Yuba City’s Tutoring Program by Fullmind Drives Sustained Student Growth
Yuba City Unified School District announced end-of-year results from its tutoring partnership with Fullmind, showing students identified as needing additional support consistently outperformed their non-tutored peers across nearly 200 participants.
The program expanded from 24 to 194 students while maintaining effectiveness. English Language Arts participants achieved 16 points of growth compared to 10.63 points among non-participants, a 50% advantage. Mathematics participants gained 8 points versus 7.93 points for non-participants.
“When students identified as at-risk of underperformance outperform the general population, we know we’ve found an approach that truly accelerates learning,” said Dr. Nicholas Richter, the program lead.
Exceptional Individual Results
Twelve ELA students gained 50 or more points between mid-year and end-of-year assessments, with one student achieving over 100 points of growth in a single semester. Students completed 93,349 minutes of tutoring with a 71% attendance rate.
Scale Without Compromise
The eightfold expansion maintained program quality and student engagement. ELA participants averaged 9 hours each while math students averaged 7 hours, aligning with research on effective tutoring dosage.
2025 Expansion Plans
Based on strong results, the district plans to expand ELA participation to 250-plus students and expand math tutoring to over 100 students. The program will extend beyond lowest-performing students to include those just below grade level.
“We’ve proven this model works at scale,” said Richter. “Now we’re expanding access to reach even more students who can benefit from this intensive support.”
The partnership represents a commitment to evidence-based interventions that address achievement gaps through high-quality tutoring services, using continuous monitoring to maintain effectiveness as it scales.
File photo of a student in the HOPE (Helping Our Parenting Students Excel) program. At varying levels, HOPE is a part of nearly 50 Learn4Life centers in California. Some schools only provide donations for baby supplies and access to support groups while larger schools have separate classrooms for its HOPE students, including the Hanford campus.
Photo courtesy of Learn4Life
Pregnant in high school, 14-year-old first-year high school student Giselle Meza said she feared she’d be judged by her peers. She was one of only two pregnant teens at her school and felt isolated. She missed a lot of classes, falling behind.
The HOPE program and Learn4Life structure empowered her to walk onto the campus without feeling alone. The program provided her with peer support from other pregnant and teen parents, a personalized learning plan, and the ability to bring her daughter to school.
In a designated HOPE room at Kings Valley Academy, shelves stocked with children’s books line the walls. Educational toys, playpens and swings cover the floor.
The room is a home away from home, where Meza could nurse, tend to or play with her daughter, Desirae, while continuing her high school education and gaining skills to better herself.
Teen parents have thrived in that environment, including Nevaeh D. who earned a full scholarship to UCLA after graduating from Learn4Life. “While I did my lessons, she was sleeping or playing alongside me,” Nevaeh said in an April media release announcing her graduation from Learn4Life. For student privacy, the school did not disclose Nevaeh’s last name.
“So many of them think they’re the only ones in this position,” HOPE founder Staci Roth said. HOPE, however, creates an environment where pregnant and parenting teens feel seen, safe and supported, Roth told EdSource.
After more than a year in the program, Meza, now 16, no longer feels isolated, and is comforted by “being surrounded by people going through the same thing.”
“We take away the shame and the stigma,” said Christianna Percell, assistant principal at Kings Valley Academy.
How HOPE started
Seven years ago in 2016, while working at Learn4Life Panorama City in Los Angeles, Roth noticed that pregnant and teen parents struggled to attend class. She started a group with teen moms to learn what obstacles were preventing them from coming to and staying in school.
Schools needed to do more to support them, she said. She designated one classroom for the group of teen parents and brought in swings and bouncers, diapers and wipes.
“Just made it their safe space,” she said.
By 2018, HOPE had grown from eight to 63 students in the Learn4Life schools, as word spread that parenting students could bring their kids to campus.
At varying levels, HOPE is now a part of 48 Learn4Life centers in California. Some schools only provide baby supplies and access to support groups, while larger schools have separate classrooms for its HOPE students, which, to Roth, has been the best way to achieve the organization’s goal of creating a safe space for parenting students to feel supported.
