West Sonoma County Union High School District (WSCUHSD) schools are soaring to new heights despite sometimes feeling turbulent in the last few years due to consolidation and leadership shifts. We started the 2023-2024 school year with a new administrative team at Analy, new key leadership positions across the district, and our superintendent, Chris Meredith, starting his second year with the district.
The momentum started last school year as Superintendent Meredith established a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) School Board Committee and revised our local control accountability plan (LCAP), which was in the final year of its three-year cycle.
This year, the DEI committee developed a DEI framework with goals and objectives for six focus areas. The DEI framework will go to the Board for approval at the June 12 Board meeting and direct our work in the 2024-2025 school year. In addition, we have crafted a new LCAP that serves as our district strategic plan by considering all district expenditures and how they align with our new draft revised mission and two overarching goals. Our DEI framework fits perfectly into our new LCAP and will serve as an action plan. The new LCAP will go to The WSCUHSD School Board on June 12, 2024, for a Public Hearing and will be adopted by the Board on June 26, 2024. Once the DEI framework and LCAP are approved, we will update the DEI and LCAP pages on our district website to reflect our district’s mission and direction.
“The mission of WSCUHSD is to provide equitable, high-quality instruction and opportunities that ensure all students have the tools they need to thrive.”
Goal 1: Provide a responsive, evidenced-based, multi-tiered system of support to maximize student achievement, foster authentic student and family engagement, and create a positive school climate.
Goal 2: Strengthen innovative, equitable opportunities for academic rigor, career preparation, and personal development so all students successfully attain the characteristics of a Portrait of a Graduate.
A couple of achievements this year include our improved dashboard results, our new and improved salary schedule, and the introduction of internships for students. First, the California Department of Education assesses academic performance through math and English standardized tests. This year, our math scores improved by 53 points, and our English scores improved by 70.8 points! We were able to achieve these scores because of our quality educators and our regular free tutoring program managed by science teacher Taylor Dobbins and maintained by math, science, and English teachers. Second, to maintain quality educators, district leadership revised our salary schedule, making WSCUHSD teachers the highest paid in the county. Last, students in Career Technical Education (CTE) classes had the opportunity to partake in a semester-wide internship in their field of study and earn college credits through the SRJC Dual Enrollment Program. Analy led the county in interns who earned college credits for their CTE-aligned internships.
Meredith also created three new district leadership positions at the start of this school year to build upon the momentum of the new LCAP and the DEI Committee. They are our Wellness Coordinator and two new Teacher On Special Assignment (TOSA) positions focusing on DEI and Education (Ed) Services.
Our Community Schools Grant afforded our new Wellness Coordinator, Sheila Richman, who was integral to expanding the Wellness Center at the Analy Campus. Now, all students in our district have access to therapists, a medical provider, and a clothing closet! Richman even started collecting “Wellness Stats” this past January to share the Analy Wellness Center’s impact. Between 105 and 114 Analy students receive on-campus talk therapy monthly. West County Health Center (WCHC), housed in the Analy Wellness Center, has also provided our students with over 50 medical visits since January. WCHC services include but are not limited to vaccinations, sports physicals, and reproductive care. Last, with the recent School Board approval of therapy dogs on campus, our Canine Companion, Jake, raised by Meredith, resides on each campus once a week to help students and staff destress and find joy.
The Community Schools Grant is a major funding source that allows district leadership to be innovative in utilizing our Forestville campus. For example, on campus, we have Sonoma County Regional Parks, The Sonoma County Library, West County Health Center, and a large clothing closet that provides free clothing and toiletries to students and their families. There has even been talk about creating a Maker Learning Hub. The end goal is to continue to serve our Laguna students and have a community school that serves our Deep West student population and others who crave a secondary education outside of the walls of a traditional high school. We are one step closer to that goal with the launch of our West County iAcademy. A full-time independent study program for self-motivated students who want to work independently and create their own schedules. The iAcademy is currently taking student interest forms for those who wish to go independent full-time this fall.
Our district has three TOSA positions that each focus on one of the following areas: DEI, Ed Services, and Career Technical Education (CTE). Our CTE Coordinator TOSA, Heidi Mickelson, focuses on CTE and College and Career Readiness grants. She helps generate funding, allowing for more forward-thinking with our policies and procedures.
Our DEI and Ed Services TOSAs, Anita Sandwina, and Nicole Wilkinson, respectively, create a more equitable and inclusive school in a multitude of ways. Together, they have expanded a peer-coaching program, which, at its scale, is one-of-a-kind in the county. Sandwina has worked to implement restorative school practices. She helped lead our DEI committee to finish its framework and is now in the process of disseminating the information and focusing on how to execute our goals. Wilkinson has worked to further professional development (PD), creating scaffolded district-wide PD focused on standards-based grading, restorative practices, and improving literacy.
Not only was our Analy administration new to our school last year, but two of our three administrators, Chuck Wade and Gianna De Periis Vona, were new to the role. With a year under their belts, they are actively working to analyze our current practices and how we can enhance them to serve our students better next year. Projects they’ve spearheaded include innovating our master schedule to introduce cohort learning and coteaching. Both of which have been proven to improve student learning outcomes. Next year, we will welcome a third vice principal to our Analy Administrative Team. This will allow site leadership to collaborate strategically to ensure that Analy remains a desirable comprehensive school that attracts interdistrict transfer students and serves all. Read about our new hires in Dale Doughty’s Sebastopol Times article “The Long School Year Winding Down”.