When Lucero Alejandra Cardenas moved to the United States with her family from Mexico four years ago, it wasn’t an easy transition.
Her oldest son, now 10 years old, suffered from anxiety and struggled to learn English at his first school. Cardenas had a difficult time, too. She didn’t speak any English herself, and she says it was hard to navigate her new life, raising a family with young sons without being able to talk with teachers about their progress.
“It’s frustrating having to communicate with some teachers and not even know how to help,” Cardenas said in Spanish.
But she noticed a difference — for her children and herself — when she moved her son to Fay Elementary School in City Heights.
For the last two years, Fay Elementary School has been a community school — part of a state-level program designed to strengthen the partnership between local schools and their communities by providing school-specific resources for families and students.
San Diego County already has 142 such schools, 25 of them in San Diego Unified. The district plans to have another 10 of its campuses become community schools this fall.
“It is a collaborative process. We share ideas, seek input, and work with the surrounding community to deliver the resources that support each community, both inside and outside of the classroom,” Fabi Bagula, the district’s interim superintendent, has said of the expansion. “The needs are different in each school community, and the opportunity to tailor the services provided is what makes this a truly special effort.”
At Fay, those offerings include adult English language classes and workshops for parents and guardians, as well as a food pantry, a washer and dryer on campus and a range of partnerships to connect families with other local organizations’ resources.
Cardenas’ son started at Fay in 2021, and she says it was clear from the beginning that it was a better fit. His English started to improve. He was less stressed. And recently — he’s now in fourth grade — he passed his English language proficiency assessment.
Cardenas has experienced her own personal development, too. She enrolled in the English language classes and took a workshop on the neuroscience of teaching and learning and social emotional development to gain more skills for raising her three children — who range in age from two to 10.
Last September, she even was hired at the school as a campus supervisor, keeping an eye on students during lunch and recess and helping as an aide during classes.
“The programs teach me how to work on my patience, and they also teach me how to participate here at school,” Cardenas said.
And learning English has meant she can help her kids with their homework and better communicate with their teachers. “They give me the opportunity to enter their classrooms and participate with them,” she said.
That’s a key goal of the program, created by a 2021 state law and expanded the following year in an effort to forge better relationships between local schools, governments and communities.
‘A light in the dark’
But identifying what each community school should offer is a process.
Within San Diego Unified, each community school focuses on different top-priority areas of need, such as wellness, engagement, enrichment, attendance, safety and basic needs. Then, each school focuses on different areas within those categories where it most needs to improve — and how, with the help of a survey shared with families, students and community partners.
Three-quarters of the school community needs to participate in the survey. Fay managed to hit 85%, thanks to a combination of movie nights, lunches and a volunteer appreciation day.
At Fay, which serves more than 500 students from around 400 families, the survey identified the top areas of improvement as behavior, communication and learning environment, said Daniel Castillo, the campus’ community schools program coordinator.
Then they began to create programming based on what the community wanted.
Parents said they wanted to learn English and to better understand their children.
So Fay partners with the San Diego College of Continuing Education for language courses, which focus on language skills centered around family and community. And the UC San Diego Extended Studies’ education and outreach department works with Fay to hold its parenting workshops.
The students, meanwhile, wanted more sports. So the school now partners with Crawford High School for the kids to play soccer, and with Pro Kids, First Tee for twice-a-week golf clinics. Pro Kids offers annual student memberships for free to Fay students.
“Golf has that stereotype that is usually for older folks with more money,” said Eduardo Corona, Pro Kids program director. “City Heights is a pretty diverse community, and golf is usually not in the picture. So when they hear that they have an opportunity to play golf, it stands out.”
There’s also a partnership with Say San Diego, which has a full-time staffer to help families connect with housing support, clothing and food, and with the International Relief Teams, which provide food for families in need.
Community members at large can also connect with resources through the school, including enrolling in the adult language class and accessing donated clothes. But the focus of the programming is on the families and students.
“We’re trying to make it basically a resource hub,” Castillo said. “They can come in and not just see the school as a learning place, but also as a place to support them, to help them, like a light in the dark.”
‘They start getting involved’
The effort to get the community of students’ families involved has paid off. Those families are coming together and building relationships across language barriers, Castillo said — especially since parents and guardians often prefer hearing from each other rather than from the school.
Cardenas has experienced that first-hand. She’s in a WhatsApp chat with a group of moms to stay connected, and she’s seen how the supportive network helps them feel more comfortable and eager to be a part of the school community.
“Sometimes they come in with fear and see all the help available, and they start getting involved,” she said.
At Fay, creating a safe school community and addressing those fears is paramount.
Nearly all of its students are economically disadvantaged. More than half are English language learners. And chronic absenteeism has been a persistent problem, one that school officials have gotten more proactive in addressing as immigration enforcement fears affect their community.
To help reverse attendance declines, Castillo and other staff members have gone to families’ homes to try to understand why some students weren’t coming to school. There are many reasons a student can be chronically absent, he said, and they’re trying to identify ways to help.
“They used to not open the door, but now they see us as something positive,” he said.
That development of trust has become more important since the Trump administration rescinded a longstanding federal policy that limited immigration enforcement at sensitive locations including schools. As fear from families threatened to worsen absenteeism, Fay offered families presentations to inform them of their rights.
It’s personal for Castillo. He himself immigrated as a child and was a recipient of the Obama-era deportation protection known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and he can relate to many of the families his school serves.
“We’re here to really protect your kids,” he said.
‘Teach the whole child’
To fifth-grade teacher Kinsey Klug, it’s especially important for students to feel safe and loved at school, so they can make mistakes and learn. She’s seen leaps in school morale over the years.
The PTA has gone from basically nonexistent to thriving. And she was recently able to take her students to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where they rode the Africa Tram and admired the savannah animals up close.
“A lot of these kids come in the door with so much more loaded into their backpack than just their books or their computer,” she said. “We have kids that have faced trauma, kids that have escaped war-torn countries.”
“You have to take all of those things into account,” she added. “You’ve got to teach the whole child, not just the fifth-graders sitting in front of you.”
That can be tough when she’s teaching literacy. Her classroom has 36 students who speak a wide range of languages and whose skills range from the level of kindergarten to sixth grade and above.
A diagnostic assessment helps her understand where all her students stand — in phonics, in vocabulary and in comprehension for literature. But she usually has a group of newcomers for whom she starts with the basics.
“I really try and just focus on the need of the student, not what their native language is,” she said.
For Cardenas, her son’s advancing English language skills have not only helped him academically since moving to the U.S. but are helping her learn the language, too. “He’s like my translator,” she says.
But through the adult language classes, she’s getting better at English on her own.
This element of the community schools — where parents themselves are able to grow as caregivers and experience personal development — is key, Cardenas says.
“Sometimes, as a mother, it’s hard to move forward. I abandon myself to be with my family, with my children, and I don’t think about myself,” she said. “So this is my favorite part. It’s where I get the chance to keep an eye on my children, but I’m also growing as a person.”
And the bonds being forged between families, children and the school feel like they are creating a lasting network.
“It’s no longer seen as help,” she says, “but rather as a community where we all work together.”
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