had a concern around the SNAP benefits back in October.

And during that webinar that we co facilitated with cde, there was a community schools grantee who said they're hearing from parents about their concerns. And we asked a question. Do you think you would have heard from these parents prior to you becoming and implementing this community school strategy? And the coordinator said, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

They would be, they would, we wouldn't have those relationships. So RTA system really builds upon these relationships, collaborative leadership. And lastly, I'll end with from a systems perspective, the community school, state and regional transformation assistance structure fills a unique role.

Unlike initiatives that focus on specific student populations or compliance areas, the structure provides leadership development and professional learning centered on the whole child. This work complements rather than replaces County Office of education tier 1 services and has generated levels of engagement that often exceed what is seen through local control and accountability plan driven processes alone.

The community school state and regional transformational assistance structure represents the only statewide system intentionally designed to build and sustain whole child capacity across the system.

Thank you, thank you. Thank you all for your presentations. We'll turn to the Committee for Comments and questions. I have one and then I'll kick it off to the others for the annual progress report. Probably for ucla, but anybody else wants to chime in, welcome to. I'm trying to understand what, what the report is measuring.

It sounds like to me that it's because community school is supposed to be different. At every school you're likely measuring different things. And so you know, the goal of the hearing today is to try and better understand themes, common themes and what, what works and how to replicate that.

And so but we also would like to get some level of specificity. And so I think the report perhaps is more thematic this, this annual progress report. But could you help me understand better with the report what it's getting, what kind of information it's getting us?

Absolutely. So based on research, we know best practices and we. So one section is focused just on building the knowledge, the skills, the capacity of interest holders in understanding the approach and implementing the approach. That's the capacity building strategies that Dr. Purell just mentioned. I mentioned.

So we're asking grantees across the state to self reflect on how they're making progress building this knowledge across their interest holders. That's one section. We also know that engaging educational partners is critical to the approach. Again, we're asking grantees to really think about the extent to which they are engaging their educational partners in the approach.

Another section looks at the provision of whole child and family supports. And again we're asking grantees to think about to what extent are they offering these important supports and services based on what they're learning about their community. So they're offering health and mental health services because they know it matters to their community. Their community needs these services.

We're also asking them are you offering professional learning to increase your capacity to offer these services? Are you serving more students and families as a result of community schools funding? The section about goals in action is a really important one and I think that's what you're getting to.

We want to understand from grantees how they're making progress in their communities across the priorities that come from their needs and assets assessment. So there are a set of outcome indicators that they all have to address and monitor. Those are in the rfa. So graduation rates, absenteeism, so they're tracking that, and we are tracking that alongside them.

But we have an opportunity to understand the relationship between those outcomes and all of the other things they're doing to get those outcomes so we could understand implementation strategies and these important outcomes. We also give them the opportunity to think beyond these standard outcome measures.

This is where we, I think we got in year three, over 2,000 local measures, all different. Some are tracking service rates, like I mentioned to you. Some are tracking seal of civic engagement obtainment rates. These are things that they've identified matter to their community, dual language opportunities, et cetera. And we are tracking the extent to make.

The extent to which they're making progress on those local measures. It's a challenge for us because, like you mentioned, every community might lift up a different measure. But we understand that for each community, making progress across those measures is important alongside the standard metrics that they're also tracking.

Yeah, I guess what would be helpful is making that progress and how that's aligning or not to making the progress we measure and oftentimes focus on and whether those approaches to leading up to the implementation of visions of community schools are leading to.

I'm curious, and I don't want to get too much into the second panel, but on the outliers and what are the things that you've identified through the report that align or don't align with outliers on either side of the curve? Those that are excelling and those. We have some community schools that are actually not performing better.

All right. And so that's what I'm trying to better understand, but I'll turn it over to.

Yeah, I just want to note, we also have what we call a Deep Dive strategy across the state, and we are partnering with some of those outliers to understand best practices and to use what we are learning from these particular Deep Dive partners to scale and spread these effective practices.

When will you have that data available?

So we have a lot year one and year two data available, what we've learned from our Deep Dive partners and our year three findings will be incorporated in our outcome study that will be released in June.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Mitzuch. Thank you. So, you know, I started off talking about how excited I am to do a deeper dive into community schools. At the same time, you know, I know that change often, you know, happens very slowly in public education.

You know, we just started funding community schools in California since 2021, and we're talking about transforming schools, the mindset shift. And so I want to come from a, you know, a position of what I think hopefully is healthy, you know, skepticism in terms of the data that we're seeing.

But the data, you know, is very impressive based on these charts. And so, Ms. Mayor, focusing on your LPI study, you know, you talk about how the greatest test score gains were at the community schools with the biggest chronic absence drops.

To what extent is there a direct correlation, if not causation, between the chronic absence drops and the increased test scores?

Yeah, that's why I had included the figure that kind of is looking directly at that relationship. And I think that this is an area we need to unpack more with case study research.

And this is kind of the best way that we can look at the evidence, and I think this is aligned with Dr. Saunders, is that we're looking at the administrative data that we have access to, we're looking at the locally determined measures, and.

And we're actually doing site visits, interviewing, collecting case study data to understand the changes that are happening.

So what I would posit is that in that graph where you see those lines crossing that, what you're seeing is that schools are reducing chronic absence, increasing average attendance rates, and that students are feeling welcome and supported when they are at school.

And I'll just mention that LPI produced a report from case study research we've done that looks specifically, we identified schools in several districts across the state that had made very large gains in reducing chronic absence after the pandemic. And we actually went to those sites, interviewed people and asked what they were doing.

And I think what was remarkable was that from Los Angeles to Kern County, we got incredibly similar responses, which was really focused on relationships and climate. And what people told us is we want our students to feel welcome.

We never want a student or family to feel like they're going to be punished or criticized if they've been missing school and they show up. We want them to feel like they come in the door and we're happy to see them, that they feel a sense of community, that school is a fun place to be.

People talked about developing mentorship programs, advisory systems, implementing positive behavior and intervention support systems. So they really talked about positive reinforcement and trying to make school highly engaging for students. So my hypothesis is that what we're seeing is that the resources we're infusing are just accelerating the approach of providing students with resources and engaging them.

Okay, I mean, I'm looking at your chart here. We basically have, since the pandemic, we have three years represented on the charts, starting with 2021. And so we had the 4.1 billion that went out in 2021. And then we have two years.

And so what you're saying is that in that three year time span, we're able to get the money out, we're able to ramp up the staffing, we're able to produce this culture change.

You know, I just want to make sure that, I mean, as we continue to get more data, that we get a better understanding, you know, to explain these you know, these increase in test scores. One other.

I know that we have many or several panelists to follow, but your study specifically focuses on the largest gains among the underserved students. And in particular, your figure number four, you know, really the gains for black students really jumps out.

So why do you have any theories at this point as to why the community school model has shown the greatest gains with black students?

Yeah, I mean, I'll look forward to hearing the panel discussions later. But I think that what we have heard consistently from our case study research is that there's a. It is that transformation of listening to students and engaging them and really prioritizing those relations, the trusting relationships with families.

And I'll note that Californians for Justice released a report within this past year that was documenting the black student experience in schools and documenting instances of microaggression and exclusionary discipline and feeling unwelcomed, unlistened to and unheard.

And so I think that my hypothesis is that with this work that we're seeking to change those patterns and to rebuild trust. And there's actually quite an evidence base for community schools showing that trusting relationships can be a mediating factor in reaching student outcomes.

Thank you. Just. Just want to do a little check in and reminder. Panel two will be on the key elements of successful. So if you have questions about that, let's wait to hear from the panelists because I know I have a lot of questions on specifics on the key elements. So really want to focus on the implementation part, which is actually pretty important as well. So. Ms. Hadwick.

Hi. Thank you, guys. I'm very passionate about community schools. I served as our county lead before I got elected, so wrote a lot of those grants. Thank you. My district received 28 million for Cohort 3 and 25 million for Cohort 2. So we're very new into it. But I think there's a lot of.

I like it because it's local control. The school boards get to pick what they want to do, and we fill the holes that we. We have, you know, not based on siloed categories funding like normal. There's a lot of intangible outcomes that I think are so hard to report. And I had to do the reporting. And they.

