This week's school highlight is ARISE High School, located in the Fruitvale area in Oakland:

The mission at ARISE is to empower our students with the knowledge, skills, and agency to be leaders in Oakland. We provide a small school environment where we pride ourselves in every student having at least one adult who knows them well and supports them on their educational journey. At ARISE, education is not just about how well you do on a test. We are a small school that emphasizes knowledge of self, society, and history within a highly personalized supportive environment. ARISE is committed to building and maintaining healthy communities by providing families, many of which are first generation college bound, access to college and careers in Education, Community Social Services, Community Justice, Public Health, and Public Policy.
 
At ARISE we nurture, train, and discipline our school community to engage in a continuous practice of developing mind, heart, and body towards a VISION where we actively rise up. Agency and self-determination drive our struggle to improve our own material and social conditions towards a more healthy, equitable, and just society.
 
ARISE High School has been honored to serve the Oakland community for nearly 11 years and looks forward to continuing this service during our next charter term. Our founders, just as our staff today, believe that all children deserve a quality education that doesn’t replicate inequitable and oppressive institutions. Instead, we’ve developed a rigorous, high engagement, and authentic learning experience for our students.
 
ARISE High School currently serves approximately 286 students in grades 9-12, and prepares students from low-income families to be the first to attend college. Currently 86% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch, 89% speak English as a Second Language, and 86% are first-generation college-bound. We are incredibly proud of our students’ successes. Each year, we have had at least 85% of our graduates matriculate into 2- and 4- year colleges and universities. In addition, we believe our alumni will be the future change-makers of Oakland. As more and more of them graduate from college we look forward to welcoming back into our community.
 
ARISE graduates will equip themselves with the knowledge, skills and agency to lead successful lives as defined by themselves, their families, and the ARISE mission and vision. Our Graduate Profile supports the growth of knowledge, skills and agency through our branches of Project Based Learning, our Instructional Core, our Linked Learning Pathway all wrapped together with our school culture.

 
Many of our programs support students with significant academic, behavioral, communication, social, and emotional  needs in the general education setting with highly coordinated services.  Our partner schools are all at different stages of implementation of successful inclusion programs and our staff all play key roles in the development and delivery of these programs.
 
Inclusion is a mindset.  Successful inclusion programs require more than a belief in the principle of education all students together.  It requires training for staff and students, highly individualized student services, and additional research on the long-term outcomes.  
 
This article explores the history of inclusion in education and what current research says about the outcomes of inclusion programs.  It discusses some of the considerations required to build and maintain effective inclusion program and discusses some of the positive outcomes both for students  with disabilities and students without disabilities.  

Name: Cedric Guillory
Position: Senior Mental Health Counselor
 
What led you to your current position? I have worked with youth majority of my life through Oakland Parks and Recreation and found that working with youth is vital to improving my community. As a Senior Mental Health Counselor, I have a greater impact on the students and their families’. I am a product of my Oakland community and proud to support my community.
 
Fun Fact/Quote? “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”- Malcolm X
 
What does your average day look like?
Supporting the youth and encouraging them to make healthier choices to improve their interactions, expand their knowledge, and disprove stereotypes in attempts to help student grow both socially and academically.
 
Why do you do this work?
As a former student who struggled with behavioral challenges and learning difficulties, I find it to be a great satisfaction to be able to assist with improving the future of each younger person I interact with.

​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!