​Lodestar is an EL Education School with a project-based model, supporting students in becoming lifelong changemakers. Lodestar is the sister school to Lighthouse Community Charter school and first open it’s door in 2015 at the Patten University campus in the Fruitvale District in Oakland, CA. After two short years on this campus, the school was forced to change locations to the St. Jarlath Church campus in 2017 until finding their forever home in Sobrante Park in 2018.
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Currently located in Sobrante Park, the school leads with core values of Agency, Social Justice, Integrity, Love, and Community:

• COMMUNITY: We are best when we respect, value and celebrate our diversity and strengthen our connections.
• INTEGRITY: We act on our shared and personal values, especially in the face of adversity.
• LOVE: We extend ourselves so that all feel a sense of belonging and acceptance.
• SOCIAL JUSTICE: We act with courage and commitment to move toward a just and equitable world.
• AGENCY: We are empowered to pursue purposeful action as life-long changemakers.

Lodestar is in our 4th year of operation. It’s currently K-8 and are growing to be K-12. They currently broke ground this year and in process to building their high school. There’s lots of exciting growth and potential for Lodestar in the coming years. 

Our school highlight this week is our newest partnership with Rosemary Elementary in Campbell Unified School District. Our UE partnership with Rosemary was the result of an expansion with Santa Clara County interested in building strong culture and climate and effective systems of support within schools with high needs student populations. 

​Unconditional Education is about serving the students who need the most intensive level of support on a school campus while also positively impacting the culture and climate of that school community as a whole.  Clinical Intervention Specialists Brittany Allinger and Caroline Larrieu Casias embody that mission every day through their outstanding work at Elmhurst United Middle School in Oakland.

​Schools in low-income communities face enormous challenges of resource scarcity as they fight to promote equity and social justice.  Caroline and Brittany bring valuable clinical leadership to Elmhurst through their strengths-based approach to both the micro ​(student/family-focused) and macro (system-oriented) levels of practice. 

​Their work with students and families is grounded in respect, creativity, and cultural responsiveness.  With empathy and courage, they facilitate deeper levels of communication, connection, and understanding among family members facing serious challenges.  Through ongoing reflective practice, they continually explore how identity, power, and privilege impact their work.

The mission of Seneca’s Oakland Alameda Public Schools (SOAPS) program is to provide each student with the best individualized academic, behavioral, social, and emotional support possible in the least restrictive environment. The I-CECs include a multidisciplinary team of the district teacher, district teacher’s aide, Seneca Mental Health Counselors, Seneca Classroom Therapist, and a Seneca UE Coach. Through team collaboration, each student’s unique needs and goals are addressed through a personalized treatment plan that includes individual, group, and often family therapy, supported by intensive case management and crisis intervention services. Program services are designed and tailored to enable each individual student the best possible behavioral, therapeutic, and educational support.
 
The classroom at Think College Now (TCN) is new to SOAPS this year. TCN is a college-focused elementary school in Oakland’s Fruitvale district who’s mission is that all students will have the tools to choose their life’s path and desired occupation with an equitable opportunity to attend college and pursue their dreams. There are currently four 4th – 6th grade students enrolled in the classroom, all of whom are working on specialized behavioral and academic plans. Students receive individual therapy every week as well participate in group social skills, and the classroom therapist is available for check-ins with students as needed. With the support of the classroom team, three students who are partially mainstreaming in general education classes, and the remaining student will be joining their peers very soon. 

This year our Mental Health team at Lighthouse expanded significantly and it’s been an exciting collaboration to watch unfold.   After years of providing therapy services through a county contract for just one Clinical Intervention Specialist (CIS) on the high school side, this year the Seneca team found itself with a new, expanded contract. Our team suddenly went from one to three CIS plus a graduate student intern, as well as two School Psychology interns!!  