It's very. It's very hard even district to district to do the reporting because it's so specific to those schools. But from ours, even in year one, we had. Our kids were happier. Like you could walk through the halls and feel it. And I always say it's not a program, it's A movement that it's.

And it's a feeling like I would love to take you guys to some of our community schools because they are like a poster card or postcard for these program but non program movement. We call them movement, not a program. But they're ready to learn and their attitude towards school has changed, which is so hard to do.

Like that culture and that just feeling in your school. I think our teachers felt more supported. We had way less turnover in our districts, which in rural is a huge problem for us. But you know, when I was teaching I was buying kids school snow boots, you know that or you're just more worried about kids.

And that was one of the reasons I left the classroom was because of that worry, that constant stress and then the community trust and partnerships. I cannot say enough. We even as a small, small district and small schools, we have that small town feel and that community pride and that everybody's involved in everything.

But we did not have a group like the advisory council and I created ours, but we didn't have a group that was. We literally had everyone that did anything with kids in that group.

And one of the districts did not get awarded and they still do the advisory group because they collaborated so many things on so many other programs, so many grants and they just knew what was going on better with our kids. So I can't, I'm a walking commercial for the program but. Or for the movement.

But that community trust I think has been huge for our schools. And like you said that people didn't come to you with, come to those schools before with complaints. One of my schools is, it's a migrant worker community that was awarded. They were almost 60% ESL, like almost 90% Hispanic.

They had 1200 people come to their back to school carnival. That was their community schools activity. And well served 1200 dinners so that some people probably didn't even eat. But their school only has like 250 kids.

So it's not, you know, the whole town is there and it just changed the whole feel of their, their community and their school. But I think you can't. It's really hard to document and quantitate, you know, make that quantitative. But. So I just wanted to touch on that. I'll leave the rest for next. The next panel.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Patel.

Yeah, I'll save my comments, but I have a very specific narrow question. In implementation and planning, how were you able to distinguish between other programs that were initiated around the same time and how they dovetailed with your success?

So universal Meals, supports for students, behavioral health needs, and other such programs that are being rolled out kind of at the same time. How are you able to determine what are actual contributing factors? I'm assuming all of it contributes.

Yeah, but how are we able to tease out what is directly related to community schools and what is supported by other similar programs?

You want to take it?

Yeah, maybe I'll jump in first. I mean, that was actually the reason for taking on the matching strategy in the study, because the comparison schools also had access to the same programs and funding sources. So I do think that, you know, this is about funding whole child education and it's.

This is, this is a feature, not a bug. Right. Like it's a good thing to have all these compatible funding sources. But at the end of the day, we were really trying to isolate out the growth of the schools that were newly implementing and received the grants.

And that was also why we had looked at, for example, LAUSD separately, because the timing of the implementation matters too. But. And then there were a number of statistical controls included in the analysis as well to control for things like school size and, you know, prior student performance.

But really it comes down, I think, to seeing that you have that trajectory, that those schools are looking very, very similar on the outcomes. And then after the grant program really kicks in, you start to see those patterns change in positive ways.

It's a great question. And I shared that we will be releasing impact study that looks at outcomes in the relationship with implementation strategies in June. And we too will be using a very similar match group selection process so that we could discern these outcomes.

But the annual progress report and the capacity building strategies really encourage grantees to think about alignment and coherence. And to the community school strategy is indeed about bringing all of these other really important opportunities together at a school site.

So we are encouraging through the implementation, I'm sorry, through the annual progress report to assess to what extent they are indeed creating coherence for the sake of sustainability.

In the section that looks at the provision of whole child and family supports, we ask grantees to state what funding sources beyond California Community Schools Partners Partnership Program, what other sources are they using to support these important services? We want to understand that. So it's a great question.

Yeah, thank you for that. And I want to echo Alvarez's concern about wanting to know what's going on with the outliers. That's also something I'm curious about. Look forward to seeing that analysis in your report and seeing how we can make sure that the things that are Working. We can share toolkits.

We don't want to have staff across similar, you know, regions or similar sizes of districts. Have to recreate the wheel as we expand into additional cohorts. Thank you for your presentations today.

Thank you. I think the last question I'd ask on this panel is, are there. Nobody really talked about what may not be working or what is getting in the way of implementation. So I'd like to get maybe just a 30 second. Is there something that, you know, we're trying to improve a process?

What are some of the barriers or challenges for some of these to go through the implementation process from beginning? Anybody wants to share?

Yeah, I can share. I think one of the concerns we've heard is a concern around sustainability.

And so really thinking about this very critical and important role that a community school coordinator plays at the school site and the trusting relationships that they have built with the community, with the staff, with the leadership at the site, and with, you know, concern around sustainable funding.

Although we love and appreciate the idea of coherence and braiding funding and thinking about how do we leverage the different funding streams, that has. Is a concern and something that potentially isn't working well.

Because if folks are saying, zero, the grant's going to sunset, some coordinators may say, well, I need to go jump ship and go find another position because this grant's going to. Going to end. And so that is a concern in terms of sustainability and in terms of keeping this momentum going.

Yeah, I mean, we've all heard that. I'm sure. On the implementation front, though, any challenges to. To get this going off the ground that. That have. Or is it all just working perfectly well?

No, we're learning about a number of challenges. And I think one of the biggest challenges we heard, especially in the early years, was give me a how to what is a community school? And I want a checklist. I want to hire that coordinator. Tell me how to do it. Because that is how we've done schools in.

In this state. We have a beautiful new improvement strategy. And this is how you do it. Community Schools is really about creating the structures, creating the conditions that meet the needs and responds to the rich assets of that particular community. So. So there has been, I think, a real learning curve there.

It's a little bit of a culture shift for school.

And I'll also add on to that in terms of implementation, it's that exact shift between the mindset. Right. Of this isn't about wraparound services. Yes. This came out alongside cybhi, a Children Youth Behavioral Health initiative, expanded learning opportunities program. This isn't about bringing on a wellness center and calling it a community school.

This isn't around bringing on a dental school services and calling it a community school. This is really ultimately how are we transforming this, how is this impacting the classroom? And I think that is where we are going and where we've. We've seen a little bit of a slower.

Okay. Yeah. And I could add to that. Yeah. Briefly, please, so we can move on to panel two.

It would be the two pillars of active family and community engagement as well as collaborative leadership. I think to the outliers where it's working well, you see all four pillars being implemented.

Where it is not is this idea of what does it mean to truly share in the decision making process with our families and with our communities and with our guardians.

So that remains a challenge because then it's just a technical endeavor and we're not actually doing the transformative work where it's actually shared decision making that really underlies and leads to that transformation and relationship.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. You may need to stick around because I think panel two, there's going to be probably a lot more questions and some of you may have something to share. Thank you. So we'll ask panel two to please come forward. Dr. Kyla Johnson Trammell. Maria Mirandas. Stay. Melissa Aguilelo. zero, hi.

Hi.

Visited that school. And Angelica Honko from Public Amnes.

If you're all okay, we'll start with Dr. Johnson. Kick us off. We'll go in that order.

Welcome. Okay. Good morning. Can you all hear me? Fine. Good morning and thank you all for being here.

I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to get us all focused. We're talking about the key elements of success. Don't tell me it's working. I think we want to hear how is it working? Yes. Help us. Thank you. All right.

Okay. So My name is Dr. Kyla Johnson Tramell, Superintendent Emeritus of Oakland Unified. Community Schools are sometimes described as a collection of services that framing misses what makes them powerful. Community schools are really about coherence, a way of organizing schools so student learning, well being, family engagement and future readiness reinforce one another rather than compete.

I often explain the model using a phrase many of us know well it takes a village to raise a child. What makes community schools different is that they turn that idea into infrastructure, into staffing roles, shared mindsets and systems so the village actually works together in support of students. This matters because we all know families are worried.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California's 2025 statewide survey, about 44% of public school parents say major changes are needed, specifically around student mental health, school safety, academic quality, especially literacy and numeracy, and whether schools are preparing students for college and career. Community schools can be a powerful response to these parental concerns as a K12 strategy.

For my remaining remarks, I'd like to focus on how Oakland Unified integrated the community schools model with high school pathways as an example of what can happen when initiatives and statewide funding are aligned to achieve greater impact for students.

