In our Berkeley Public Schools Program, WE are very proud of our team member, Karla Artiga-Gomez! We wanted to shine a light on Karla as she has been a consistent rock of support to the youth at Longfellow Middle School. Karla started with us right at the start of the Pandemic and jumped in right away to support families and the program. She would regularly volunteer to grocery shop AND drop off groceries to families that were identified in the vulnerable population affected by COVID-19. Karla is a skilled Mental Health Counselor in our program and is now on her way to UC Berkeley to earn her MSW. We could not be happier for her and for the field we all share. The field of mental health and Seneca is lucky to have such an incredible mental health professional. The students at Longfellow, parents/families, teachers, colleagues, providers and all who meet Karla feel supported, heard and seen by her. For this post, we asked Karla what she loved most about her job. Here is what Karla had to say…

​As a Student Support Assistant (SSA) there are so many parts to the job. One thing I absolutely love is building relationships with students. The start of the school year starts off a bit rocky. Staff are unsure of student’s behaviors. Students are unsure if they can trust and be supported by staff. I use the beginning of the year to find out my kiddos interest, what their favorite color and foods are.  We play games and take breaks searching their favorite YouTube videos. I spend the first couple of months focused on building relationships.

​With a month left of school, my kiddos are now confident that they can trust me. My kiddos know I will support them to achieve their fullest academic potential. We now sit in the back of the class doing our work, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company.

This year, MAC SELPA was able to bring the Student Art Show back in-person, one of our most favorite annual events! The art exhibit was shown in the Hayward Public Library Gallery featuring student artists from MAC SELPA and James Baldwin Academy (JBA).  Our show opening was held Saturday, March 5th with a group of team members supporting the event whom set up tables outside with refreshments, art activities to welcome the youth and their guests, as well as any members of the community visiting the library that day.

The youth that attended the opening were very excited to see their work on display and share the experience with their guests. It was truly a lovely event. Our exhibit was available at Hayward Public Library on the 2nd floor gallery until April 12th, so a full month of supportive community members were able to view our student's art work!

Mt. Eden High School is a public high school located in Hayward, CA, and has the largest high school student body in the Hayward Unified School District with approximately 2,000 students. Several notable Mt. Eden alumni include Dell Demps (NBA Player), Spice 1 (rapper) and Mahershala Ali (Oscar winner). When students returned in-person for the 2021-2022 school year, a new state of the art STEAM building was ready for use. The building includes flexible learning spaces, 2 science labs, breakout rooms and an outdoor learning center.
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The Mt. Eden High School Program is a School-Based Counseling Enriched Special Day Class (CE-SDC) managed in partnership between Hayward Unified School District and Seneca Family of Agencies to help students on site and in their communities to overcome emotional and behavioral challenges in order to be successful at their public-school campus. Counselors and therapists emphasize unconditional care of each student and are committed to our core values of Love and Compassion, Respect, Curiosity, Hope and Courage, and Joy.

​Seneca started their partnership with Hayward Unified School District in the early 2000’s and Mt. Eden is one of those original 3 schools.  When you enter the B-7 classroom you are immediately greeted by the amazing staff: Erika (Seneca alum) is the teacher, Jesse (Mt. Eden alum) is the therapist, Jessica (Clinical Intern) and the Mental Health Counselors: Divya, Vanessa and Janet. As you spend time in the classroom with the staff and students, you get a sense of their commitment to building a safe and welcoming community.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it layers of grief and loss that put on undeniable display the inequities present in our educational system, in our physical and mental health care systems, and throughout our society. 
During the 2020-21 school year, students faced enormous barriers to accessing their education through the distance learning platforms available to them.

In the 2021-22 school year, many of those barriers continue.  A dramatic number of families have had their economic, physical health, and mental health challenges compound dramatically through this chapter, compromising their access to the internal and external resources needed to support their children in staying connected and engaged with their academic goals.

As many sources and studies have noted, communities who have long suffered from the educational, economic, and health inequities caused by structural racism, oppression, and white supremacy culture in America have disproportionately felt the negative consequences of the pandemic.

Beyond the challenges exacerbated by COVID-19, many parents/caregivers have little trust that the school system will truly do everything it can to support their children and meet their needs, perhaps for valid reasons. The educational system may have failed to meet their own needs when they were students, and now they can’t help but worry that their children will experience the same shortfalls.