Learn4Life’s Hanford location adopted the program three years ago with about a dozen parenting teens. Today, the program serves almost 60 teen parents, said Lindsey Hoskins, the supervising teacher who oversees the HOPE program in Hanford.
“I was a teen parent,” Hoskins said. “There was no place I could take my baby.” She said she remembers having the choice of dropping off her child while she was at school or staying home to nurse the baby.
As a result of HOPE, Hoskins said student parents aren’t dropping out like they were before the program’s implementation.
Being supported
The HOPE program allows students with children to bring their kids to school, so they can work toward a high school diploma at their own pace while receiving mentorship, supplies and peer support. Students have access to essentials such as diapers, car seats, strollers, cribs, clothes and toys, so the teens don’t feel pressured to work as much or to spend their earnings on baby supplies.
Instead, the student parents can focus on their education and their children, Roth said.
The program provides resources by connecting the teens to community partners, providing transportation when needed or simply offering encouragement.
“We may be providing diapers and formula now while they’re at school,” Roth said, “but at the same time, connecting them to where they can get that in the future if they need it.”
The peer support ensures the parenting teens don’t feel alone and allows them to learn from each other, Roth said.
In the HOPE room, parenting teens often step in and help with a crying baby that has colic, Roth said. Or during a support group meeting, they’ll bounce ideas off of one another to treat a rash. “They’re their best teachers to each other.”
Teen parent Nevaeh earned a scholarship to UCLA after graduating from Learn4Life, which allowed her to continue her studies while bringing her daughter to the Hanford campus. Photo courtesy of Learn4Life
Students also learn life skills, such as financial planning, lessons about child development, health and nutrition, as well as job readiness and career skills.
Over time, HOPE programs have added elective classes to teach parenting skills; Roth said students can learn to be better parents while gaining needed credits to graduate.
Created based on student input, skills classes range from preparing for childbirth and breastfeeding to building healthy relationships and co-parenting. Hoskins said students can pick a topic that’s specific to their life or situation. Some of Hoskins’ students have completed classes for potty training and teething — which has allowed them to gain confidence and address the challenges they currently face as a parents.
“They feel so empowered to take care of their little ones,” Roth said.
According to a 2010 study of women in their early 20s, 53% of women who became moms as teenagers graduated with a high school diploma, in contrast to 90% of women who did not become teen parents.
Such statistics, Roth said, were the driving force behind HOPE’s goals: teaching teens how to parent and to support their family while encouraging and equipping them to go to college or find a career after high school.
Students supported by the HOPE program graduate at a 6% higher rate, according to Learn4Life and HOPE statistics.
Addressing the whole child
Several parenting students said they joined HOPE because they no longer felt comfortable at their traditional schools after becoming pregnant, the Learn4Life staff said.
“We’ve heard the stories from our students (about) how they felt at their school when they found out they were pregnant,” Roth said.
To break that cycle, HOPE staff builds supportive relationships, Roth said.
“We say we’re going to be here, and we are here,” she said. “We say we’re going to support them, and we do support them. It’s life-changing for them to have someone who asks about their day (and) to call your teacher in emergencies.”
HOPE students can be teen mothers or fathers as well as students who help care for their siblings. Kristen Cooper, 17, nearing the completion of her sophomore year, brings her one-year-old brother to the program while her parents work. She said she gained trusting relationships with adults because of the program.
The HOPE and the Learn4Life school model allows staff to build lasting, meaningful relationships with students by addressing all their needs.
The school’s model focuses on one-on-one instruction, flexible scheduling and personalized learning, said Ann Abajian, a spokesperson for Learn4Life. Students, including those in HOPE, have the option to work virtually or spend minimal hours at school.
A “team of teachers” manages students’ action plans and goals as they get “layers of support” through tutoring; one-on-one, small group and traditional class instruction; three school counselors and an onsite therapist; resiliency programs, such as yoga, meditation and classes that teach organizational skills and coping mechanisms; and an alumni support group.