The community school model is grounded in four pillars and and I'll use Oakland High and Fremont High as bright spots to illustrate how these pillars played out in practice across Oakland Unified. The first pillar is integrated student supports at Oakland High School. This is exemplified by Shop55, the school's on campus wellness center.

Shop55 provides students with access to mental health services, wellness supports and referrals in a familiar, non stigmatizing space and embedded in the school day. Critically, Oakland Unified did not try to do this work alone.

The district partnered with community partners like East Bay Asian Youth Center, a trusted community based organization to provide culturally responsive mental health and academic supports. This partnership allowed services to be coordinated, consistent and aligned to student needs rather than fragmented or crisis driven.

Teachers at Oakland High shared that having this system in place allowed them to focus on instruction and relationships, knowing students well being needs were being met. The second pillar is expanded and enriched learning opportunities at both high schools. Community schools were integrated with college and career connected pathways including dual enrollment internships and work based learning.

Students completed A to G coursework aligned to real world pathways, early earned college credit during the school day and participated in career connected learning that increased relevance and motivation.

District wide close to 40% of high school students participate in dual enrollment classes with 90% of students earning a C or better and about 20% of students participate in work based learning including pre apprenticeship programs which are clear indicators of strong engagement and and preparation for life after graduation.

The third pillar is active family and community engagement which provides informal partnerships to structured, sustained collaboration with families and community organizations. This was done by developing a district wide memoranda of understanding and shared expectations for partners making it easier for schools to engage high quality organizations.

This allowed families and students to be more engaged as partners in planning decision making, strengthening trust in school culture. And finally, the fourth pillar is collaborative leadership and shared decision making which is just a specific example of this shared mindset that I think you'll hear over and over again.

This work required building leadership capacity across the system from the classroom to the boardroom. Oakland Unified invested in roles such as community school managers, provide coaching and professional learning and created shared tools alongside our community partners so principals, teachers and partners could work effectively. Just a couple of the results of this work.

At Fremont High, graduation rates increased from 60% to 81%. A to G rates rose from 27% to 60%. District wide, Oakland Unified saw graduation rates increased from 70 to nearly 80%. A to G rates rise from 34.7% to 48.7%, evidence that when systems align, outcomes improve.

What ties all of this together I just want to underscore is integration. Integration of initiatives, integration of funding our community schools. Actually I was thinking about this at 3am this morning. It allowed us to actually respond to the pandemic. We were nationally recognized for our pandemic response because these are now infrastructure and a mindset.

It's allowed us to use expanded learning funding. Well, it's allowed us to use the Golden State Pathway funding and I'm a big believer that the best way as system leaders to show care is to use our finances strategically to get to sustainability, which I know we'll talk about in panel three.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll hear from Maria Miranda. Welcome.

Thank you. Hello Chair, Members, Chair and Members, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Maria Miranda. I'm an educator of over 20 years. I was a community school coordinator for two years.

I am currently the Vice President of Elementary Schools at United Teacher Los Angeles and I'm the co-chair of the Community School Steering Committee at LAUSD and utla. It's a joint Committee. I'm here to speak on how California's community school strategy is working for our students and how to keep it working.

Community schools are much more than a model for improved wraparound services which are great and folks here have spoken to that a little bit already.

Community schools are co created and co led spaces and I'm going to talk about a little bit about how this is done at the school site level and not just at the district level. Classroom curriculum instruction along with student and family voice are very representative and need to be reflected in these assets and needs.

So I'll start with As a community school coordinator we one of my tasks was to conduct a needs and assets assessment. In that role I got to work directly with students, parents and fellow educators. Something that's really important to point out is that in our district that role is led by a certificated person. Right?

So in our case it was important that it was someone that was part of the bargaining unit, the United Teacher Los Angeles bargaining unit. Because our CBA had certain protections to make sure that the community school initiative was successful in that role. Like I said, I got to establish new systems and structures for the school site.

And part of those systems and structures were to make sure that I had a team that I worked directly with. A team of students, a team of parents and a team of colleagues.

And we all had to have the same understanding of what community school schools are and how they all work together to make the changes and create goals for our schools, for our school. So the community school approach is rooted in the belief that each and every school community has an incredible level of capacity and potential.

And we can't forget that this is where the assets and needs come from. We need to focus on the assets just as much as in the needs as well. We know that schools face challenges and countless initiatives have been created to solve them. However, often these solutions fall short.

What makes the community school approach unique is that it actively resists top down solutions created and implemented by those far removed from the individual school sites. And that includes we need to listen more to student voice, family voice, educator voice. It can't be just one interest holder group speaking the loudest are represented.

The most educators appreciate working at community schools because these schools respect their experience, their knowledge and their creativity. Instead of an approach which tells schools that an outside expert has the answers to the Challenges they face experts that may have never set foot in a local school community.

The approach at community schools is to see solutions as coming from within the larger school community. This focus highlights the assets and unique needs of school sites so that problem solving is done collaboratively and in a way that affirms the dignity of each school interest holder.

I want to make sure that I emphasize on that we need to affirm the dignity of each interest holder. That. Of educators, that of students and that of families. This combination of respect, collaboration and belief in each school community contributes to why educators appreciate and love their communities schools. Now.

Los Angeles, about 30 seconds. We have a whole nother panel, everybody. And I want to give you guys a chance to ask questions. And we have a 12 o' clock caucus.

I have a lot that I wanted to say. I think we'll have questions and yes, when you ask these questions, I want to talk a little bit of the councils. The decisions that our school sites are made through the local School Leadership Council. These are councils that have parent all interest holders representatives in those councils.

It's not just the principal making the decisions. They make decisions on pd, they make budgetary decisions, they make decisions on partners, they make decisions on schedules, they take ownership of really what's happening at the school site and they're able to create the changes that the school needs.

Also implementing new structures and systems within the school to address the needs that the school has identified themselves. Everyone is part of that process. No one is left behind. And because of that, there's extreme like deep commitment to making sure that the strategy is working at the school sites because everyone does it.

And you ask why are some community schools more successful than others? In our district, community schools, they apply to become a community school.

So there's already a commitment of commitment that is better than a district that appoints schools to become community schools because they already come in with some understanding, even if it's small understanding what community school is, but they come in with the commitment that otherwise wouldn't be there. And it's part of every interest holder, not just educators.

Thank you. I appreciate those fine points at the end. That's what we're looking for with this panel. Not a review of what the community schools program is, but like the fine points of what really works. Well, thank you. Welcome.

Hello, my name is Melissa Agudelo and for the past five years I have served as principal at Lincoln High School in San Diego, California.

I appreciate the focus on outcomes, but I want to spend some time telling you what community Schools has helped us become Lincoln is a school of about 1400 students whose demographics include 70% Latino, 19% black, 10% Asian Pacific Islander students, 89% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch, and 20% of our students qualify for special education.

I'm honored to share my experience as a community school principal and to share the key elements we believe are factors in who we are becoming at Lincoln. Our site governance team made the decision to apply for the Community Schools Grant during the 2223 school year, and I led the efforts in writing and submitting the proposal.

The main factor that led to our decision to apply was the teacher and SDEA campus leaders who knew of the community schools programs in Oakland and advocated for Lincoln to strengthen our collaborative leadership structures through that community school design.

Lincoln is a school in Southeast San Diego, an area that has struggled with systemic racism, so the Community Schools model created a school of creating a school with our community supported our hope to flatten leadership and share visioning with our families and students.

We also saw as we returned from the pandemic that our students were simply not engaged with school, and collectively we knew we were at the right time to pivot from the factory model of education to something specifically designed and focused on our particular community.

We were subsequently accepted into the second cohort for the San Diego Unified School District and began working during the 2324 school year. At that time, we hired our Community Schools coordinator, Adam Armas, who came to us from Junior Achievement and whose community organizing experience is foundational to the success and impacts I'm sharing with you today.

Lincoln has seen significant impacts thanks to this implementation. During our first year, our Community Schools team undertook a vigorous needs assessment that resulted in over 75 participation rates percent participation rates for staff, students, parents, and community partners alike.

This incredibly high response rate achieved by Coordinator Armas and his team lent efficacy to the resulting four focus areas that emerged from that collective voice. Now our four focus areas are providing a strong transition to adulthood, extending and enriching our learning experiences, how to address attendance, and most importantly, growing a culture of respect within our school.

