​Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) partners with Seneca Family of Agencies to provide behavioral and therapeutic support at their alternative education campus. Students are referred to the Community Day School (CDS) campus through the Disciplinary Hearing Process (DHP), when they have been expelled from their home school campus. Students are assigned to the CDS campus for a set period of time, depending on the severity of the behavior leading to their expulsion. 
 
While at CDS, the staff provide a nurturing environment where students receive academic and behavioral supports, as well as develop a strong sense of community.  Through our behavioral phase system, eligible students are able to receive special monthly lunches, attend monthly field trips, and participate in student store twice a month.  The entire campus community also participates in monthly cultural lunches, where students learn about other cultures and experience food from those cultures. 
 
CDS is a small, intimate campus nestled in the Oakland hills.  The serene environment, combined with smaller class sizes and a variety of staff supports, help students to focus on achieving individualized behavioral and academic goals, and prepare for their readmission hearing.  At the readmission hearing, school staff discuss the student’s progress and either recommend that the student be readmitted to a mainstream school or remain at CDS to continue work on specific goals.  The ultimate goal for students at CDS is to be readmitted.  This past December, CDS had 12 students readmitted, which is the largest number of readmissions the campus has ever seen. 

The founders of the Primary School had a vision of a community school that began serving children at birth and offered a holistic approach to serving their students and families. When they opened their doors in August of 2016, they welcomed in expecting mothers for prenatal services, parents with infants and toddlers for early childhood programming, and 3 year-olds for full day Pre-School. Now, The Primary School has their first 1st grade class and will grow one grade level each year until they reach 8th grade. With their own special blend of Whole Child supports, The Primary School maintains close relationships with health clinics in the neighborhood and utilizes their pediatrician (yes, they have a pediatrician!) to collaborate with students' health care providers. In addition to health integration, The Primary School also offers parent coaching for every family. Each caregiver is assigned a Parent Coach and attends regular groups on nutrition, discipline strategies, bedtime routines, accessing community resources, and more.

Seneca has the amazing opportunity to work with this dedicated team to co-design The Primary School's mental health component. We've taken many elements from our Unconditional Education model, such as tiered mental health systems that include social skills groups and intensive therapeutic services, and we've combined them with TPS's existing tier 1 systems and data collection tools. Our Seneca therapist, the fabulous Melinda Brown (featured staff this week!), currently provides social skills groups for 3-5 year-olds who were flagged by the SSIS (Social Skills Improvement System) screening tool. Beyond the data collection component, SSIS offers a robust SEL curriculum that Melinda uses in her group work. At the tier 1 level, TPS employs the Conscious Discipline framework, which emphasizes creating a safe, family atmosphere at school and supporting children in learning self-regulation strategies. We've incorporated these tenants and strategies into our Crisis De-Escalation training, consultation work, and other teacher-facing supports.​

The newest addition to our work with TPS is our first SSA in East Palo Alto, Melanie Antonio! Melanie just started her work at the Primary School and is focusing on a few Kinder students who require intensive behavioral services. She will be providing milieu support, Check-In Check-Out, and targeted social skills groups. Are you curious about our early childhood superstars down in East Palo Alto? Reach out to Jonathan Barnett or Melinda Brown to set up a visit!

Four years ago, Seneca Washington began its Unconditional Education Partnership in the new charter school sector.  Working collaboratively with schools in their first years of operation afforded the unique opportunity to build schools with the Unconditional Education Model from the beginning. Excel Public Charter School in Kent, Washington was one of the first. Families were excited for new and innovative approaches to education, and Excel delivers that through a focus on computational thinking, music education and college preparation.

In the first year, the academic diversity of the school population was both inspiring and overwhelming. To meet the academic needs of all students, highly capable programming as well as programming for moderate to severe disabilities would be necessary.  How would we serve all students and meet their needs while keeping a commitment to create the most inclusive settings?

Students with significant disabilities are typically served in more restrictive settings. Nationally, 70% of students with significant disabilities are placed in classrooms and settings where they spend much of their day with other disabled peers.  In the 2017-18 school year in the Washington Charter Sector, 74% of students with significant disabilities were served in the general education setting with their non-disabled peers for 80-100% of their school day.