We now provide therapy services for students from Kindergarten through 12th grade.  Our expanded Seneca team joins Lighthouse’s own Lead Clinician, Lighthouse’s Clinical Psychologist and 5 Clinical Psychology interns.  I think this is the largest combined counseling support team of any of our All In programs--11 people sharing three therapy spaces, fanning out to support a myriad of students, families and needs in a -dare I say- beautifully coordinated manner. This doesn’t even factor in our Speech and Occupational Therapy providers, who round out our Seneca therapeutic team (between the Lighthouse and Lodestar school campuses) to create quite a crowded office when we all show up at the same time!
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Coordinating this many people takes planning, patience and understanding from everyone involved.  To start, our teams had to get real about how many rooms the school has available for confidential therapy space.  Once this was established, teams set about creating color-coded, individualized calendars that show who will use what room, and when.  Even with this organizational feat completed, I have witnessed team members graciously offering to step out of a shared space to allow for another confidential meeting to occur.  I am consistently charmed by the positive energy and willingness to compromise that each person seems to manifest as these teams get to know each other and we head into the second quarter of the school year.  
 
There is no doubt the students at Lighthouse can feel this level of collaboration and kindness.  When teams work to build trust and show grace to each other, team members are more equipped to meet the needs of the students with a grounded, even presence.  It’s like that airplane-age-old proverb of putting your oxygen mask on first before helping others: the Lighthouse team is bringing so much oxygen!!!  

​Since the 2017-2018 school year, Seneca Washington has cultivated an impactful relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary (pK-5th) in Seattle’s Othello 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. Starting in the Fall of 2019, Seneca proudly expanded MLK Jr.’s partnership to include a full-time Unconditional Education Coach.

​With an enrollment of about 350 students, MLK Jr. takes seriously it’s responsibility to provide every student with an excellent, holistic education. Martin Luther King Jr. is known a Seattle Public School’s most diverse student body, with students coming from over 20 unique languages and cultures. Over 98% of MLK Jr.’s students are students of color and about 40% are English Language Learners. Martin Luther King Jr. 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 MLK Jr. Elementary 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 become less frequent and shorter in duration. The reduction in reactive interventions at MLK Jr. provided a powerful opportunity for Seneca- to shift the focus of the partnership to a proactive PBIS-informed approaches (check-in/check-outs, reward systems, behavior plans, etc.) for individual students.

​As the partnership with MLK Jr. continued to grow, Seneca staff became more integral resources in systems-wide changes at the classroom and school-wide level. This shift resulted in Seneca placing MLK Jr.’s first Unconditional Education Coach at the school in August 2019. Martin Luther King Jr.’s UE Coach works in-step with the principal to lead multi-disciplinary, multi-agency teams to identify key areas of growth within the school. In a few short months, the UE Coach has made incredible progress in implementing core parts of the Unconditional Education model; she’s kick-started the school’s Multi-Tiered Systems of Support team, coordinated MLK Jr.’s PBIS implementation, established a Coordination of Services Team referral system, and began coaching individual staff members. Seneca’s partnership with MLK Jr. Elementary is a powerful example of the impact of multi-year partnerships. Through building trust, integrating into MLK’s school community, and developing closely aligned values, Seneca’s partnership continues to increase the achievement of MLK Jr. students by building a climate and culture that is engaging and responsive to all.

​I’m writing this week to introduce Ánimo Legacy Charter Middle School, one of Seneca’s newest school partners and one of our very first in Los Angeles! Ánimo Legacy is one of twenty Green Dot schools in LA and is located in the south LA community of West Athens, serving approximately 1,200 students in 6th through 8th grade. Legacy is hosted on the campus of Los Angeles Unified’s Henry Clay Middle School, which Green Dot assumed control of in 2011 through LAUSD’s Public School Choice initiative, where operators can apply to run one or more of the city’s most persistently low-performing schools. Clay was split into two smaller campuses—Ánimo Western Charter Middle School and Ánimo Phillis Wheatley—before being unified this school year as Ánimo Legacy.
 
Legacy’s partnership with Seneca began when Green Dot toured some of our Bay Area programs back in January of this year. During those tours, Green Dot became especially interested in Seneca’s culture and climate partnerships and the role of the UE Coach. Through a grant from LAUSD’s SELPA, we were able to place a UE Coach at Legacy this school year, Jeraniqua Martin, whose focus is to help develop the new school’s systems for coordination of services and school culture and climate improvements. In addition to Jeraniqua’s role, the grant also funds a series of trainings for Green Dot’s network-wide team of twenty-five school psychologists (led by our very own Sonya Benavides) on best practices for COST and MTSS implementation.
 