All these factors lead too many students and families to give up hope for academic participation and success.  Consequently, students limited academic engagement and achievement lead to limited opportunities in their careers and further economic inequities.

Schools, districts, and charter networks have certainly worked hard to remedy this gap in trust and engagement.  There are Family Engagement Specialists, school counselors, and school leaders that endeavor to build and rebuild trust with students and families.  The Community Schools Movement strives to make schools a hub that can connect students and families to resources across many domains.  Especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have stretched in many ways to provide support to students and families addressing their holistic needs and challenges including access to basic needs (food, shelter), to technology, to mental health and physical health supports, and to financial resources.

Still, school-based resources to help address these complex challenges and inequities are scarce and underfunded.  Often families share with school-based staff some challenges they’re experiencing in their lives and the school staff is only able to respond with, “I’m so sorry to hear about those struggles.  I wish we had capacity here to really help you with that, to provide case management and possibly link you with other agencies who specialize in that area.  But we don’t have that capacity.”

The solution we are proposing and implementing is the Compass Care Model, developed through a partnership among Valor Collegiate Academies, Seneca Family of Agencies, and Transcend Education.

The Compass Care Model addresses this problem in a deeper, more effective way. It is a model that honors and acknowledges the inter-related domains of student wellness and family wellness.  A model that is rigorously realistic and skillful in setting attainable, incremental, short-term goals that promote hope and momentum through building on small successes.  A model that brings team members together (student, parent/caregiver, natural supports of extended family and community members, and school staff) in a structured, strengths-based process that aligns everyone around common visions, goals, and agreed-upon action steps.  A model that considers and focuses our efforts on the whole student and the whole family system.  Thinking way outside “the box” of the school site, and looking to connect the student and family with resources that have been missing.

​The Partners
Valor
Valor Collegiate Academies is a Charter Management Organization comprised of two middle schools and one high school, delivering world-class personalized education to a diverse community of learners in Nashville, Tennessee. At Valor, we believe that engaging students and the community that supports them in comprehensive human development is essential to their, and our collective, success. Our mission - to inspire our diverse community to live inspired, purposeful lives - is driven by a belief that education is about helping young people reach their whole and full potential. We know that human development is a complex and lifelong process that requires deep and ongoing engagement and that it is guided by the development of a unique inner Compass. The Valor community is committed to supporting all students to develop and refine this inner Compass, knowing we all can fall off course sometimes.  
 
The Compass Care Team is made up of a Team Director, a Team Facilitator, and four Family Partners serving students in all three Valor schools.  Some funding for this program comes from the Charter Schools Growth Fund.

​Rocketship Public Schools
Rocketship is a national charter school network committed to ending the achievement gap.  The California Bay Area region is utilizing elements of the Compass Care Model as they implement their CareCorps program.  Thirteen Bay Area Rocketship elementary schools are participating in this program, with a CareCorps Coordinator assigned to each campus, supported by an Associate Director.  One particular focus of the CareCorps Coordinators is building and enhancing partnerships between their schools and local nonprofit agencies in order to provide streamlined, holistic case management support to families.  Some funding for this program comes for a grant through the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CA Dept of Education).

Seneca Family of Agencies
Seneca has been a leading Wraparound provider in California for more than 21 years since establishing one of the first Wraparound programs in the state in 1997. Seneca partners with behavioral health, child welfare, and juvenile justice departments across California, implementing its Wraparound model focused on enhancing youth safety, permanency, and wellbeing through Wraparound and Full-Service Partnership (FSP) programs for vulnerable youth and families. Seneca also partners with schools throughout California and in Washington state through our Unconditional Education partnerships which help ensure that all students receive the support they need to achieve ongoing and sustained educational success.  Seneca is supporting the Valor and Rocketship partnerships with program design, training, and ongoing consultation for the service providers and Team Directors.
 
