California Safe and Supportive Schools

Engaging Educational Partners in Local Control and Accountability Plans

County Office of Education Coordinators

Engaging Educational Partners in Local Control and Accountability Plans

by

Join the California Center for School Climate and the California Department of Education for a webinar on how to authentically engage educational partners in Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP) to drive school climate improvement and other transformation efforts.

Local educational agencies (LEAs) in California are required to partner with students and families to create their LCAP. This webinar will discuss how to meaningfully and effectively partner with students, families, and other partners to authentically engage with them in education decision-making. In this session San Jacinto Unified School District will share information and their best practices in engaging with educational partners as an essential asset for their LCAP process.

Watch the webinar recording: 

View the recording transcript

View the webinar slides and resources

Presenters:

Dr. Vanessa Gomez is the Director of Equity and Access for San Jacinto Unified School District where she is responsible for LCAP development and has effectively worked with diverse families to engage them in the process. She has over 25 years of experiences as an educator. During her career, Dr. Gomez has developed and implemented comprehensive, data-driven school counseling programs and Student Assistance Programs. She also has a vast experience with crisis response counseling including creating and designing suicide prevention protocols, and implementing Trauma Informed approaches in schools. Dr. Gomez earned her doctorate degree from San Diego State University and completed her dissertation study on Implementing Trauma Informed Approaches in Schools.

Dr. Karen Kirschinger is the Assistant Superintendent of Personnel Services for San Jacinto Unified School District. She joined the district in 2001 and has held several positions including as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and most recently the Executive Director of Student, Community & Personnel Support. In that role she provided guidance to students, families and staff in areas pertaining to child welfare, services to foster youth and homeless, attendance, counseling and support groups and also gave direction to the district’s enrollment and parent centers.

The Importance of Alignment and Coherence

by

Join the California Center for School Climate for the third Virtual Learning Session, The Importance of Alignment and Coherence. 

Participants will explore the concepts of alignment and coherence across policies, funding, communications, capacity building, data use, and goals, with a focus on equity. Presenters will share examples from education agencies in California and beyond that illuminate the technical and adaptive aspects of working toward alignment and coherence of programs and services. We will discuss the six domains of alignment and coherence and how they apply to school climate improvement and other initiatives.  

Watch the session recording:

View the recording transcript.

Download the session slides and resources.

Session Three Presenters:  

Natalie Romer (she/her) is a Senior Program Associate in WestEd’s Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team. Her work includes technical assistance, research, evaluation, and training focused on developing effective and efficient systems to support the social and emotional well-being of school communities. Romer’s areas of expertise include multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS); school-based mental health; social and emotional learning (SEL); positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS); social, emotional, and behavioral intervention and assessment; design of instruction and evaluation; special education; cross-agency collaboration; and integrated behavioral health service models. 

Natalie Walrond (she/her) serves as the Director of the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities content area at WestEd and the Associate Director of the Region 15 Comprehensive Center. She is a national leader of efforts to help public schools, districts, and regional and state education agencies become resilient and healthy places oriented to serving the whole person. Walrond has experience in K–12 education, finance, and strategy for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations and has led the development of flagship publications that have been widely cited in the field, including Serving the Whole Person: An Alignment and Coherence Guide for State Education Agencies, Rooting Social and Emotional Well-Being Efforts in Equity: A Reflection Guide, and the recently released Equitable, Sustainable Systems Change at Scale: Lessons Learned From State Collaboratives. 

You can register for the entire series or for any single Virtual Learning Session. Each session will be 90 minutes, with a 1-hour webinar-type session and an optional 30-minute virtual discussion for questions and consultation. Learn more about the Virtual Learning Sessions here. 

Working Collectively to Generate and Prioritize Ideas

by

Join the California Center for School Climate for the second Virtual Learning Session, Working Collectively to Generate and Prioritize Ideas.

Participants will learn how to collaborate together to identify priorities and goals. This involves brainstorming and designing actions, services, and programs that interrupt inequitable system conditions and create opportunities for young people, families, and communities to thrive.

Watch the Session Recording: 

View the recording transcript.

View the session slides and resources.

Session Two Presenters: 

Kristin Sobilo currently serves her community as an elementary principal in rural Humboldt County on the far northern California coast. A dynamic, bilingual, and passionate educational leader,  Kristin puts inclusivity into practice by meeting and welcoming children, families, and educators where they are. Kristin builds bridges because she genuinely values the efforts and voice of each stakeholder and engages the diverse community she and her team serve. With 25 years of experience in education, from teaching English to middle schoolers, coaching teachers on effective instruction, facilitating and implementing both Restorative Justice and Arts Integration grants, and leading through example, Kristin embraces and models curiosity, learning, and growing every day. Kristin and her husband Mike enjoy visiting with their adult children, traveling, and a good game of Scrabble.  