That support helps students navigate their challenges, including not being able to attend a traditional school because they’re dealing with social-emotional trauma, working every day, helping care for a sibling or raising a child.
Staff members are trained to be trauma-resilient education professionals who provide tools to build the resilience to face their past, present and future, said Roth, who is also the school’s coordinator of trauma-resilient education.
Students who take part in the HOPE program, Roth said, come to the Hanford campus for one-on-one instruction with their teachers. The difference for HOPE students is the designated space to bring their children.
Meza, the student who joined HOPE to avoid judgment at her traditional school, spends a lot of time on campus because she feels more comfortable there than in her own home, she said. There’s more room for her one-year-old daughter to play, and she gets the help she needs from staff.
“I’ve been doing better than ever, honestly,” Meza said about now being nearly finished with her first year of high school.
HOPE is ‘different’ from other youth parenting programs
Schools in California have operated youth parenting programs for decades. Currently, programs are under the umbrella of Cal-Learn, a state program designed to encourage pregnant and parenting teens to graduate from high school or gain the equivalent, become independent and form healthy families.
Sixty percent of teenage parents who are currently receiving welfare will depend on government aid for 10 or more years, according to research noted in the legislation that established Cal-Learn to address the “unique educational, vocational, training, health, and other social service needs” of teen parents.
The Youth Parent Program in Clovis Unified, for example, serves parenting teens who are trying to graduate.
With a 91% graduation rate, the parenting program supports students on their journey to finishing high school and helps them gain basic parenting skills, district spokesperson Kelly Avants said.
The program is meant to “come alongside” students who are teen parents, ensuring they have access to transportation, nursing, counseling, academic support, encouragement to “stay in school, pass their classes and ultimately graduate,” and the skills to “parent well,” Avants said.
Through the program, teen parents can learn areas such as basic infant CPR, lessons on childhood development and ways to be engaged parents.
But HOPE is different, Hoskins said, because it’s on Learn4Life campuses, where educators can give students what they need with specific programming, such as personalized learning and the elective classes picked by students.
“We meet them where they are,” Hoskins said.
‘Impacting generations’
The percentage of teen parents who do not finish school contributes to high incidences of their own children not graduating.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the children of teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of high school, give birth as a teenager and face unemployment as a young adult, among other findings.
Generational impact on kids
A child who comes to campus sees their parent studying — something HOPE staff believe will foster a child’s love for school and can break the cycle of dropping out.
Mayra Hernandez, 18, said her 2-year-old son Sebastian loves his preschool and isn’t shy like some of the other kids because he attended HOPE with his mom for the first two years of his life. She said Sebastian eagerly plays with and communicates with his peers.
Parenting teens, Hoskins said, are “bringing their child who is exposed to books (and) exposed to mom reading,” Hoskins said. “They’re exposed to literature, structure, education, other peers and social behavior and norms.”
“(Teen pregnancy) has such a generational impact,” Roth said. “This population has its own obstacles and trauma that go along with (being a teen parent).”
Acknowledging those “high statistics,” Roth and Hoskins said the aspects of the HOPE program — bringing kids to campus, graduating from high school, gaining life and parenting skills and learning about careers — are “impacting generations.”
“I would be struggling still,” 18-year-old Mayra Hernandez said in hindsight. Her mom, also a teenage mother, didn’t graduate from high school. Hernandez, considered an 11th grader, said she is better able to manage her time as a mother and student because of HOPE’s and Learn4Life’s model. She is dual enrolled in high school and the West Hills Community College District and works two jobs to pay her bills.
She considers herself on track to graduate and pursue a career. Hernandez gained nearly 60 credits in just a month at Learn4Life, has completed a semester of college through dual enrollment and plans to either become a traveling nurse, ultrasound technician or a medical professional in the Navy.
Hernandez said it will be “inspiring” for her son to see her graduate.
Meza said she once viewed the military as her only option after graduation, but now after high school, her goal is to become an ultrasound technician — all because HOPE expanded what she viewed as her choices.
“A lot of our students will tell you, ‘I would not graduate high school if it wasn’t for Learn4Life and the HOPE program,’” Hoskins said. “Things that are deemed not possible are happening.”