Being a part of the design and early implementation of this new model through this pilot year has been tremendously inspiring.  Finding remedies to chronic absenteeism is one of the most critical and challenging tasks we face at the crossroads of education, community wellness, mental health, and equity work.  Our programs have many stories of early success.  A mother shared the following appreciation: “This program is the answer to my prayers.  I wish something like this could have been in place for my oldest son who did not get the support he needed to complete high school.”  Of course, in addition to our success stories, we also have some students and families on our caseloads who are still struggling greatly to achieve consistent attendance.  Our teams will continue learning through every step of this initial implementation year, striving to more effectively partner with students and families, ever-striving to promote the mission of #EveryStudentEveryDay - attending school, accessing learning, increasing their opportunities. 
 
We were excited to present our work at the California Mental Health Advocacy for Children and Youth (CMHACY) Conference on April 28th in Pacific Grove, CA.

Burckhalter Elementary School 
Through our partnership with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and Alameda County Behavioral Health, we have been honored to partner with Burckhalter Elementary School since the 2019-20 school year.  

Burckhalter is located on a beautiful campus in East Oakland where students are supported to thrive in academics, arts, after-school programs, and community connections. The school benefits from the strong, experienced leadership of Principal Geathers and a well-established Coordination of Services Team (COST) led by Ms. Mack that works to make sure student support needs are effectively met.

Name: Melissa "Mickey" Gant
Position: Milieu Supervisor
What led you to your current position? o This position honestly kind of just fell into my lap at the right time. For so long I didn’t really have a plan for my career but knew that I needed to at least gain some work experience – and that was the mindset that I had. I worked as an MHC at the elementary level and after a year I started floating to other sites within my program with older age groups.  Still wanting to gain some experience and explore different environments to work in with youth, I started taking shifts at some of the NPS’s, Willow Rock & the Petaluma Compass program and was able to gain a lot of knowledge.  I think the missing piece for me was feeling comfortable, confident, and capable in holding a leadership position.  I really took advantage of my supervisions and voiced my personal development goals, as well as had the support of the MHCs and the clinician at my school site to strive for more.  So with everyone’s feedback, I participated in the Lead-In series, began the process to become an Equilibrium & Suicide and Prevention Trainer, as well as now holding a spot on the Leadership Council. In the short answer, I just continuously wanted to become a better “counselor”. I was determined to not be stagnant within my position, so I took advantage of all of the available opportunities for personal and professional growth.
What inspires you to do this work? o I think about my younger self and the friends I grew up with and how much we all could have benefited from extra support and love from adults. So my hope is to help the kids out there, the way that I would have wanted to be helped. I know there’s so much un-tapped potential in our youth, and just helping them discover that is what motivates me.
What is a recent highlight you’ve experienced in the work or an important lesson you’ve learned in this role? o An important lesson that I’ve learned in this role is that time management is key.  I think I get so caught up in this work that I forget to enjoy time when I’m off. So I’m currently learning how to spoil myself more often.
Share your life motto or something unique about yourself: o Not really a life motto, but my favorite quote that pushes me daily: “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine.”​

As I sit down to write this, I glance out my window at the sunlight as it trickles through the neighboring trees of Community Day School, one of the schools set to be closed in Oakland by the end of this school year. Surrounded by trees in the Oakland hills, CDS is a small alternative education campus for students that have been expelled from their general education campuses. CDS provides space for restoration, repair, and deep relationships for students that have recently been rejected from their home schools. Because of the small class sizes and intensive therapeutic and behavioral support here, CDS creates an environment where students often feel free to be seen, heard, and vulnerable in a way that isn't always possible in a larger school context.

Over the past few weeks, the Oakland community has been catalyzed into action, as students and families caught news that the Oakland school board would vote to close a handful of majority Black and brown schools, including Community Day, at the end of the 2021-2022 school year. This news came after OUSD passed the Reparations for Black Students Resolution last year. Part of this resolution included protecting and investing in historically Black schools and involving an equity impact analysis of any proposed school closures. The board continued to go ahead with this vote to close schools despite not completing an equity impact analysis, and despite thousands of students and parents opposing these closures. Many of these students delivered powerful testimonies against these closures at the school board meetings, including a 13-year-old from Bret Harte Middle School:

This was just one of hundreds of testimonies, pleading with the school board to change their votes and instead discuss community-based solutions to their budget deficit. While the school board went ahead with their vote to close two schools at the end of this year, and five schools at the end of next year, the community has not let up in fighting back. 