Jenny Betz (she/they) serves as a Technical Assistance Provider for the California Center for School Climate. Jenny is also a Senior Program Associate in the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities content area at WestEd providing coaching, training, and technical assistance to support client efforts to assess and improve school climate and wellness, with an emphasis on equity, trauma-informed practices, SEL, partner engagement, youth leadership, bias-based bullying, LGBTQ students, data use, and sustainability. With more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Jenny has worked with hundreds of SEAs, LEAs, government agencies, professional associations, community organizations, and corporations, focusing on creating and sustaining safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments for all students.

You can register for the entire series or for any single Virtual Learning Session. Each session will be 90 minutes, with a 1-hour webinar-type session and an optional 30-minute virtual discussion for questions and consultation. Learn more about the Virtual Learning Sessions here.

Strategies to Enhance Life Satisfaction for Students and Educators

by

Let’s start this school year by discovering the wellness strategies and tools that work best for you and others in your community to increase life satisfaction. This webinar will explore a wide range of tools to support physical, emotional, and mental well-being in a variety of formats.

Join the California Center for School Climate (CCSC), CalSCHLS, and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) as they provide an overview of resources that participants can use to support students or themselves.

Watch the webinar recording:

View the webinar transcript.

View the session slides and resources.

Presenters: 

Laura Buckner is a Technical Assistance Specialist with WestEd’s Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team. Laura’s work centers on sharing information that is timely, relevant, and useful to education leaders as they seek to improve systems to address the whole-person and whole-community needs of their stakeholders. She does this by translating research to practice, supporting implementation of evidence-based practices in education, and designing learning opportunities that help practitioners align their goals with their activities. Prior to joining WestEd, Laura worked with community-based organizations, partnering successfully with schools and school districts to provide mentorship and mental health services to students in grades K–12. She holds a joint MBA/MA in educational leadership from Mills College in Oakland, California. 

Michael Furlong, PhD is a research professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2021/22 UCSB Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship). He received the 2022 School Mental Health Research Award and provides consultation and support to the California Department of Education and WestEd related to CHKS. A co-editor of the Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools (2009, 2014, 2022), he collaborates with colleagues on Project Covitality, supporting schools’ efforts to foster all students’ social–emotional development.

Erin Dowdy, PhD is a professor in the department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a licensed psychologist and a nationally certified school psychologist. Her research career and scholarly publications have focused on universal assessment for social and emotional health and risk. She is focused on equitable screening practices. Dr. Dowdy has a record of past success at disseminating research in peer-reviewed journals and at professional conferences. Her research and collaborative work with schools, state, and community agencies has been funded by various agencies.  

Tom Hanson serves as a Senior Advisor for the California Center for School Climate. Tom is a Senior Managing Director at WestEd. He has extensive experience in developing and validating survey instruments designed to measure school climate and other outcomes. He is the Director of the California School Climate, Health, & Learning Survey (CalSCHLS), a comprehensive youth risk-behavior and resilience data-collection service available to all California local education agencies. He has served as a principal investigator of multiple large-scale randomized controlled trials and has been lead methodologist for several studies examining the impacts of education interventions.

Participatory Systems Change for Equity: Centering Community Wisdom and Collective Action to Transform Child-, Youth-, and Family-Serving Systems

by

Drawing on community organizing, liberatory design, and participatory methods, Participatory Systems Change for Equity is an approach to systems transformation that centers the expertise of those most impacted by child-, youth-, and family-serving systems to make sense of and interrupt inequitable system conditions. Attend this session to learn about the Participatory Systems Change for Equity framework and how this framework can help your school, district, county, state, or other community-serving agency reimagine how it transforms systems in partnership with communities to promote equity, opportunity, and well-being.

Watch the session recording:

View the recording transcript.

View the session resources and slides in this Linktree.

Presenters:

Natalie Walrond (she/her) serves as a Senior Advisor for the California Center for School Climate. Natalie serves as the director for the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities content area at WestEd. She also serves as Director of the national Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety housed at WestEd. The Center works nationally to build state and local capacity to integrate evidence-based approaches to social and emotional development and school safety with academic teaching and learning, school climate, and all the ways that children and youth experience school. Natalie speaks and writes on social and emotional well-being, education excellence, alignment and coherence, and equity. Natalie brings to her work over 25 years of experience in K–12 education, finance, and strategy, for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

Amber Valdez, EdD (she/her) is a Senior Program Associate II with WestEd’s Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities team where she supports local, regional, and state agencies and organizations to design and transform complex systems for equity. Her expertise includes complex systems change, transformational leadership, participatory change approaches, cross-sector collaboration, continuous improvement/improvement science, and human-centered/liberatory design. Valdez brings experience working with public and private sector systems, including education, health, and community development agencies, nonprofit and for-profit organizations, and foundations. Before coming to WestEd, Valdez led a consulting business supporting youth-, family-, and community-serving agencies and organizations with strategic planning, resource development, and community partnerships. She also served as a nonprofit leader supporting school and district administrators with resource development, community schools design, family engagement, and educational leadership.

