BY SAMMIE WICKS
The Westside Express
What do you remember about your early school days?
For most of us who came up in the public school system, going to school was pretty standard: Get up, shower, have breakfast, get dressed, grab your book, and walk to school–or if friends or family had a car–get a ride.
Once there, you attended morning class, had lunch, went to class in the afternoon, and went home; or If you were in sports or band or cheerleaders, you stayed after school for practice.
Your classmates who hadn’t had breakfast, or who didn’t have the best clothes, or didn’t have a ride to school, might have gone unnoticed–nobody talked about it much. Some kids had more, and some had less, than others.
That was long ago–but over time, schools began to recognize some students’ special needs and started to change, adopting programs to help vulnerable kids and their families. But poverty and its effects on students’ ability to learn persisted.
Now, in California, an almost seismic shift has occurred in that pattern, in the form of funding–into the billions of dollars–voted in by the state legislature, that promises to fundamentally change what schools do, and how they do it.
And hometown Los Banos schools find themselves right in the middle of what may become a revolution in education–and by extension, maybe society as a whole.
“We now will have the power to literally change the cycle of poverty in our district and our community, by expanding Community Schools,” declared Dr. Sean Richey, Los Banos Unified School District’s chief academic officer, when he spoke to the Express last week, his voice brimming over with excitement and anticipation of the five years ahead as the program is integrated into the community.
Dr. Richey was referencing California’s Community Schools concept, taking form in 2021 when the state legislature passed the California Community Schools Partnership Act, allocating an unprecedented $3 billion in funds and instituted the California Community Schools Partnership Program. The 2021 funds followed a previous $45 million commitment, with the current added funds expanding the program to year 2031. It was an unheralded opportunity.
As grant opportunities were advertised, the Los Banos Unified School District was determined to try for its fair share and intensely competed during the application process–and it paid off.
The state, through the California Community Schools Partnership Act, on May 8 awarded the district a whopping $20,187,500 grant to begin setting up novel Community Schools programs that are predicted to fundamentally influence Los Banos’ community life.
The large amount of the Los Banos grant placed the district among the top eight grantees in the state–a bit of a coup and a feather in the cap of district staff.
Other district officers also had high praise for the district’s having successfully won funding for its local project, but injected a bit of caution while events unfold.
“We were awarded a $200,000 grant to plan the (community schools) program,” recounted Los Banos Superintendent Dr. Mark Marshall at the district’s school board meeting Aug. 8. “And that got us started.” But the superintendent went on to say planners should be ready to account for how the project develops moving forward.
“With the $20.1 million we got for a five-year period–when you’re given that kind of money,” Dr. Marshall declared, “you expect there will be a lot of state oversight, and that state representatives will be down here, making sure you do what you set out to do.”
Notwithstanding that expectation, with monetary resources now in place, district leaders say they can incorporate the community’s human resources and make them the center of plans.
The grant makes possible the application of ideas in education long espoused at the national level that vastly expand the traditional role of public schools and aim to offer greatly augmented community outreach, including the following: Before-school and after-school programs, opportunities for family and community members to receive education, sports programs, support for student and family health (including mental health) and collaborative ventures with local business and community groups.
All of the components are contained and coordinated within a physical location–what local educators now are calling a “community hub.” (See more on the hub later in this article.)
Tall order! But district officers say that can be achieved with the right people involved–some of whom are already in place.
To that end, Richey stressed the grant’s success was due to the growing sense of teamwork by all involved.
“The schools themselves did a lot of the work,” Ritchey declared, “so we decided to go for it, and applied for all 16 of our schools. And they all qualified.
“Applying for grants had become more and more competitive, and this time it was a long process,” Ritchie added, “with a lot of moving parts.” Competing successfully in the grant proposal was key, he said, but he added that realities at the school level, and the large number of students known to benefit most from the new outreach programs, contributed to attracting attention from Sacramento.
“We have a great many students that we identify as ‘unduplicated,’ who would stand to benefit from what we want to offer,” Dr. Richey explained, “meaning they fell within three groups—those who we call ‘English learners,’ those who are considered low income and those who are in the Foster Youth group. So that probably increased our chances. But we also had a team of people hugely committed to making this work, impacting the kids and their families, with everybody passionately involved, together–the excitement was tremendous.”
Is Los Banos experiencing one of those fabled constellations of events–the right people, the right time, the right place–when magical things happen?
The answer to that cosmic question is a resounding “Yes!” according to Dr. Heather Clary-Wheeler, newly arrived in Los Banos and already embedded with educators on the ground as she starts her job as coordinator of the new program.
“When I got here, the real work had already begun, so I immediately started interviewing–and I mean really interviewing–principals and others,” Dr. Wheeler told the Express. “Because they’re right there–I wanted to know what their challenges are, what they’re going to need from this new program.”
Wheeler comes to her local job from a myriad of diverse educational specialties across California, including many in Palo Alto, and more recently, Madera, during which, among other things, she taught high school Advanced Placement English and college prep journalism, always pursuing her continued interest in advancing the learning capabilities of Black and Latinx students. She has served as an educational administrator at multiple levels of responsibility and specialty areas.
Her father, who Dr. Wheeler calls “A kind of progressive Archie Bunker,” also was a teacher, and early on inspired her to follow.
“Just about everyone in my family was either in military or education,” she said, “and I picked education. Education is in my blood.”
And when Heather Wheeler speaks, invariably the first words you hear are about students. “It’s the kids who are important, and our stewardship of their realization,” the veteran educator said, “and not us.”
With that in mind, she stressed that in an ideal learning environment, no student, no matter what their personal attributes, should be prejudged or placed in an educational context that others may think is appropriate for them.
“I’ve learned, and I stand by this strong view, to never close doors,” she declared. “Even if a student feels they want to be in an advanced class, the system can close doors–and grades can also close doors. I say, allow it–you never know where a student can go, or what they can accomplish.”
Even more important initially, Wheeler said, is addressing a child’s basic needs that occur outside school.
“How are students who can’t afford to get something like a haircut ever going to feel good about going to class–how are kids who’re hungry when they get to school ever going to learn?” she asserted. “We have to deal with things like that first, and we have to find out what the needs are.”
To achieve that, she reported, community liaison staff soon will fan out throughout the community exploring multiple opportunities to discover what the people themselves–the students, their families, and their neighborhoods–want and need.
“With that information, we can exactly tailor what we’re doing to the needs of those who will be in the program,” Dr. Wheeler asserted, “to be present in the way the community wants us to be–and that includes social and emotional support especially.”
Through it all, she said, to succeed the program must be a group enterprise. “We have to make sure there are multiple eyes and ears and hands involved in the whole process,” she stressed. “There has to be a two-way dialogue.”
Pretty heady stuff–and infectious: Throughout Westside Express discussions with those who will be navigating through this innovative and original experiment, the feeling of camaraderie is palpable–even drawing in the local real estate broker tasked with finding a location where much of the activity will take place.
“I’m in, believe me,” Geneva Brett, associate broker at Los Banos Century 21 Select franchise told The Westside Express. “As a realtor with multiple decades of work in the field, I’ve also served on the Area 5 County Board of Education, so I’m already a believer,” Brett said. “We’re going to find the perfect location for this to happen.”
Brett also said she’s not at all concerned about the future of the ambitious new plan–that there is no downside–suggesting a touchstone for all striving toward its success. “We’ll never know if it’s going to work,” Brett said, “until we try it. Let’s go.”
There’s an old saying out there in the storied annals of oral history: “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Will Los Banos’ brave new venture prove it’s true?