Zaida Ramos first learned the magic of mariachi from her father when she was a little girl. Now they make music together, running the bilingual music program for San Jose’s Alum Rock Union School District.
Her father, Juan, is the maestro, the music director. She’s the program director. The father and daughter duo collaborate to share the culture and heritage of mariachi music with their students. The Ramos clan has been teaching children music for more than two decades. It’s a veritable family business.
“Mariachi is how I grew up. In my family, we were always singing,” said Ramos, a vocalist who also plays the violin. “It’s so fulfilling for us, so rewarding, to share mariachi with the families and with the whole community. Everybody is part of the performance because everybody’s connected to these songs, you know? Many times you’ll hear the audience sing along, they laugh, they cry. It resonates with everybody in some way, it’s their story.”
Students from third to eighth grade gather after school and during the summer to steep in the folkloric music of the southwest region of Mexico, a musical tradition marked by stringed instruments, strolling musicians clad in intricately embroidered costumes and a distinctive yell known as a “grito.” The youngsters in this program learn how to play instruments, including the guitarron, guitar, vihuela, violin, and the trumpet and to sing, art forms that require equal parts creativity and discipline. They also learn the beauty and fluidity of ballet folklorico.
“I am really driven by the ideal of a free and public education, and the arts need to be part of that,” said Sofia Fojas, arts coordinator for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. “Music and the arts are part of being human. It’s a universal language, a way to bridge the different cultures we see in the classroom in California. It’s really about the importance of arts and culture and engaging youth who traditionally have not had access.”
Credit: Allie Palomera from SCCOE
Through the study of mariachi, children from this predominantly Latino district learn that music is more than sound. It’s also about identity, history and culture. Mariachi contains myriad meanings because there is great nuance and complexity embedded in its notes. While the melodies evoke Mexican heritage, with roots deep in the country’s colonial period, many of the themes are also universal.
“I believe that by embracing our cultural heritage and sharing our stories through music, we can inspire positive change and create a more harmonious society,” said Guillermo Tejeda, a musician who specializes in teaching history, jazz and mariachi to youth. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see how music can empower and inspire young people in our community.”
Carrying this rich artistic tradition into a new generation is part of what drives Ramos. She sees mariachi as a way to connect students to their own unique voice as well as the collective spirit of their community.
“I always tell them, you are ambassadors of your whole community,” said Ramos, who also works in real estate. “Wherever you go, you are not only representing East San Jose, you’re representing a whole culture. You’re representing Mexican culture and you’re representing mariachi. There’s a sense of pride in who you are.”
Struggle is often a part of the stories told in mariachi music. It’s also part of the reality of teaching music in a time of tight budgets and declining enrollment. While Ramos is cheered by how many of her students acquire a lifelong love of music, she wishes she didn’t always have to fight for more funding.
“We need more teachers, we need more instruments, we need more support, we need more time, we need more classes,” said Ramos, “and that all comes down to budgeting. We have lots of requests for the kids to perform and to represent Alum Rock, but if we don’t have the budget to support it, we can’t do it.”
Many arts advocates are hopeful that an infusion of Proposition 28 funding may help bolster projects like the mariachi program, an arts ed program that represents the cultural heritage of the community.
“Culturally relevant curriculum and instruction helps educators build relationships with students by leveraging what they bring to the classroom,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative. “It helps ensure relevance and engagement and maximizes inclusivity.”
The braided nature of art, the way it’s tightly interwoven with history and culture over time, gives mariachi its power. Arts education also opens up avenues of opportunity and possibility for students as well as nurturing a sense of belonging, experts say.
“You’re teaching them about their own past,” said Fojas, who taught orchestra, band and mariachi for 20 years. “The majority of students that I taught were of Mexican descent, so when you’re teaching mariachi, you’re actually teaching them about the history of Mexico.”
In a post-pandemic world, when absenteeism and disengagement are running high, the arts can be a path to teach students how to persevere through adversity. Budding musicians must learn how to have the grit to rehearse tirelessly and then perform fearlessly before an audience. Fojas sees arts education as a magnet to draw students back to school.