​With some creativity, curiosity, and a staff that was open and willing to try new things, Excel has created a very inclusive setting for its most impacted students. One of the most valuable resources has been training and continued support on accommodations and modifications. Using a graphic organizer to present to staff, the Special Education team worked through each level of accommodations and modifications. Having teachers bring work samples and creating workshop time was essential to making this a success. Special Education teachers also had drop in office hours on Mondays during teacher prep called “Modification Mondays.” Through continued professional development, classroom support, and weekly check ins, teachers gained new skills and strategies to modify their curriculum for all learners. 

Recently, one of the founding scholars at Excel, who had previously been served in a more restrictive setting, was awarded at the scholar breakfast for his academic achievement.  His teachers modified his curriculum to meet his needs and he is now confident in his own academic ability. 
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Every one of our students deserves to have access and support to learn. It’s our job to do our best with what we know and have to make that happen, 

Dearborn Park International School (k-5) serves students in the heart of Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. As part of Seneca’s expanding partnership with Seattle Public Schools, a Student Support Counselor was placed at the school in Fall of 2017.
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With an enrollment of about 400 students, Dearborn Park takes seriously it’s responsibility to provide every student with an excellent, holistic education. Dearborn is a dual-language emersion school which embeds Spanish, Mandarin, and English into instruction. As one of the most diverse schools in Seattle, students at Dearborn come from families representing over 25 unique languages and cultures.  About 70% of students at Dearborn come from low-income families, and about 40% are English Language Learners. Dearborn is a school where joy is always in the air, families and community members are active and engaged, and staff care deeply about the students they serve.

Seneca’s partnership with Dearborn began with a full-time Student Support Counselor focused on carrying out the reset procedure- helping students who are experiencing behavioral challenges, in the moment, to regulate emotions, reflect, restore relationships, and reintegrate into classrooms. With support from Seneca staff, these Tier II and Tier III behaviors became less frequent and shorter in duration. This reduction in reactive interventions provides a powerful opportunity in Seneca school partnerships – focus can shift to proactive PBIS-informed approaches (check-in/check-outs, reward systems, behavior plans etc) for individual students. It also enables Seneca staff to be key resources in systems changes at both the classroom and school-wide level.
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One powerful support that Seneca has been prioritizing with its SPS partners (including Dearborn) is focusing on the Teacher-Student relationship. Research has consistently shown that the relationship between a student and their teacher is one of the greatest factors in student success. This is sometimes referred to as the invisible classroom – “a collection of continuously active neurological and human connections that have an immense effect on learning but little to do with the actual content of the lesson (Olson, 2014).” It is what exists beyond competencies and test scores – it is the behavioral, emotional, and rational elements that create a contextual, safe, and caring environment in which learning occurs for all students. Teachers, more than any other adult in a school building, have the power to create these environments. By closely partnering with teachers and doing in-class proactive work with individual students, Seneca staff play an active role at Dearborn (and other schools) to work towards positive invisible classrooms. These efforts create sustainability, key to the mission of Seneca’s Unconditional Education model.

Learning Without Limits is a K-5 school in the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland that believes strongly in the balance between constructivist learning and knowledge-based learning using culturally relevant pedagogy. Students attending Learning Without Limits are empowered with the academic skills and character traits necessary to succeed in college and beyond. The teachers and staff help students grow into leaders who care about their peers and who are able to act in support of what they believe in.  

Students and their families are a part of a community where relationships are nurtured and student growth is a collaborative effort, and their actual vision statement was written by founding families and teachers (they chant it as a whole-school community every morning).
 
We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us as we grow into leaders, who are passionate and care about making our world better. We are equipped with skills and knowledge, filled with curiosity and we know that even when we face challenges, we will achieve!

This year at Lazear, clinician Chrissy Highet is continuing to lead a GSA group for middle schoolers, partnering with Ed Specialist Ms. Rivera and 7th grade Humanities teacher Mr. V. GSA usually stands for Gay-Straight Alliance, but it can also stand for Gender and Sexuality Alliance (which is a much more inclusive name). GSAs are school clubs in which students can talk and learn about sexual orientation, gender identity, and some of the issues that surround them. The students took lead on spreading the word about the group this year, and have taken charge on naming the topics they want to discuss in the group, including media influence, feminism, and gay rights in the community and internationally. Group members are also planning a PRIDE celebration for October around National Coming Out Day. This year we will also have guest presenters from Sigma Epsilon Omega, UC Berkeley's gay fraternity.
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If you're interested in learning more about GSA or starting a chapter at your school, check out this handbook with information and resources!
https://gsanetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/GSA_Advisor_Handbook-web.pdf