Anecdotally, we saw great impact from engaging with this process. We saw increased staff unity and trust as they engaged in the process with us. Gone were the guesses or conjectures about what our community wanted us to focus on, and in its place stood a starkly clear picture. That unity made actionizing our four pillars a smoother process.

Figuring out how to take action on the pillars was a daunting task because our community talked about quite a few topics that, to be honest, were hard to address and were not normally things that a large comprehensive high school would be thinking about.

We decided to focus on growing a culture of respect as the working group, as that working group was intent on addressing student voice first and foremost. Early on, we saw this process activate student voice and thanks to this needs assessment, our students, led by sophomore Michaela De Jimenez, formed a student Senate.

That group, already in just one year, has successfully lobbied to change the Bell schedule, advocated for increased off campus opportunities, planned and performed a Dia de los Muertos cultural celebration, and organized recent student protests and walkouts.

Community schools funding and processes have given them an avenue for leadership and to flex their voices in a productive and collaborative way that has garnered the respect of staff and community Members alike.

We are proud of the process that we have undertaken in just two and a half years and I attribute this success to a variety of factors. First, we appreciate the support San Diego Unified has shown for community schools through the leadership of Jason Babineau and our district, district's Director of the program.

Having a central person focusing on keeping high fidelity to the process and supporting us as we design our efforts that are often way out of the box have maintained that high fidelity to the program. With almost 80% of our stakeholders sharing their voice, we cannot ignore what they're asking us to do.

Finally, I believe that the partnership between the principal and the coordinator is crucial. It is vital as the principal that I show up with humility and I listen to the voices that I serve. And that voice is made clearer thanks to the work of our coordinator.

Our coordinator has the capacity to collect data and provide analysis without the trappings of positional authority. And this voice is one I simply could not collect on my own. I believe the high trust we have cultivated has furthered our collaborative leadership and our trust and that is why Lincoln feels different now than it did three years ago.

This has echoed out to staff, students and our community. So thank you.

Thank you. I'll have our last panelist on this item and then we're going to get into panel three right afterwards. So welcome Angelica Jongco.

I'm honored to represent Public Advocates and the California Partnership for the Future of Learning, an alliance of more than 30 community based advocacy and research organizations across Community 14 counties in rural, urban and suburban California.

Building on 20 plus years of collaboration in state and local policy advances for education equity, our network has been working to make real in the lives of students and families the equity promises of landmark reforms like the Local Control Funding formula and the Community Schools Partnership program or movement As a capacity building network, the California Partnership has been supporting students and families families to partner with their schools, district and statewide system of support to advance community schools as places of deep learning, belonging and joy.

We're seeing how California's historic investment in community schools is closing opportunity and achievement gaps. What makes the community schools approach so transformative for students and families comes down to three key ingredients that are part of the state's community schools framework.

1 authentic partnership with students and families 2 relationship centered school cultures and 3 a capacity building approach that centers schools as the places where students learn. I'll speak now to the first two and save the third for the last panel. In community schools, students and families are co leading the transformation.

This matters because research and experience shows that the more students and families are involved in developing and implementing school plans, the more students thrive. Community organizations have been key bridge builders for authentic partnership with students and families.

For example, in rural Eureka City schools, the community schools approach started with Community partner True North Organizing Network building trust with families, students and school staff through 151 to 1 meetings.

This process surfaced the need for a strong high school English Learner Advisory Committee and School Site Council to engage students and families in learning and decisions on topics like reclassification and college preparedness. A few years in, students now find the space so welcoming that they bring their parents to participate and the outcomes for students are improving.

In 2025, chronic absenteeism is down 3 points from the prior year, English learner reclassification increased from 44% in 2022 to 57% and college and career readiness has gone up from 45% for the class of 2023 to 76% for the class of 2025. Why is this? According to recent graduate Alejandra Quote My family is my biggest motivator.

It was a privilege for my parents to be present with me in those spaces and to advocate together to make school work better for me, my younger brother and my community. Alejandra is now a freshman at UC Davis and an aspiring educator. Transformation rests on authentic partnership and collaborative leadership with students, families, educators and community partners.

Working together. Strong, shared decision making teams are the engine driving school transformation. This assets based approach values the lived wisdom and expertise that students, families and community partners bring. In Anaheim, students started a community schools club to gather student feedback on proposals for their high school redesign.

Team Frieda Senior Shared Quote I really want to uplift everyone's voice to make sure all students feel represented and heard in the decisions that affect our learning. This authentic Partnership and deep listening builds the relationship centered school culture necessary to create fertile conditions for student learning and well being to flourish.

With chronic absenteeism and declining enrollment plaguing districts statewide, these connections are what compel students to come to school. Last year, the California Partnership conducted a statewide listening campaign with more than 1,800 students and family Members. No surprise, students and families are experiencing a lot of fear.

But we also heard that California's big investment in community schools in the wake of the COVID crisis moment is now bearing fruit. In this crisis moment, community school networks are providing the relational glue for schools and community partners to be responsive and supportive in these tumultuous times.

Whether it's checking in with a student afraid their parents won't be there when they get home, or families reaching out for safe transport to school for their kids when they don't feel comfortable to walk outside, community schools are breaking isolation and making it possible for students to continue to learn, dream, grow and lead through these challenging times.

Right now, our collective work to create welcoming, safe, high quality community schools for all students matters more than ever. The state's community schools framework, aligned resources and capacity building have been a catalyst for California to forge the conditions of learning that students need to thrive.

But the real game changer has been the thousands of students, families and community partners now teaming up with educators, school and district leaders across the state as agents of transformation for their schools. For the sake of California students and families, especially those facing the greatest barriers, it's critical we sustain the momentum of our community schools movement.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, I have a challenge here. We've got 30 minutes to get all of you to where you need to go. And for our panelists, what you have to say is important and we can read a lot about this ahead of time.

What really matters to me is that Members get a chance to ask you questions about what you're doing. Because I think the goal is we want to elevate that and replicate that.

And so what we're going to do to give everybody a chance to do that and then get you to your respective places is we're going to now do questions.

I would encourage you all, if you have questions on what panel three is sort of about, which is recommendations on how to maintain this long term and how to embed this and sustain it, we can ask sort of some of those questions. You can weave some of your prepared remarks into those responses. I will stick around.

Everybody else has to go stick around and see if we have more to say on panel three. That maybe you didn't get a chance to say in your responses. Is that fair? I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to say something and ask questions. Okay.

So I'm going to start to go around here, Mr. Garcia, Ms. Banta, some questions.

I'm going to reserve my question for panel three.

Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. All right. Well then why don't you. You want you have questions on this panel. Okay. zero, and you do too. Okay. Skipped over Dr. Patel. Sorry.

So a very specific question on impacts to LCAP participation. Community schools seems to be doing a great job in engaging community. LCAP was supposed to also do that. So what are you seeing differently? Why is it working through the community schools model where it didn't work through lcap?

I can jump in because I've read a lot of LCAPs and participated in a lot of those processes. So I think they complement one another. But again, where the LCAP is a process that's directed at the district level and certainly family engagement is one of those eight state priorities and you have to have a district level Committee.

What is different is that community schools really center schools as a unit of change and where those shared decision making teams must happen. And although the school it's directed that the school plan must align with the LCAP and districts like Oakland do a great job of making those documents make sense together.

The community schools in particular, this program provides the resourcing to be able to have the transformative process and the change in practice at the school level.

So while they go together, the LCAP is kind of sort of that bigger view and the community schools funding and this program allows folks to focus at their site where it's easier for families and students to engage to co create their change.

I appreciate that. What I'm trying to see or determine is whether we've seen an improvement in LCAP participation in those schools with a community schools model and how we can translate that to those schools that are struggling with LCAP participation. I know many schools do well with it and it's great.

But there are schools that still struggle with authentic participation in the LCAP at the community schools model can help with that. I think that's brilliant. It's synergizing. Right?

I'll say two things. First, I think LTCAP often, at least as a site leader, feels district focused. And so I want to double down that. Like community schools, that's us, we get to decide that and we get to have a strong say there.