“Everybody needs to understand the importance of art,” said Fojas. “Arts is culture, and when you deny people arts, you’re denying them culture, and those cultural artifacts are the things we leave behind. So if we deny youth the ability to participate in the arts, we’re denying future generations the ability to see what we’ve left behind.”
Future filmmakers brainstorming ideas at Berkeley High.
Credit: Courtesy of Allison Gamlen
In fourth grade, Nico Lee dressed up as Miss Hannigan, the heartless head of the orphanage in the classic Broadway musical “Annie,” for Halloween. He put together such a fabulous costume, bedecked in a dress, lipstick and a messy bun, that his mother worried her son might get teased. But she was also proud that he had no qualms about being playful about gender.
Nico Lee, one of the young filmmakers at Berkeley High School.Credit: Nico Lee
Now the thoughtful Berkeley 15-year-old, who grew up with two moms, digs into that formative memory and riffs on what it means to become a man today in his new short film exploring masculine tropes, “Changing Shapes.”
“One of the big ideas is finding your own identity in your own time,” Lee said. “It’s important to explore gender boundaries because if you are able to feel comfortable doing things that are outside of your gendered box, that opens up so much more freedom in how you express yourself. All that gender boundaries are is something that restricts people and separates them.”
Lee is one of seven Berkeley High School students getting their big break as part of the Future Filmmakers program, which mentors teens through the process of creating short documentary films, from the first rough cut to the red carpet premiere. This new, immersive video project culminated in a sold-out film festival at Berkeley’s Rialto Cinemas Elmwood.
“This kind of experience is rare,” said Allison Gamlen, visual and performing arts coordinator for the San Mateo County Office of Education, who helped produce the festival. “The chance for high school students to truly tell their own stories, work with real professionals, and go through every step of the creative process, from idea to finished product, is amazing for them. This program builds not only technical and career skills, but also confidence, communication, and self-awareness.”
From cinematography and sound design to editing, the students are learning the ropes of filmmaking under the tutelage of documentarian Jordan Olshansky. The class includes Lee, Madison Chau, Derrick Coney, Oliver Hufford, Camila Reyes Mendez, Keely Shaller and Madeleine Wilson.
“I’ve never had an opportunity for kids like this one, where they’ve had long, sustained, in-depth, collaborative relationships with working professionals,” said Phil Halpern, a lead teacher in the communication arts and sciences program, which includes the video program, at Berkeley High. “You could equate it to an internship where you’re the CEO and that’s really cool.”
A peek inside the film/video classroom at Berkeley High School.credit: Phil Halpern
Lee, who has always loved theater and film, jumped at the chance to make a movie of his own. It was a considerable time commitment, and he admits he had doubts about whether his story was dramatic enough, but overall he found the experience invaluable. In the end, he learned to trust his gut.
“The hardest part of making this film was that I think the whole time there was sort of a big worry that I didn’t have a story to tell,” he admits. “I learned to be comfortable with that and tell the story that I did have, and hopefully that would connect with people.”
Confronting those fears is often part and parcel of the creative process.
“My favorite part is witnessing students discover the power of their voice and find the courage to tell their stories,” Gamlen said. “That moment they see their story on screen is transformative. They realize that their perspective is not only valid, it’s needed.”
Olshansky, a father of two teenagers, had always wanted to work with adolescents, but he wasn’t sure how many kids would want to commit to early morning workshops on Mondays before school. He needn’t have worried. Many students were eager to get their foot in the door of the film industry, long a pillar of the state’s creative economy.
“The vision is not only to help them develop their storytelling skills,” said Olshansky, president of San Francisco’s True Stories production company, “but also to share their films in ways that spark meaningful conversations among other young people — about identity, family, and other issues that matter most to them.”
One of the themes Lee wanted to explore was the power of influencers, such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, to shape teen boys’ coming of age amid the rise of the manosphere.
