How do we create equitable, transformative and healing-centered school environments? Since 2013, the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) has been a tool to help California school districts think strategically about equity, their priorities and their budgets. The plan focuses on improving outcomes for many of the most vulnerable students in the state. It is also intended to center local voices in decision making, including students, parents, and community stakeholders. Each year, districts go through a study session and set goals to improve outcomes for key groups of students including foster youth, African American youth, English Language Learners, students dealing with homelessness and students with disabilities. The final step is creating a plan and budget to implement these goals. The plan has teeth because it guides district budgeting and the school district’s board has to sign off on it. It's a high stakes and high profile process in many school districts.

What does it mean to authentically engage young people, especially those who are most impacted, in this kind of decision-making process? How can this be done in the middle of a crisis, when a school district is facing extreme budget cuts?

Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) wanted to find a meaningful way to engage students in their LCAP process, even though the district was facing a serious budget crisis. Taking inspiration from other districts, the Youth Development Department at SCUSD decided to use YPAR as a way for youth leaders to talk with other youth across the district about their needs and priorities. At the same time they were developing youth leadership, they were also getting real information to inform LCAP priorities.

The first challenge was finding a YPAR team. The SCUSD Student Advisory Council was a natural choice. They were working with the superintendent and the district’s Youth Development Department on district-level issues. However, while they represented high schools across the district, these were, for the most part, students who were already engaged in school and doing well. In collecting data, they had to make sure that they fully represented students that were underserved and often least involved in district conversations. They decided to form partnerships with other youth leadership bodies across the district—groups that represented African American students, Native American students, foster youth and other key LCAP constituencies.

The second challenge was to help the team understand a complex process like LCAP development. Even though these students were engaged in district leadership, none of them knew about this process. The district’s LCAP Coordinator came in and did trainings for the team just to understand the context, what they were there to do and why.

The team met weekly in the district office with an adult coordinator. They decided to focus on three deceptively simple questions: What are issues you face? What are the issues you face in school? What changes do you want to see? Through an initial survey they learned that students in their core communities faced five key issues: lack of sleep, mental fatigue, racial discrimination in schools, gender discrimination in schools and dress code discrimination. They then used public data and focus groups to go deeper into each of these issues—understanding both the details and the broader social context. At the heart of the research were huge questions about school climate and student wellbeing. The team had to think about how to link it to the district’s LCAP and make recommendations that would actually make a difference.

The team had three main recommendations:

• Hire mental health counselors
• Create and implement time management contracts (to contain the out-of-school work load put on students)
• Mandate training on race and gender for teachers, staff, campus monitors, and students

As part of their leadership role they were very concerned with accountability. These issues—especially around addressing race, implicit bias and dress code enforcement in schools—had been raised over and over again. The youth leaders made it clear that they wanted a real follow up plan for all of their recommendations and that they planned to attend the monthly board meetings to advocate for their implementation. They found synergy and support with the parent LCAP leaders who were raising similar issues.

The board immediately agreed to hire more mental health counselors and used the team’s report to help justify the expense. To continue momentum around ending racial and gender bias, the district’s youth media team picked up the findings and launched a social media campaign to highlight the different findings and messages across the district. Meanwhile, the Men’s and Women’s Leadership Academy—another youth leadership body in the district—initiated a deeper look at student and teacher relationships through a subsequent YPAR project the following school year that looked at healing and trauma-informed work.

SCUSD demonstrated that even though it might be hard to engage youth in times of budget crises, those are times that are critical to have youth at the table, especially the youth who are most affected by cuts and least represented in decision-making processes.

Collaborating Organization: UC Davis Center for Regional Change Putting Youth on the Map Program

Photo Credits: Joshua Hoehne; Wil Stewart