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CWC West Valley is an independent public charter that provides a socio-economically, culturally, and racially diverse community of students in the heart of the San Fernando Valley with an intellectually challenging, experiential learning environment that develops each individual student’s confidence, potential, and individual responsibility as citizens of the world in which we live. I chose to work at this work site because of the strong leadership and focus on social justice. The school is currently led by Jennifer Mansfield, a PLI Alumni. Her distributive leadership approach and encouragement of staff members to lead based on their strengths is a major reason for my decision to join this site. I was extremely impressed with her desire to address inequities in the school system. I also chose this site because of its focus on SEL. I was impressed with the organization's commitment to SEL instruction.
Our school community officially opened its doors in August 2020 with 135 families in grades TK-1st. Like most schools at the time, we opened virtually and were faced with the challenge of building a school, without a building and creating a community without being in a space together. Our staff worked tirelessly to collaborate on just about every aspect of our school from what happened in the virtual classroom to creating the systems and structures for families to partner with their child’s school in a meaningful way. We currently serve over 180 students and families in grades TK-2nd and have grown to a staff of 37.
Another unique feature of our school is our Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) math approach. In Math Workshop, teachers create and pose different types of story problems to students. Children have opportunities to work in whole groups, in partnerships, as well as independently to solve a variety of problem types by utilizing many different solution strategies.
Another feature that separates us from other schools is our fully inclusive model. Our school strives to meet the needs of all students, including those with disabilities, including but not limited to those with an Individualized Education Plan (“IEP”) and 504 Plan. Our school is open to all students and will not discriminate on the basis of disability.
Our school currently has 174 students enrolled at our site. The following chart shows the diverse demographic of students at our campus by ethnicity in the 2021-2022 school year. According to the data chart, nearly half of our school’s population identifies as white. The other half identify as either Asian, Filipino, Black or African American, Hispanic, or by two or more races.
Our school’s and community’s political context is very unique. At our school, we believe in radical collaboration from all of our stakeholders. Our staff and stakeholders are very involved in the decision-making process. As a result of this collaboration, our social context is very different from a typical school. Our staff has spent time building relationships and truly getting to know one another to create a familial feeling within our community. Culturally, our staff is very diverse which is truly an asset because our students have representation within our staff. We are so lucky to have such a diverse group from many parts of the country. Many cultures and heritages are represented through our staff and we are truly committed to having a staff that is reflective of our students and community demographic. This graphic shows that our staff is not only from all around the United States, but they also have deep roots and ties in other countries. Some of the languages that are staff speak are Spanish, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Russian, Mandarin, and ASL. We currently have 10 lead teachers and 2 specialists. Five out of our twelve teachers are white, three are Asain, two are Black, and 2 are Latinx. The graph below shows our current teacher demographics.
Our school is currently located in Reseda, California. Reseda is a diver city in the San Fernando Valley. The following chart shows the demographic of the surrounding community by ethnicity according to niche.com. CWC West Valley is part of a larger network of schools, CWC Los Angeles. Prior to 2019, there were 3 elementary schools and 2 middle schools throughout Los Angeles. In partnership with a small group of founding parents, and the CWCLA Regional Team, we embarked on an exciting journey to open a new school in the heart of the San Fernando Valley.
This summer we are moving to a new facility that will be ours forever home. We are expanding to third grade and will add a grade level each year until we serve students in grades TK-5th. When our students finish 5th grade, they will have the opportunity to matriculate to a CWC Valley Middle School. We are also adding an additional 2nd grade this coming school year, with a total of 1 TK class, 3 Kinder classes, 3 first grade classes, 3-second classes, and 2 third grade classes.
A group that is marginalized and is struggling academically because of our school’s policies and practices is our English Language Learners. Our current practices for English Language Development are still under development. With our school being so new and having minimal data, we are trying to create a structure for our EL students. Other groups of students that are being marginalized are students of color, EL students, and neurodiverse students. They are being disproportionately referred for special education assessment plans because the behaviors exhibited by these students are not culturally aligned with the school setting.
Since our school is so new that I think our current policies or practices don’t need to be disrupted in order to provide equity and access to learning for all students but instead be fully developed with an equity lens for our community. Specifically, I think we need to focus on providing equitable access to learning for the marginalized groups that I identified. To address these inequities, we have created a Student Culture team that is looking at potential root causes and creating change ideas to address them.
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