“There’s a lot of stuff about toxic masculinity right now and about what masculinity means,” Lee said. “And I felt like maybe an interesting way to look at that was through what it’s like being a boy who was raised by women.”
All seven autobiographical short films hit hard, resonating with an authenticity that’s rare in the social media age. Camila Reyes Mendez crafts a heartrending valentine to her late mother in “Corazon Espinado.” Madison Chau examines feeling caught between two worlds in “Overseas Vietnamese.”
“The students share a huge range of life experiences,” said Gamlen, “dealing with parent death, deportation, divorce and blended families, leaving the nest to go to college, yet one theme that is emerging has to do with family and its impact on their lives.”
Young filmmaker Nico Lee shoots his autobiographical film.credit: Nico Lee
Lee’s mother, Becca, also had to venture outside her comfort zone because he interviewed his parents, as well as his grandparents, for the film.
“Honestly, I just felt so proud of him for wanting to dive into this topic and tell our family story,” she said. “But the part of it was being on camera, being in the film, that was a big stretch for me.”
Hands-on learning is the secret sauce for this project, with its unique blend of funding. The school’s video program is funded through Proposition 28 and Career Technical Education (CTE) money, while the Future Filmmakers project is paid for by Olshanky’s company, True Stories.
“We know that for most students, kinesthetic experiences make learning stick, when students are doing, not just watching or listening,” Gamlen said. “They’re holding the camera, adjusting the mic, recording their own interviews. And when it’s their own story on the line, they’re invested in every detail. That kind of ownership builds real-world readiness and pride in their work.”
Lee, for one, will never forget working side by side with a professional editor, learning what to cut and what to keep, the magic of how to craft a cinematic moment that sticks with the viewer.
“It’s one of the things that I feel most grateful for about this project,” he said. “It was pretty awesome to be able to experience that kind of collaboration. That was the first really gratifying moment for me, to see this thing that’s just been in my head actually be in a movie.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced an increase of $60 million to the Federal Charter Schools Program, bringing the annual total to $500 million to open new charter schools or expand existing ones.
This decision ignored research produced by the Network for Public Educatuon, showing that $1 billion had been wasted on grants to charter schools that never opened; that 26% of federally funded charter schools had closed within their first five years; and that 39% had closed by year 10.
The charter sector has been riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse.
See the following reports:
Charter failures
The Failure of the Federal Charter Schools Program:
Students catch up and get ahead during LAUSD’s Summer of Learning.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
Thomas Jefferson High School has a rich history.
It is one of the oldest schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District — established more than a century ago — and lies in Central Avenue, which used to be called “Little Harlem” during the 1920s and 1930s.
Its graduates — from Ralph Bunche, the first Black Nobel laureate, to Alvin Ailey, the legendary choreographer — have had lasting impact.
Now, Jefferson High sits on LAUSD’s list of 100 priority schools — meaning that Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has identified it as one of the district’s highest-needs campuses with lagging academic performance and lower attendance rates.
In an effort to promote equity across the district, LAUSD provides priority schools like Jefferson extra support and is the first to receive various resources, including instructional days designed to recover pandemic learning losses, as well as being the first to pilot LAUSD’s AI personal assistant.
“This approach places schools with the most need in a place of priority in the District regarding time and attention by Central and Region Offices,” an LAUSD spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource.
While veteran teachers and community activists have applauded Carvalho for putting an emphasis on equity, they have also said that being placed on the list creates a stigma that affects the schools’ administrators, teachers and students. Many have also warned that the superintendent’s approach is too standardized and does not address the root, societal causes of students’ academic struggles.
“Nobody wants to be listed as a failing school,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a longtime LAUSD educator who co-founded the Facebook group Parents Supporting Teachers. “Who wants to be on this list? No one — because it feels like an indictment of the hard work that we are doing every day at these schools in the face of huge historical and institutional obstacles.”
According to a district spokesperson, LAUSD’s priority schools have higher percentages of underserved students, including those who are Black, Latino, foster youth, unhoused and from immigrant backgrounds.
Proponents of other equity programs that largely support the same student body, including the Student Equity Needs Index, say their efforts have been sidelined and that they have not received the same level of support.