Rebeca Cerna (she/her/ella) serves as the Director for the California Center for School Climate. As an Area Director at WestEd, Rebeca supports districts, schools, and community partners in centering equity and improving educational, prevention, and health outcomes. Rebeca’s areas of expertise include health and wellness, school culture/climate, partner voice, data use, and cross-sector collaboration. She has extensive experience in working with communities that have been challenged by infrastructure deficiencies and in lifting the voices of all community members. Rebeca has also worked with diverse settings, including rural and urban communities, recent and mixed-status immigrant communities, and alternative education.

Shazia Hashmi (she/her) serves as a Technical Assistance Provider for the California Center for School Climate. As a Program Associate at WestEd, Shazia translates and applies research on equitable, developmentally appropriate strategies to support state education agencies, district leaders, and educators in serving communities. She supports research and technical assistance projects that focus on improving practices in social–emotional learning, school climate, and community engagement. She currently works with The California Endowment’s School Health Data Team to create supportive, engaging learning environments for students using school climate data. She also serves as a technical assistance provider for the National Center to Improve Social Emotional Learning and School Safety.

 

California Center for School Climate: Building Safe, Supportive, and Inclusive School Climates in 2023-24

by

Join us for the California Center for School Climate: Building Safe, Supportive, and Inclusive School Climates in 2023-24 webinar. The California Center for School Climate (CCSC), a project of the CDE operated by WestEd, provides school climate and data use coaching and supports at no cost to LEAs in California.  

Come learn about upcoming opportunities including professional learning, technical assistance, and resources available to LEAs. You will hear from a local administrator about their experience with CCSC. The webinar will be hosted on September 14, 2023 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Contact [email protected] if you have any questions.  

Watch the webinar recording:

View the recording transcript.

View the session slides and resources.

Presenters:

Hilva Chan, MSW, is an Education Programs Consultant with the California Department of Education. Chan has extensive experience managing programs promoting youth resiliency and wellness both at the state and local levels, and she has managed several federal grants addressing school safety, positive school climate, and student mental health. She is currently the program director for two mental health projects, Project Cal-STOP and Project Cal-Well. Chan oversees the California Center for School Climate and the statewide implementation of the California School Climate, Health, and Learning Surveys.

Rebeca Cerna (she/her/ella) serves as the Director for the California Center for School Climate. As an Area Director at WestEd, Rebeca supports districts, schools, and community partners in centering equity and improving educational, prevention, and health outcomes. Rebeca’s areas of expertise include health and wellness, school culture/climate, partner voice, data use, and cross-sector collaboration. She has extensive experience in working with communities that have been challenged by infrastructure deficiencies and in lifting the voices of all community members. Rebeca has also worked with diverse settings, including rural and urban communities, recent and mixed-status immigrant communities, and alternative education.

Jenny Betz (she/they) serves as a Technical Assistance Provider for the California Center for School Climate.Jenny is also a Senior Program Associate in the Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities content area at WestEd providing coaching, training, and technical assistance to support client efforts to assess and improve school climate and wellness, with an emphasis on equity, trauma-informed practices, SEL, partner engagement, youth leadership, bias-based bullying, LGBTQ students, data use, and sustainability. With more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Jenny has worked with hundreds of SEAs, LEAs, government agencies, professional associations, community organizations, and corporations, focusing on creating and sustaining safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments for all students.

Kristin Sobilo currently serves her community as an elementary principal in rural Humboldt County on the far northern California coast. A dynamic, bilingual, and passionate educational leader,  Kristin puts inclusivity into practice by meeting and welcoming children, families, and educators where they are. Kristin builds bridges because she genuinely values the efforts and voice of each stakeholder and engages the diverse community she and her team serve. With 25 years of experience in education, from teaching English to middle schoolers, coaching teachers on effective instruction, facilitating and implementing both Restorative Justice and Arts Integration grants, and leading through example, Kristin embraces and models curiosity, learning, and growing every day. Kristin and her husband Mike enjoy visiting with their adult children, traveling, and a good game of Scrabble.