The other thing I'll say is having undertaken a vigorous needs and assets assessment transformed the feeling of access our families felt to us, which has increased our family's willingness to even participate in things like like pottery nights or bingo nights. I mean things like that that matter, right?

That brings the community in because so many people don't feel safe to be out and about. So I think that's the difference is community schools feels like ours. It doesn't feel like it's coming from the district.

We get to direct it and having spoken to the students who are so empowered by it, they even feel like there's a budget that they get to access without a whole lot of protective padding around it that makes it hard for them to get through. They feel empowered and that's really special.

For a large district like San Diego Unified versus a smaller district that might have one school in their lea with their community school. So thank you for highlighting that difference.

Thank you, Mr. Matouji. So Ms. Miranda. Oh no, Agadello.

So, I think, you know, a lot of us, we've felt the challenge of getting, like, working families more involved. You know, they're so busy with their jobs and all that's going on in their lives that, oftentimes, we don't see the same level of parental participation in schools in terms of volunteering.

But you're-- you know, are you saying that because there was the funding to put on these bingo nights and these other community activities that that was-- you know, that's how you're able to draw in, you know, the engagement of the working families?

I would flip that around. I would say that having a high fidelity process to the needs and assets assessment and the incomparable support of Jason Babineau in the district in helping us do that, I don't think anyone in our community would have believed we could have gotten 80% of our parents and community to respond.

But we did, in large part, because they felt a sense of, oh, wow; there's actually gonna be some innovation. They wanna hear what we want. And for them to come back and one of the biggest voices to be, we need you to focus on our kids' transition to adulthood and making that diploma mean something, because diploma for what if they're not going to go to something meaningful?

So I'd flip it on its head. I would say that because of the needs and assets assessment and the support we got there, it resulted in more families seeing themself be part of Lincoln High School, so when we sent out the call for bingo night, people are more likely to be like, yeah, it's community schools. I'm going.

Okay.

I want to add something to that. It's very important that the structures and systems that are being formed at schools address that because the needs and asset assessments are important, the way that you bring parents to help with that work, but also the school implementation teams.

When you're working directly with parents and really showing them what are the current structures that the district has for parent voice or for a voice for any group, right--and you actually explained the LCAP or whatever it is that you're going--you're giving them the tools to really advocate for themselves.

So when you do that, parents want to come to the school site and say what it is that they want to see at the school, what's going to bring them to the school site, to the school, and what's going to keep their kids coming to school every day as well.

So I think having these teams at the school site making the decisions but also identifying the gaps in understanding of how the districts work and how they do these things and how they spend the money is very important. So local school leadership councils are very important when it comes to that, and the teams that--the subcommittees basically--that support that work.

Okay, thank you.

Can I just add in? I just want to bring in Ms. Shelley Gonzalez's voice from Oakland High School because I feel like everyone can relate to this. She says, I keep coming back because I feel my time and opinions are valued and I see real change happening in our school.

And I think that's true for every single one of us. And I also want to point out there are parent organizers in this room from Anaheim, like Maritza Bermudez or Elvia from Sacramento ACT, so that's a good question to also ask them about how they engage families.

All right, thank you. Last question. Dr. Trammell-- I mean, I'd like to ask you the same question I asked the earlier panel. The Learning Policy Institute shows that the largest gains were greatest for Black students in particular, and I wanted to see, what is it about the community school model that is so impactful for Black students in particular?

Yeah, well, there's been tons of research that's really kind of grounded in targeted universalism that shows that, particularly for African American and Latino students, that if kids have one trusted adult built into their school system, it has tremendous impact on their sense of belonging, and sense of belonging is highly correlated with academic achievement.

So, like, one thing, I think it's a mistake to just think about community schools as the wraparounds, right? The best thing that we can do to contribute to economic mobility in this country is to close the opportunity gap for our newcomers, for our Black students, for Latino students.

And so creating a model where we're not disaggregating them, or separating them, but seeing kids have to see themselves in schools, parents have to see themselves in schools, and when you shift that mindset in infrastructure and ensure there's at least one person that that student and family can go to, it has tremendous impact on students really being able to live out their potential.

Thank you.

All right, so let's get into panel three, and what I would ask you, and what I said earlier totally did not work, so let's try it this way. If we can get you all to say one thing, because there's five panelists now, we're adding another person--Dr. Navdeep Purewal's going to join us.

One thing about a recommendation, given your experience for sustaining or embedding this into--the community school practice--into schools, let's try it that way. One from each of you. I'll open it up. If nobody has questions, we'll continue, and maybe we'll get a second one and we'll go subsequently. I'm trying to get in as much as possible in the limited time. So let's start with Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell.

I'm going to try to be one. Okay. How many semicolons can I use? Okay. I think I'll focus just on the technical assistance, and I'm a big, big believer in investing in leadership capacity. I don't think you can find an educator--and by educator, I mean students, teachers, all the way to board members--who don't believe in values-based leadership, collaborative leadership, partnership leadership.

Just because you believe it doesn't mean you know how to do it. And, you know, when I think about, I've had the longest tenure in Oakland, over 35 years, and what helped me sustain was building a community of leadership advisors. And there are things I did not learn in a traditional leadership preparation program. So that was faith-based leaders, labor leaders, business partners, student alumni, just very innovative folks that could help me figure out how do you create a table?

And none of this is perfect, right? This piece around ensuring that schools don't feel like things are done to them by district is something as a systems leader you have to continue to grapple with. How do you learn how to authentically listen?

How do you learn how to create these tables where families feel comfortable, whether they speak English or not, coming and speaking their truth, and they feel like the system is going to listen even if those truths are unpleasant to hear.

So I think it is a collective responsibility between the state advisors, county advisors, but also high-quality community-based organizations and people who do organizing and coalition building, where that is their expertise. That is not necessarily our expertise from the bureaucracy.

And so making sure that that's built into the technical assistance, because systems are made up of people. People are going to change, and we want this mindset to be integrated into the infrastructure so when the people shift, the work happens; it can mature and sustain.

Thank you, and I just want to remind us, very helpful there at the end to bring it together, but recommendation for sustaining and embedding, given existing school structures, how do we embed this? So this is not the ingredients so much as the recipe--right--component. Maria Miranda.

Right. So once we invest in our schools, we need to make sure that collaborative leadership and authentic shared governance are intended to formalize decision-making practices that includes educators, families, and students. That shared power cannot just be rhetoric. It needs to truly be requirement of community schools implementation.

The Legislature should consider taking more proactive steps to ensure shared governance is truly embedded in community schools implementation and that accountability is an essential part of that.

Ensuring schools truly are adhering to the community schools' pillars and implementing the program with fidelity ensures our limited state resources are used in the most effective way possible to achieve the maximum benefit for the students.

Creating structures that ensure programs that are properly implemented and safeguards are embedded at all phases will help ensure the continued success of community school going forward, because only holding each other accountable at the school site is not enough. We need to make sure that you're involved so that we hold schools that are not doing this, or districts are not doing this, accountable.

Thank you. Well said.

Redesigning and innovating is a huge challenge at the high school level, given there are few examples of community schools at the high school level that have survived into the later years without regressing to the norm or focusing exclusively on efforts outside of the classroom or the school day.

At Lincoln, we see the community schools model as the ideal way to redesign learning around projects in real-world learning and move away from the old focus on content and seat hours is the primary evidence of academic rigor and engagement.

But that's really hard given the current structures that hold us back. When our families tell us that they want us to focus on the transition to adulthood and ensuring that every single student is ready for what comes next, be it a four-year university, a community college, or a trade school with transferable credits, we want to be able to partner with those spaces purposefully and not be limited by old systems that interfere with that innovation.

Community schools has supported us in shifting the narrative away from a single message that only a four-year university as a goal counts. There are lots of ways to get there, but we need more chances to be able to see schools that are doing this well and schools that are comprehensive schools doing this well.

And we need more chance to partner with innovative ways and approaches to use what is existing so that we can come up with a better approach that frees us from exclusively the Carnegie Unit approach. Innovation is the hardest thing because our families are asking for it and we need to figure out how to do it.

Thank you. We'll have Angelica go next.

Yeah. I had two things, but just one thing? I have a compound thing. The state should provide stable, ongoing funding with guardrails and support for strong implementation. It should be aligned to California's exemplary Community Schools Framework, which was developed with strong community input. The California Partnership helped with that.