LAUSD has a history of prioritizing equity, Fefferman said, and Carvalho wasn’t the first district leader to roll out a list of struggling schools during Fefferman’s tenure as a teacher in the district. Former Superintendent Ruben Zacarias, who served in the late 1990s, did something similar.
“Los Angeles Unified is committed to an equitable approach in providing historically underserved schools with critical access to supports and resources,” the spokesperson for LAUSD said.
A need for equity support
Largely clustered in south and southeast Los Angeles, the roughly 54,000 LAUSD students who attend Carvalho’s priority schools have struggled with chronic absenteeism — 38.2% in the 2022-23 academic year — and lower academic performance. Only 23% of students attending priority schools met or exceeded English standards, while 16% met or exceeded math standards, according to Smarter Balanced Test results for that same year.
Meanwhile, nearly 70% of priority school graduates failed to complete their A-G requirements, which are mandatory for admission to the University of California or the California State University systems.
Data for the 2023-24 academic year is not yet available, and it is difficult to determine whether performance at priority schools has improved since they were so identified.
So far, the priority schools have improved their outcomes, the spokesperson said, noting that their rate of improvement is larger than the district’s overall.
“The questions are: How did those schools get there? How long have they been there? And what’s the plan?” asked Evelyn Aleman, the organizer of the Facebook group Our Voice/Nuestra Voz.
“Outside of tutoring and additional school days, things like that, what does (being a priority school) mean? Is it going to be Saturday classes throughout the year? Is it just going to be three additional days? That’s simply not going to be enough.”
According to a district spokesperson, developing the list of 100 priority schools was part of a larger plan to improve student performance — and that the campuses on the list receive strategic and priority staffing, along with additional professional development opportunities that are “specific to their school’s unique needs.”
They also receive more instructional coaches and dual/current enrollment options. Their progress is more closely monitored.
Some LAUSD teachers, however, maintain that the extra support that comes with being a priority school won’t be enough because there are other institutional and societal factors that get in the way of better outcomes.
“There is so much stress in the community — much of it because of poverty, some because of violence. And it’s not that there’s violence all the time, but it’s the fact that there can be at any moment — that you’re on guard,” said Susan Ferguson, a veteran LAUSD educator who previously taught at Jefferson High School.
“When you’re on your stressors like that for an extended period of time, it affects your immune system. It affects your ability to learn and focus. It affects so many things,” Ferguson said.
‘I just don’t feel like we’re moving forward’
Educators in priority schools say they can feel pressure from the district to improve outcomes, and Ferguson said LAUSD officials would come by and visit classrooms on a weekly basis.
“Classrooms are constantly having visitors: ‘Are they teaching? What are they teaching?’ The people coming in, I feel like, are well-intentioned, but they’re visiting 10 different schools who have different needs,” Ferguson said.
“And yet, they’re being asked to help all of us, and they can’t — not unless they really spend time at one school looking at it.”
Administrators at the Jefferson High School campus, Ferguson said, have been under enormous pressure to improve academic outcomes.
She also said she wouldn’t be surprised if students’ psychology were impacted by the constant flow of district administrators in and out of classrooms — and any nervousness coming from their teachers.
“Our kids aren’t stupid. I’m sure that they have picked up on … some sort of problem,” Ferguson said. “I’m really hoping that they’re not taking it as being them. … I can’t imagine them not feeling the anxiety.”
More than anything, Ferguson maintains that the district’s standardized approach may not address the root cause of students’ academic challenges.
“‘Let’s have tutors. Let’s assign these tutors to Jefferson and make the kids stay till 6 p.m.’” Ferguson said. “Well, if you bothered to come to our school and talk to our kids, you’d realize that we don’t have kids that generally stay until 6 p.m. because it’s not even safe. And people have family members to take care of and responsibilities.”
“It just totally seems not in touch with what’s going on and what the issues are.”
