Beyond the Schoolhouse: Digging Deeper

School Districts

• Assess student well-being using universal screening strategies to support the use of targeted resources for students who are showing the most significant need for remediation including tiered support models during the school day, expanded learning time, tutoring, and year-round academic support.
• Develop strategies with young people so they can help identify what type of academic, social and emotional support they need to succeed.
• Incorporate regular student surveys like Turnaround for Children’s well-being index and stay abreast of California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) results to determine and respond to student social, emotional, physical and psychological health.
• Engage relevant stakeholders and outside experts, if needed, in difficult discussions around underlying issues that may be contributing to patterns of disproportionality to implement the CA Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework to promote adult behavior changes.
• Link families to community-based organizations, agencies and case workers who can help young peoples and families on a case-by-case basis.

Cities

• Ensure connectivity across cities so students and families have access to virtual support, resources and instruction.
• Adopt policies and promote strategies with the County and district officials to identify and remove unsafe community conditions that contribute to asthma, lead exposure, and other health risks.
• Examine city policies and policing patterns to ensure Black students and families are not being unfairly targeted, thus negatively impacting young people on school campuses.
• Establish clear benchmarks for anti-poverty efforts carried out in coordination with nonprofit and county agencies.

County of Los Angeles

• Encourage sharing of resources and instructional models across all 80 districts to focus on universal, targeted, and supplemental support strategies.
• Establish common strategies and models for supporting school districts as they work to create engaging and personalized learning experiences, including universal screening strategies to frequently monitor and adjust instruction particularly in core subjects for Black students.
• Support LA County schools and districts to implement culturally responsive practices by using the California Multi-Tiered System of Support (CA MTSS) to support the needs of Black students’ academic, behavioral, and social emotional needs within a tiered framework of support.
• Expand the County’s community schools pilot across 15 high schools and districts to include feeder elementary schools that serve a higher proportion of Black students.
• Leverage Measure J funds to target investments in these 14 communities to focus on youth development, job training, small business development and supportive housing services.

• Dedicate more funds to districts to supplement Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) resources, requiring clear articulation of evidence-based practices to support student learning and growth for Black students and families.
• Strengthen the pipeline for more Black educators to enter the profession, a factor which has been shown to significantly improve achievement and college matriculation rates.
• Provide more targeted funding to augment Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in areas where Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), health disparities and environmental are greatest.
• Encourage partnerships between education, housing and child welfare stakeholders & dedicate state community schools grants to Black communities.

Federal

• Require counties and districts to use funds to focus on addressing existing gaps, including the digital divide and student achievement disparities.
• Increase Title I investments and encourage school systems to use Title I funds to address opportunity gaps for Black students.
• Incentivize schools, districts and states to support students, teachers and school leaders in making improvements to classroom and behavior management, especially where rates of disciplinary exclusion are high.
• Increase federal support for the McKinney-Vento Act in California, where two out of three housing insecure young people attend schools with no federal aid. This can help to ensure that Black students experiencing homelessness are getting necessary education services.
• Prioritize federal housing vouchers, food stamps, cash grants, Medicaid, and tax credits which all have been found to boost student learning for financially struggling families.