The state's key to ensuring that continuous improvement happens by reinforcing that Community Schools Framework, the annual progress reporting, and aligned elements from the partnership program RFA while working to also align and provide the guidance around how can the community schools approach, like an intentional community school's planning and reflection process, be leveraged to bring coherence across what can be experienced as really disparate initiatives and plans?

And then I would say, what's really important on the community-- the multi-layered system is enforcing the integration of students and families as co-learners and leaders and incentivizing that partnership with community partners. For nearly four years, the California Partnership has been collaborating with the Statewide Transformative Assistance Center.

And there's a communities of practice approach that's highly effective in supporting those huge mindset shifts that we're talking about because it's not business as usual.

So how can you incentivize at every layer of the system, from the classroom, to the district level, to the county level, folks participating in meaningful communities of practice to really understand how to engage and to embed these best practices in what they're doing?

Thank you. Dr. Purewal.

From the State Transformational Assistance Center perspective, we think it's really important to provide ongoing funding for this vertically aligned TA Transformational Assistance system that we have. We know that to embed these practices and to continue sustaining these practices within our schools to support our students and our families, our educators and our leaders, it is important for the opportunity for long-term planning for this community schools work to happen for hiring stable teams.

We also know that systemic and equitable funding to these existing community school sites is largely important so that it's predictable, so that they're able to plan for the future and not just for the imminent-- what's coming up and what do we need to take care of now.

Also, our State Transformational Assistance Center as well as our Regional Transformational Assistance Centers and our County Offices of Education really know our grantees well and all of our districts in our counties well.

So it's really important for us to support this embedding and sustaining of the community school strategy, which is aligning and-- aligning across related initiatives to increase flexibility in allowable uses and reducing administrative fragmentation across education, health, and human services. So really investing in this TA system can support sustainability of these practices being embedded across our schools.

Thank you. I made an attempt--probably not a very good one--at trying to create essentially a word cloud, if you will, of some of the themes that I heard here that I wanted to say, and then turn it all over to my colleagues. Desire from the school community being sort of important as a key element.

The coordinator, the community organizer, heard that mentioned multiple times. The flattening of decision-making as it was phrased by one of you, but really being student-centered and family partnerships being critical to embedding this, and this being sustainable, that shared governance model.

And then, barriers to innovation is the way I'll phrase it, but I heard that from a few folks about how that's going to be important for the type of transformation that's occurring to be able to continue that innovation that needs to be rewarded as opposed to, you know, being held back.

And that takes shape in different-- from the state funding and requirements to the locals, to your local school districts and allowing that flexibility. So I'm going to stop with that and now I'll turn it over to my colleagues. Ms. Bonta.

Thank you. So I had the honor of working with James Comer back in the 90s. Remember he started basically community schools in 1968, so we know that this is one of those situations where the recipe for success has long been known and it's been a challenge for us to be able to make sure that we've been able to implement it. And I'm very excited to be able to have you all here today.

My question around kind of a recipe for success, also meaning sustainability over time, is how we are able to thread the work of community schools and individual school site being at the center of that work to ensuring that that work is embedded within the entirety of the community.

So if any of you all have examples of the ways in which schools are able to do their part and their fair share within the context of child development, what's helpful, collaboration, parent engagement, all that, but doing so within the context of the broader community context, that would be very helpful to get a sense of because I think that also relates to sustainability.

And I will look to my OUSD Emeritus Superintendent who I had the honor and privilege of working with for a long time to kick us off with a response, but I know that there are others who might have some.

Yeah, I would say-- I mean, as complicated as the LCAP is, and it is--it's a bear to try to make accessible to schools--ensuring that community schools is a part of your district vision is extremely important so that you're able to leverage a lot of funding.

It can't-- I wish we had, you know, limitless money, but we know we don't, and so I think the state has done an incredible job when you think about the investment in early child care, literacy, you know, workforce development, and making sure our kids are ready for the future.

But if we're looking at all those things in very disparate ways, you end up just being able to invest in a fraction. All those things are around whole child development, and so the community schools is just a component of it.

So the more that it's a part of your district vision, you're able to leverage Community School Grant, LCFF, Title I. It helps you to go after philanthropy better. It helps you to go after business partners. We've had incredible business partners from Salesforce that's helped us with community schools. I'm sure people have heard about the Curry's.

All of that has been community schools. Every kid deserves a wonderful space to be in school. Kids are in school over six hours. We can't afford all of that with our facilities' dollars and unrestricted. We need to keep investing in salaries, and so being able to leverage $80 million of philanthropy to do that which we braided with facilities and ESSER Fund, one-time funding for long-term impact.

So the more--not just the leadership at the top--but your schools can communicate, this is what we're trying to do, and give community-based partners. The church that's been doing food pantry work for 30 years, why put that on the backs of educators where we really want them to focus on students and families if you've got a community that can say, we want to be a part of your school community; we can do that in service of your students and families to make sure everybody has healthy, qualified food?

And so, again, back to the shared mindset and shared infrastructure, so it's that village mentality. You're opening up your system to have other leaders be a part of providing the services for students to learn. Go ahead.

No, you go first. Okay. I just want to piggyback on that. At Lincoln, in addition to the other sources that my colleague shared, we've also paired our community schools with the Golden State Pathways Grant.

And that has been a real game changer because through that, we now have an executive industry advisory board that comes to Lincoln to talk to us about our pathways that are directly connected to San Diego Workforce Partnership development, which not a surprise, is directly connected to what our parents told us they want us to focus on, which is that transition to high school, that-- after high school and the question of high school diploma for what, right?

The A to G requirements, while important, are not-- that's not a guarantee of any future success or what comes next. And so, for us, it's the intersection of those two and bringing my Golden State Pathways coordinator in with my community schools coordinator and seeing all of that crossover as well as LCAP, LCFF; all those other things are important, but that intersection and the state's dedication to those two programs, that's been game changer for us.

I want to answer the question a little bit differently. At our school site, it's about building capacity, and parents, and leadership skills. Through the process of community schools, they learn how to have access to the district, school board meetings, all of that great stuff.

When our public library was going to-- was in danger of being shut down, property was sold, they only had a two-year permit in a bungalow now. They were getting rid of it. Our parent leader came up to me and said, Ms. Miranda, I want to do what you guys did for the strike to save our library.

How are we going to do that? So we had to sit down and put together a plan and what they had to access, and the target was the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles. And we had parent leaders and community leaders show up and speak in support of their library. They had a huge picket line.

We had hundreds of folks outside of the library. They ended up not only getting a new library, right, and they also gave them a new tech center for the community because once they analyzed what little services the community had, they got to see that not only was the library desperately needed in our community, but they also needed a tech center, and the community was very happy.

It was the first time that the community had come together and the school was that hub of reunion, right, to fight for something and advocate for themselves when something was being taken away and access a different structure within the community to get what they needed. And now students continue to use the library to further, right, their education.

Parents have a place to go and look for jobs, and do their research, and write their resumes. So it was a beautiful thing to see how this was more than just the school. It was the power of the community to advocate for themselves and to protect the community and its resources.

There's the community schools multiplier effect because it brings more resources in, it generates resource in the community, and to your question earlier, too, Dr. Patel, parents who are developed as leaders at their school site, and students, they go on to engage in district-level practices, but also in the city and in the county.

And another example in terms of bringing resources in with the additional capacity from True North, Eureka City Schools has applied for a Cal Serves Grant to build out a pathway for high school students to earn the State Seal of Civic Engagement. And of course, more civically engaged students will go on and already are being leaders in our community.

So this is really the way that creating the conditions for collaboration and community partnership, it has that multiplier effect, making both the school and the surrounding community stronger.

I would also say this idea around the assets and needs assessment is really being critical about this asset mapping of our communities, not just of our students, the assets of our students, not just the assets of our educators in our schools and our parents, but what else is in our communities who we can partner with?

And it shouldn't be a one-way. This should be reciprocal, where our students are going outside of the schools and folks are coming into our schools so our students are getting this opportunity to do that, to really build this asset lens for students to really see that the educators, their teachers, their leaders find value in their communities. Oftentimes, the educators and leaders aren't from the same communities.