‘A broader view’: SENI’s approach to equity
A long-term equity program across LAUSD schools — the Student Equity Needs Index (SENI) — is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
The effort, which was developed by the district alongside various community partners, ranks and categorizes all of LAUSD’s campuses based on their needs. The 15 factors that inform SENI’s rankings go beyond academic factors to include the prevalence of gun violence and asthma rates.
During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, exposure to the coronavirus and related deaths were also taken into account.
Jessenia Reyes, Catalyst California’s director of educational equity, said social indicators help them focus on challenges more uniquely faced by lower income communities and communities of color.
SENI then uses a sliding scale to allocate funding, which schools can use to address whatever needs they and their communities collectively feel are most pressing, said Daniela Hernández, the senior director of campaign development at Innercity Struggle, a local nonprofit organization that has been part of the effort to implement the program.
About 90% of SENI funds — which come from the district and are given to schools based on their level of need — went toward bolstering staff across elementary, middle and high schools, with many choosing to focus on psychiatric social workers and pupil services and attendance staff, according to a 2021 evaluation of the district’s SENI program conducted by American Institutes for Research.
The same evaluation found that SENI helped boost English language arts scores among economically disadvantaged students and those who are English learners. Math scores also increased among students with disabilities who are also English learners and economically disadvantaged.
Despite the improvements SENI has seen over the past decade, community advocates have also sounded alarms that not all of SENI funds allocated to schools are spent by principals. According to a district budget report, there is roughly $282 million that remains unused going into the 2024-25 academic year.
“Schools are encouraged to utilize SENI funds for each school year in order to serve the students who generated those dollars, and to engage with educational partners regarding the use of these funds,” a district spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource.
“Unspent SENI dollars are reallocated to schools based on need in order to address learning acceleration, provide mental health services and supports, provide additional learning supports, support student attendance, and address the needs of student populations.”
Priority schools, the spokesperson said, get to keep up to 70% of their carryover funds.
A delicate relationship
This past year, 88 high- and highest-need SENI schools were listed on Carvalho’s list of 100 priority schools. A district spokesperson said that SENI serves as more of a financial designation, while the 100 priority schools list is more of a “strategic designation for central and regional support systems.”
Advocates have said they appreciate LAUSD’s expressed commitment to equity.
“The district, if anything, has been ahead of the game of understanding that students don’t learn in a box — that whatever happens in their community matters,” said Miguel Dominguez, the director of development at Community Coalition, who has worked with LAUSD on the SENI initiative.
“If they’re being exposed to gun fatalities in their neighborhood, maybe doing a test or a pop quiz might not be something at the forefront of their mind. … This understanding of this overall whole child approach has been big.”
But several advocates also maintain that the district’s attitude toward SENI has changed with the emergence of the 100 priority schools.
When Carvalho announced he had developed developedhe list, Reyes said SENI seemed to drift onto the back burner; and, they felt an increasing pressure to prove SENI’s worth, and that it “wasn’t just symbolic” but had funding tied to it.
She noted that funding for SENI has increased over the years — soaring from $25 to $700 million. Advocates have continued to press for sustained support.
“Now more than ever, it is vital that LA Unified takes actionable steps to demonstrate its core belief of equity by interrupting the course of history and committing to prioritizing stable, long-term adequate funding to meet the unique needs of highest-needs students,” a March letter from various SENI supporters to Carvalho and the school board states.
“This includes protection of SENI and ensuring the $700 million investment is a permanent and stable funding source beyond the 2024-2025 school year.”
Meanwhile, SENI advocates said that a lack of transparency from the district and its failure to immediately release the list of 100 priority schools has made it harder for them to work collaboratively.
The district, however, noted that support for priority schools is intended to help campuses take advantage of their resources, including SENI funding and “removing any barriers that may interfere” with their schools’ individual efforts.
“There’s room for improvement in collaborating and working in parallel. Because ultimately, if they are SENI schools and they are priority schools, that means it’s a high-need school, period,” Reyes said. “It needs the support and the love from everybody and everything.”
Yuba City Unified School District announced end-of-year results from its tutoring partnership with Fullmind, showing students identified as needing additional support consistently outperformed their non-tutored peers across nearly 200 participants.
