California Safe and Supportive Schools

Making Data Meaningful in Educator-to-Family Communication

School Climate and Culture

Making Data Meaningful in Educator-to-Family Communication

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Schools collect vast amounts of data about students—the sources range from attendance records, classroom activities, and standardized assessment scores to homework completion, behavior, and local school climate surveys. School leaders and educators are becoming increasingly skilled in sharing and using data to make important decisions about programs, interventions, resources, and policies.

This document describes strategies for sharing data and engaging in data-driven discussions with families to improve student and school outcomes. It includes tips for considering how to invite families into data conversations, effectively engaging with families around student and school data, and determining which data to share with families. A vignette from Azusa Unified School District in California illustrates how collaborating with families to make data-informed decisions can build trust and draw on community assets to improve school outcomes.

Youth Perspectives on School Safety

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School safety has become an increasing concern for education leaders, especially as recent years have marked record highs for shootings, wildfires, and other emergencies on school campuses.

A few Youth Advisory Team members described how school staff tend to emphasize order, control, and hierarchies in their exchanges with students, which harms their ability to express themselves and build relationships at school. Part two of this two-part brief  examines the role that school safety plays in students’ classroom experiences in addition to the overall well-being of school communities.

Featured Speakers:

  • Alexa Southall, 10th grade student
  • Jubia Chavez, 12th grade student
  • Amiya Farias, 11th grade student
  • Julian Berkowitz–Sklar, 12th grade student
  • Aisha Bilgrammi, 10th grade student

View the transcript from this audiocast

Download the brief

Meaningful Youth Engagement to Guide School Climate

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Partnering with students, caregivers, and community partners is crucial in creating environments that are safe, supportive, and inclusive. School leaders can achieve a higher level of participation by offering students collaborative roles in affecting change based on their critical examinations of learning conditions. Collaborating with students is especially important for secondary students, as creating opportunities for youth to practice decision-making skills aligns with the neurological and developmental needs of adolescents.

The CCSC has prioritized youth engagement through the creation of the Youth Advisory Team (YAT), a group of six high school students who provide input on climate needs based on their lived experiences in public schools throughout the state.

Featured Speakers:

  • Alexa Southall, 10th grade student
  • Jubia Chavez, 12th grade student
  • Amiya Farias, 11th grade student
  • Julian Berkowitz–Sklar, 12th grade student
  • Aisha Bilgrammi, 10th grade student

View the transcript from this audiocast

Download the brief

Cultivating Caring Relationships at School: 15 Activities That Promote Staff and Student Connection

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This resource, coauthored and reviewed by California Center for School Climate’s Youth Advisory Team, contains 15 classroom-based activities that promote the development of positive relationships between staff and students at both the elementary and secondary levels. Activities are designed to be low cost and easy to implement. Each activity contains detailed instructions as well as adaptations for both in-person and online learning environments.

Watch this video to learn about an activity in the toolkit!

View the transcript.