And so when educators and leaders do that, it really helps students feel the sense of belonging and this commitment to their communities. I'll also add that along with that, it's de-siloing. I think Kyla mentioned also this idea of, how are your mental health coordinators talking to UPK, universal prekindergarten coordinators?

How are your expanded learning opportunities coordinators, your foster youth homeless services coordinators talking to your community schools coordinators? How are we unifying as a education system from the county, to the districts, to the sites to really coordinate so our community sees us as one? We first have to see ourselves and position ourselves as one.

And just another question. I really appreciated Ms. Agudelo speaking to the complexity and, quite frankly, the rigidity that exists within our high school systems. Obviously, there's a greater uptake in our elementary and middle schools. This is very difficult and challenging work to do at the high school level.

You said it around kind of organizing around the Carnegie Unit. I would also say organizing around the bell schedule, particularly at the high school level, being huge issue, so just as our chair is trying to think about targeting our resources, what would you all say are important barrier-minimizing efforts that the state can take on to support community schools, particularly at the high school level?

Wanna start? You go ahead.

So I definitely just underscore the point of literally blowing up the Carnegie Unit made sense in the industrial era, but that's not where we are now. We need to think about talent differently.

I've had folks from tech sector come to me and say, is there a way I can just be a teacher for a couple of units so that I can teach algebra? Right? We have a shortage of science and, you know, bilingual. Special-- I mean, these are shortages we've had--I still consider myself young, but I am 50--I mean for over 50 years, right?

We have to have more creativity in terms of people who actually want to teach to teach in specialized area where there is student engagement. We need to think about 12th grade differently. There are so many kids, whether they're newcomers, right? They need to work.

That's what's driving a lot of the chronic absences in high school. But we're trying to fit them into this archaic 8:00 to 3:00. Why can't they work and find ways of having school online?

Why can't we give flexibility to educators, teachers who still want to teach, but maybe they have kids and they want to be able to do hybrid work, you know, permanently? And so being able to look at what is life like in the 21st century, I think many districts are trying to do this, LEAs. It is cumbersome.

It actually cost us money because then we're paying for infrastructure for people to figure out, how do you create master schedules with your community colleges to do dual enrollment, as an example?

If we can figure those things out at the state level to have that type of coherence, that frees up more dollars to flow back into schools instead of having to have that infrastructure in the district, right, to do those things. So that is something that I think will help us transform and get to greater scalability faster.

I'm going to give you two direct stories. We started a partnership with our area adult education to start a trades-based program because some of our kids said, we want to go on to college, but I need a higher paying job because I've got to be able to support my family in order to be able to go on to the community college or San Diego State University.

In order to schedule students into that class, I would had to have scheduled them for only two classes at Lincoln. I was told I couldn't do that, right, because that means that they would be under-scheduled for minutes. And so just to put them into a PE class instead of going and getting an HVAC, or a welding, or a CNA certification that they could have taken with them which would have opened up the doors to university.

That seat hours limitation means it's really hard, and there's not even a way to apply and say, hey, what if a student is doing this program? Could I do it if that program exists? So I don't even need a blanket. I just need some way for innovative structures to be able to open up.

I can also talk to you about students who have directly come to us and said, hey, I appreciate that I need to do all of these A to G requirements, but are there other ways for me to get on the modified diploma track--and there are some ways, but they're very limited--if I'm working towards this other way of changing my family's life because I see a different pathway for me into what I want to do with my life, right?

And four-year university is ultimately a wonderful goal, but what we see is our families are saying, there's got to be a different way, because not everybody can go away to or sit at a four-year university as a first step. And we don't ever want to take that off the table, which is why at Lincoln, we say trade school is college. All of those credits are transferable to the community college and then all of those credits are transferable to the state system. So we need that.

We need the ability to be able to open up those programs without having to say, well, we're not going to get ADA if we do it. So I have to make an impossible decision.

Do I lose the funding that I need to run the school in general, or do I make the sacrifice and say, I'm not gonna make that kid sit in just a PE class so he meets minutes; I'm going to let him go and do that program which is gonna make a difference for his future? So those anecdotes, I've got a dozen of them, but I'll stop with that one.

I wanna add, I know you asked about high school, but I think it's important that we open up in terms of, what are the elementary and middle schools doing right and what could be harming them by the time they get to high school where they-- right now, there's all these other obstacles that need to be addressed.

And I think the goal of a lot of elementary school teachers is to find the talent in every child in the classroom, and sometimes there are things done, right, and we're told to do certain things that prohibits that. And I think that goes back to being innovative, and creative, and being able to love teaching again, and students love learning.

Because there is no right pathway, not one single pathway. And sometimes it is the career route, but you're going to find out different ways what students really are good at, what they're talented at, and how they learn. And that also-- again, we're talking about testing. People focus on so much data and testing.

There are alternative ways to assess our students, to really find out how they're learning, and what they love to show, and how they show that learning. And that could-- we're trying out that community-based learning so that we can see what it is that they're learning, how they're learning it, and how they're showing their learning.

I'll also say one of the barriers in some focus groups that I engaged with for those who didn't apply for the California Community Schools Partnership Program and the why behind that was a concern around reporting requirements, around, you know, expectations, about what does this mean. How does this tie in?

So, potentially, you know, clear guidance on how programs like career technical education align with community schools, also streamlining or coordinating, you know, when possible, the reporting timelines and expectations so that we actually are de-siloing these programs as we're rolling them out so that districts don't fear that it's another thing and they're not treating it as an isolated program that they're trying to implement.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Bonta. Dr. Patel. Good? Mr. Muratsuchi. Okay. All right. Well, I want to say thank you to all of you for your presence here and for so much that you've given to us. We're happy to continue to receive, you know, other specifics, anecdotes, or examples, as were shared.

I think the two that were shared were pretty clear and very much spoke to me. So I think we want to just remind everybody we will have a hearing on community schools, on the proposal for the budget happening as well, where I hope this informs us in that conversation, and it will because of your testimony. So thank you all.

Thank you.

Thank you for what you do.

Thank you.

So now we will take the public comment on this. Please come forward if you wish to speak on the item today. Again, we're not speaking about the proposal in the budget. We are talking about implementation, key elements, and embedding, given the lessons learned from the panels that we heard from today.

So please be germane, keep your comments germane to the topic, and you will each have one minute. Welcome. Please introduce yourself and then go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm Dr. Jami Parsons, executive director at the Orange County Department of Education and the lead administrator for the California Multi-Tiered System of Support Statewide Initiative, led in partnership with Butte County Office of Education.

California MTSS supports schools and county offices in implementing and aligning the academic, behavioral, social, emotional, and mental health supports within a coherent continuum for all students. This work is especially relevant to community schools. We provided a letter to the panel today for your review.

By strengthening Tier I, or best first instruction, and supporting school teams to use data effectively, MTSS enables community schools to strategically deploy resources, monitor progress, and continuously improve practice to maximize student outcomes. In our letter to the community, we highlight California MTSS collaboration with the community schools STAC and RTAC--excuse me--and the positive impact this work has had across California.

If you notice in the annual report for community schools, MTSS is identified as one of the top five whole child supports in Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 schools. Thank you.

Thank you. The minute goes by quickly.

Good afternoon. I'm Rindy DeVoll, director of California MTSS for rural California through the Butte County Office of Education. I lead the California Rural Ed Network, elevating voices of rural educators.

For rural schools across the state, MTSS implementation combined with the community schools' pillars and capacity building strategies has been the most effective approach in improving programs and practices that are unique to these small schools and their rural communities.

Rural educational leaders often say that because schools are the center of rural communities, the integration of these two frameworks paves the way to an organizing structure that helps to make sense of it all.

Community schools implementation works harmoniously with the domains of the California MTSS framework, blending into a coherent, systemic approach in which rural families and community members can stand behind with a trusted commitment. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Elvia Vasquez. I'm a community organizer with Sacramento ACT here locally and also with the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. And in 2024, Sacramento faced the loss of free student transportation, the free ride of K to 12.

So families and community partner organized together to protect this access to school. Today, therefore, provides over 4 million rides annually, a 2.5 increase from pre-pandemic levels, serving the students across five school districts.