Four members of Oakland City Council have introduced a resolution that recently passed through city council and would eliminate OUSD’s remaining debt. Students and teachers have planned walk outs, marches, and recall campaigns of the school board members who have voted for these closures. The fight to keep schools like CDS open is far from over, and the community is calling on folks to get involved in the campaign for the long haul.
 
For up-to-date information on how to take action and get involved in this fight, follow @rep4blackstudents on Instagram!

​There are some exciting changes happening in California’s Medi-Cal system of care! The initiative, California Advancing and​ Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) represents “a long-term commitment to transform and strengthen Medi-Cal, offering Californians a more equitable, coordinated​, and person-centered approach to maximizing their health and life trajectory.” CalAIM lifts up prevention, wellness and person-centered care. 

​For Seneca’s school partnership programs, this is really moving.  Much of our work is funded through Medi-Cal, but the eligibility criteria for Medi-Cal services can be quite restrictive and has made it harder for us to establish truly sustainable early intervention and prevention services.  Such prevention services usually require a separate funding source, which can be hard to count on year after year. With these groundbreaking CalAIM policies, we see the possibility of serving more youth earlier, intervening at a time that is often the most effective, before a crisis. We also will be able to serve many youths who have experienced trauma without ever having to label them with a diagnosis. It’s truly a paradigm shift!  ​

Advancing Equity
CalAIM is about building a healthier and more equitable state, with an emphasis on “whole person care” and looking at social drivers of health. From the DCHS website, the message is clear:

“Black and Latino Californians have long faced health disparities that are the result of longstanding, structural racism in the health care system, housing, and employment. The pandemic exacerbated these inequities and underscored the need for CalAIM’s investment in Community Supports, and home and community-based services, including interventions that address social drivers of health. These lessons learned are at the heart of the CalAIM system transformation.​”

The social justice tenets of these policies are more than just words on a website; we’ve already been able to expand our services to work with new clients more quickly.  As counties build out their systems to support these changes, we expect to see increasingly flexible and expansive opportunities to serve youth in ways they need and want to be served. 
 
Riding the Waves of Change
The direction that California is going fills me with so much hope.  It’s not often we find ourselves announcing that access to services might actually be getting easier. This is truly something to celebrate! As we adapt these big ideas into our practice, there will undoubtedly be a period of uncertainty. So far, it seems clear that the ultimate payoff for our clients and practitioners will be absolutely worth it.  ​

​You can read more about the CalAIM policies at the DHCS website by clicking here!  
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Or, see below to watch this short video:

​After nearly 2 years of working tirelessly to stay in community with each other behind screens and over the phone (which our team and students did an AMAZING job of), our Berkeley High School Counseling Enriched Classroom (CEC) program is finally finding some normalcy by connecting in person through a variety of group activities!

​This week we are venturing to Hayward to highlight another Unconditional Education MAC SELPA partnership, one of our newest this year: Cherryland Elementary. Located in the Cherryland Area of Hayward, this relatively new campus grabs your attention as you drive through the neighborhood. 

As you enter the campus you are immediately greeted by turf lawn areas that students and staff alike enjoy sitting on and eating. Walk a little further and there is an open garden featuring fruit trees, planted vegetables, and a variety of flowers as well. The campus classrooms are divided among a 2-story, state-of-the-art designed classroom space that were designed so nice, our very own facilities took pictures of it for inspiration!
 
As you ascend the stairs you are greeted by our classroom. Within our classroom you may find our amazing teacher, Chase (a Seneca alum), Laryonda (our extraordinary therapist), and some amazing Mental Health Counselors: Sierra, Shaquan, and Erika.
 
We had the privilege of partnering with this program in the midst of the pandemic. Unfortunately, due to COVID, no on-campus meetings or in-person intakes with families were allowed, which made it a bit challenging to build new relationships with families that were bonded to the previous teams. Virtual tours and Zoom video meetings of the space don’t hit the same mark that an in-person meeting can. While the team continued to reach out to our families and establish a strong community within these partly established classrooms, rumors began coming around that some of our families did not like us nor how we were providing support to the students. Our teacher and team attempted to engage our families to get down to these negative feelings that were being reported, however all families reported positive support and good communication.