At Ánimo Legacy, our partnership this year has focused on building on the school’s existing strengths and systems of support. Among its many strengths, Legacy’s team has built incredibly strong connections with families and the community, with an admin team that strongly prioritizes family involvement in their students’ education. Many teachers have also been with their respective schools since their founding in 2011, which resulted in strong—but different—cultures having developed on each campus. These differences in school cultures have provided something of a challenge as the schools merged, as staff (and families) across both schools had grown accustomed to their own norms, practices, and ways of being. To help support this transition, our work has focused on two priority areas this year. First, Jeraniqua is participating on Legacy’s School Culture Team, whose aim is to build unity and cohesion among staff, students, and families. Second, Jeraniqua is leading Legacy’s new Student Support and Progress Team (SSPT)—our local version of COST—to help develop collaborative systems of support for students, staff, and teachers.
 
Even as these structures continue to take shape, Jeraniqua has wasted no time building relationships across the Legacy community. Only two months into the school year, she has already built quite a following on campus—whether it’s students reaching out in need of someone to talk to, a teacher asking for support with a student or intervention, or a member of the School Culture Team asking for advice about Niqua’s experience leading PBIS, SART, or MTSS initiatives at her previous schools. We are only excited to find more ways to roll these supports out campus-wide as the year continues!

​Kipp Bayview Elementary is in its second year of serving the Hunter's Point community with quality, early childhood education. Housing students from Transitional Kindergarten through second grade, KBE boasted a strong restorative approach to discipline and positive behavioral interventions before Seneca even entered the building. Now, in our first year of partnership together, Seneca and KBE are taking the next step in trauma-informed education for the children and families of our community. Gage McGarry, the Unconditional Education Coach at KBE, has been able to build on the three school-wide behavioral expectations, "Work Hard/Be Kind/Be Safe," and create a set of visuals that line the halls and various locations on campus. KBE students kicked off the year with engaging lessons at each major location on campus, practicing the school rules in each setting. The students also just had their kick-off assembly, in which students from every class were acknowledged with "Student of the Week" for meeting and exceeding these expectations. The classroom with the most Class Dojo points, the online school-wide currency system that KBE employs, received the Class of The Week award. So, what does a KBE student receive for these accomplishments? They get to spin a digital Wheel of Fortune to earn extra recess, special game time, class parties, or another exciting reward.

​While the Seneca and KBE staff have been focusing on explicit instruction and celebrating positive behaviors, they have also been responding to high levels of need on campus. Bayview/Hunter's Point is a strong community with a solid history of activism and sticking together through challenging times. It is also a neighborhood that has been historically undeserved and highly impacted by poverty and community violence. Many children at KBE demonstrate the internalizing and/or externalizing behaviors commonly associated with early childhood trauma exposure. While these behaviors can often make school a tricky place to be, our Clinical Intervention Specialist, Raquel Monge, and the rest of the KBE team are ready and willing to support all of their amazing students. One of our Kindergartners, who prefers to be called "Ice" or "Tony Stark," depending on his mood, was eloping and demonstrating risky behaviors on a daily basis (i.e. climbing to high places and threatening to jump off). Our staff have been working hard to develop strong, supportive relationships with Ice, and it is certainly paying off. Recently, Ice ran out of class and towards the staircase, which used to be a precursor for dangerous behavior. But this time, he ran right up to the UE Coach, grabbed his hand, and said "will you please help me fly like Superman back to my classroom?" The UE Coach smiled and said "Absolutely" before scooping Ice up and soaring down the hall to his classroom. For this little guy, that flight was evidence that he can trust the adults around him to keep him safe and meet his needs at school. We are so proud of Ice and all of our KBE students for the new skills they are acquiring and the hard work they do everyday. Keep your eye on this new little school in Hunter's Point! They are certainly on a path to greatness this year.