This outcome reflects the community schools approach and also the school and families and community partnering as the co-creators of the solutions that meet their community needs, the result of reduced transportation costs of families, safer access to schools, after-school programs, and greater equity for the students--

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'm a parent leader from Anaheim and community organizer with OCO and the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. My name is Maritza Bermudez, and I want to share on how our work through community schools and shared decision-making can make schools of belonging possible.

Across California, families and young people are helping redesign attendance systems, improve school climates, and reimagine college and career pathways that reflect the families lifted up in the California Partnership for the Future Learning Listening Campaign 2025, the need for authentic partnership between schools and students and communities.

In Anaheim, this work is real and I'm proud to be part of it, alongside Anaheim Elementary School District, Anaheim Union High School District. Parents and students sit at the table with educators and administrators to redesign our schools together, and we're also leading professional learning spaces where families share what's working and what's not and why relationships must stay at the center.

In AUHSD, OCO has supported the district in engaging families and students in the LCAP process, helping move more participation from one-time input to more intentional, meaningful engagement where families understand the process and see how their voices shape decisions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. I am Dr. Selena Barajas-Ledesma from the Los Angeles County Office of Education. We are thrilled and grateful that community schooling has been prioritized by the administration in this proposal. There are approximately 279,000 students enrolled in CCSPP supported schools.

In LA County, it includes 500 grantee schools across 400 implementation cohorts, representing an unprecedented investment in community-driven educational transformation. Importantly, 456 of these schools serve student populations with the unduplicated pupil count rates above 80%, reflecting a concentration of communities that have historically experienced underinvestment but continue to demonstrate deep cultural strengths, resilience, and community leadership.

To the north of our county, in our most rural communities of Antelope Valley, south is Compton Unified School District, east to Pomona Unified School District to Inglewood. Within this landscape, there are 64 Cohort 1 schools alone serving 46,000 students--

--in LA County. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Brianna Bruns, on behalf of the California County Superintendents. First, we want to thank the chairs for agendizing this very important topic today. County Offices of Education throughout the state are deeply invested in the successful implementation of the California Community Schools Partnership Program.

We understand that students are most engaged with learning when their social, emotional, physical, and safety needs are met. This program provides educators with the opportunity to serve the needs of the whole child, thereby advancing educational equity within their communities. We are thrilled to see legislative interest in this program.

As we move forward, we want to underscore the importance of the COE role within the CCSPP technical assistance system as was discussed today by your panelists. As we shift our thinking towards program sustainability, we feel strongly that we the COE coordinator position should be maintained for success and longevity of the community school model.

Moreover, we encourage the Legislature to consider ways to be more inclusive of all communities in terms of eligibility. The current eligibility requirements preclude many small and rural local educational agencies from qualifying, thereby limiting access to this transformational program.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, Chair Alvarez and members. Karen Stout with W Strategies, speaking on behalf of a couple of our clients here today. First, I just want to speak on behalf of the Anaheim Union High School District as well as the eKadence Learning Foundation.

I want to offer strong support for the community schools program as well as the increased funding included in the budget. These funds are critical, as well as the program, for continuing to drive the student achievement we've been talking about today, as well as offering whole student support services.

Additionally, on behalf of Scaling Student Success, we did want to urge the Legislature to continue or consider a one-time allocation of $2 million for the Portrait of a Graduate resource hub which will help schools across the state align their outcomes with the vision of student success and create cohesion within the community schools program. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. My name is Conrad Crump with Disability Rights California, and I just want to actually speak in support briefly-- strong support of community schools because of their impact on students with disabilities. For too many students with disabilities, school isn't just about learning.

It's about navigating fragmented systems as well as families being asked to coordinate their care, as well as including navigating IEPs, evaluations, and ongoing care. So very briefly, if we're serious about educational equity and disability justice, investing in community schools is one of the most effective tools that we have to do so. Thank you very much.

Hello. Lucy Salcido Carter with the Alameda County Office of Education. We're strong supporters of the community schools approach as a County Office of Ed and as the previous STAC lead. We recognize the positive outcomes from community schools, especially for vulnerable students, and believe that more schools should have the opportunity to implement this approach.

As the Legislature considers future funding for this model, we caution the Legislature against extensive reporting requirements that got mentioned today by the panel that may get in the way of the programmatic work. Also, like with research measures, accountability measures should both reflect best practices and remain responsive to local community needs. And finally, I want to note the need for ongoing support for the TA structure that was described today, including by our County Offices of Ed. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caitlin Jung, on behalf of the Small School District Association. I want to align my comments with those from the County Superintendents, particularly around small and rural participation in the program. I think that's been well-documented the benefits that this program has for students.

Because of the current eligibility requirements, that means not every school and every student has access to this program. As the state's looking at the future sustainability of community schools, we'd want SSDA to kind of be part of that conversation to make sure the unique needs of small and rural districts are considered in their process. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Jessica Gunderson. I'm the Co-CEO of Partnership for Children and Youth and also lead the California Afterschool Advocacy Alliance, which represents over 43 agencies serving 3,000 sites with over 25,000 staff.

What I want to say is we're strongly part of community schools, but we think it was an omission today to not have any community-based organizations at the table. I think as Oakland and other districts were speaking, really they need to be at the table in the planning, and we have not seen that statewide.

When I just talked to two of my providers that have 660 sites across 71 LEAs, only 47 were at the table in community schools, even though this is a pillar. So I just want to say, I think there's a lot of opportunity to align both accountability and plans.

We don't need five plans, so ELOP should be part of that with community schools and other things, and then I also think the technical assistance needs to be more coordinated and integrated with expanded learning opportunities funding. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Day Son with Catalyst California and the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. Over 1,800 students, families, and educators across 12 counties from our listening campaign made clear that inclusive and relationship-centered school cultures are key to feeling safe, supported, and connected. Trusting relationships are foundational for school transformational change.

Research shows that relationships help create the conditions for learning and even have a protective effect against the impacts of adversity and trauma, relevant today as students and families face heightened threats from discrimination and racial violence. This is why community schools are so powerful and why investing the resources, time, and capacity-building to develop deep relationships pays off.

Community schools are not a program but rather a different way of doing schools grounded in trust, belonging, and shared leadership centered on the whole child. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Katy Nunez-Adler, and I'm the statewide coordinator for the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. As a partnership, we have seen that in order to ensure that our investments in the community schools approach are used effectively, we need to continue to grow and strengthen the statewide system of support rooted in trusting, authentic relationships, and partnerships.

Regular coaching and communities of practice help to advance shared learning and continuous improvement at a local, regional, and systems level. It's important for LEAs with multiple schools receiving funds to hold regular communities of practice.

Leveraging the collective expertise of students, families, community partners, and school-based educators as capacity builders alongside LEAs, county offices, RTACs, and the STAC is essential to growing effective communities of practice across California so all students can learn and thrive in schools of joy, belonging, and opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Rachel Murphy with Public Advocates and the California Partnership for the Future of Learning. As we consider the successes of the California Community Schools Partnership Program and what's required to sustain this encouraging momentum--thank you--we must consider coherence and alignment across initiatives, funding streams, and systems of support.

The community schools approach must align with whole child principles and existing initiatives as well, such as the Local Control Funding Formula, Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, and the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. The state should consider how to coordinate and integrate program strategies as well as the planning and recording requirements and documents.

Additionally, the state must support STACs, RTACs, and COEs to provide the necessary capacity building for maximizing resources from other programs.

It is through this powerful combination of partnerships and trusting relationships, expanding learning opportunities, and integrated student supports that community schools move us away from one-size-fits-all learning towards schools that meet the unique needs and strengths of their students. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Natalie Shin, on behalf of Californians Together. We want to highlight the important role community schools play in serving the needs of English learners and their families. The most effective community schools serve as lighthouses for multilingualism, creating safe spaces where students see their languages reflected in the classroom, communication, and leadership.

This fosters belonging, improves engagement, and supports academic growth, strengthening not just multilingual learners, but entire school communities by demonstrating that language diversity is a public good, not a challenge to overcome. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you for adding that point, which I was not able to make during the hearing. Thank you to all for your participation, whether it was your testimony or for providing any information leading up to today's hearing.

Appreciate the work of both staff from both committees, and we look forward again to the conversation in April around community schools on a going-forward basis. So welcome you back at that point, but for now we're adjourned. Thank you.