04 · School Coordination
Coordination With LEAs In Selecting Schools, And The Rationale
How Coordination Ran
School selection was not handed to districts as a request for three names. SCCOE coordinated with each LEA’s superintendent, director of student services and behavioral health lead against a stated set of selection criteria: existing behavioral health programming or counselor staffing, willingness to participate in screener administration and data-review cycles, adequate technology infrastructure including devices and single sign-on, and sufficient enrollment for meaningful performance management analysis.
The intent was not to create a uniform cohort but to select a diverse set of LEAs and schools that could generate meaningful implementation lessons across different counties, grade levels, school models, student demographics and behavioral health system conditions, while ensuring that grant resources reached schools with demonstrated student need and implementation readiness.
Within those criteria, districts chose. That is the important structural point about this cohort, and it explains most of what follows: no LEA selected three interchangeable schools.
| Selection Consideration | Rationale |
|---|---|
| Student need and equity | Schools serving high-need student populations, including Title I schools and communities with significant behavioral health support needs or recently affected by behavioral health grants ending. |
| Diverse fiscal and local contexts | Inclusion of Basic Aid LEAs, where appropriate, so the cohort represents more than one funding and governance context for understanding how BHPM practices can be implemented and sustained. |
| Geographic diversity | LEAs from four counties (El Dorado, Santa Clara, Ventura and San Diego) rather than a single geography. |
| Grade-span diversity | Elementary, middle and high school participation. |
| School model diversity | Community schools and other models with existing integrated student support structures, including wellness centers and active behavioral health services. |
| MTSS and behavioral health readiness | Schools that understand and practice MTSS as a systems framework and want to deepen its alignment with behavioral health, positioned to use the project to strengthen how teams identify needs, monitor supports, review data and improve systems, rather than as a compliance activity. |
| Implementation readiness | LEAs able to identify three schools, designate leadership, engage in meetings and move participation agreements forward. |
| Sustainability alignment | LEAs connected to CYBHI, DHCS fee-schedule readiness, school-based billing or other behavioral health sustainability efforts. |
Grade Bands And The Transition Years
How The Cohort Meets The Grade-Band Expectation
Across the eighteen sites the cohort covers every grade band the contract names: elementary, middle, high, and TK-8 campuses that span multiple bands. All three bands are represented, and the two transition points the contract’s structure implies are each measured at multiple sites in multiple districts.
Within individual LEAs, composition follows district structure rather than a uniform template, because for most participating districts no other composition is possible. Rio, Mount Pleasant and Sunnyvale are TK–8 districts; they operate no high school to select. Milpitas contributed its comprehensive high school, its alternative high school and a middle school because that is where its ninth-grade transition and its highest-need population sit. Lake Tahoe Unified, the only district selecting across a full TK–12 continuum, contributes an elementary, a middle and a high school exactly as the contract describes.
The contract’s language is permissive on this point (should, not shall), and the cohort was built to satisfy the intent behind it. That intent is developmental coverage: a performance management system that works only in high schools tells the state nothing about when to intervene. This cohort measures the same competencies across multiple developmental stages, which is what makes cross-band comparison possible at all.
Why This Composition Is An Asset For The Evaluation
A cohort of six identically composed districts would produce cleaner tables and weaker findings. What this cohort supports instead is a set of questions the state cannot currently answer: whether behavioral health competency measured at one transition point predicts anything at the next; whether a TK–8 structure changes a transition relative to a separate middle school; whether a secondary transition looks different in a comprehensive high school than in an alternative placement.
Rio Del Sol is the clearest case. As a single TK–8 site screening multiple transition points, it holds school culture, staffing and community constant while varying the developmental stage, a comparison no two-school pairing can produce.
Screening At The Point Of Transition
Site selection surfaced a trend the contract’s grade-band language points toward but does not name: behavioral health need appears to concentrate at transition. These transition years, third, sixth, and ninth grade, each mark a distinct developmental shift in how a student experiences school, and sites tended to be selected around those years rather than distributed evenly across grade labels. Within that frame, each LEA worked with its sites to determine a screening strategy suited to the specific transition it was designed to capture.
Around third grade, instruction shifts from learning to read to reading to learn, and a student’s academic self-concept begins to harden. Socially, play is shifting too, from parallel play to more rule-based, cooperative games, which changes how a child navigates peer relationships and conflict.
One teacher who knows a student becomes several who do not, and a single classroom becomes a schedule. Multiple elementary schools often feed into a single middle school, so a student’s peer group grows unfamiliar just as social cliques begin to form and students are navigating the onset of puberty.*
It happens again at higher stakes, adding credit accumulation to a social reset. At comprehensive high schools especially, students arrive from many different middle schools at once, and school staff are working to identify and connect with students who may be harder to see in a much larger, less familiar environment.
*Individual screening strategies were determined by each LEA in collaboration with site leadership and behavioral health champions, with exact grades and timing varying by district structure. These strategies may continue to evolve as sites move into implementation.
Calaveras Hills Alternative High School’s enrollment of roughly 105 students is small enough to make universal, schoolwide screening feasible, rather than requiring a targeted grade or subgroup. The district selected the site on explicitly equity- and need-based grounds, and a school community event in spring 2026 heightened urgency around behavioral health support on that campus.
| LEA | Site | Grade Span | Target Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary Transition | |||
| Rio SD | Rio Lindo Elementary | TK–5 | 3rd (Yr 1), adding 5th (Yr 2) |
| Mount Pleasant | Robert Sanders Elementary | TK–5 | 3rd |
| Lake Tahoe | Bijou Community School | TK–5 | 3rd |
| Middle Transition | |||
| Rio SD | Rio Vista Middle | 6–8 | 6th |
| Mount Pleasant | August Boeger Middle | 6–8 | 6th, plus counseling referrals |
| Mount Pleasant | Ida Jew / Valle Vista | TK–8 / TK–5 | 6th, plus counseling referrals |
| Sunnyvale | Sunnyvale Middle | 6–8 | 6th |
| Sunnyvale | Columbia Middle | 6–8 | 6th |
| Lake Tahoe | South Tahoe Middle | 6–8 | 6th |
| San Diego | Pacific Beach Middle | 6–8 | 6th |
| Milpitas | Rancho Milpitas Middle | 7–8 | 7th |
| Multiple Transitions At A Single Site | |||
| Rio SD | Rio Del Sol STEAM | TK–8 | K, 3rd, and 6th |
| The Year Before The Transition | |||
| Sunnyvale | Lakewood Elementary | TK–5 | 5th |
| Secondary Transition | |||
| Milpitas | Milpitas High | 9–12 | 9th |
| Lake Tahoe | South Tahoe High | 9–12 | 9th |
| San Diego | Mission Bay High | 9–12 | 9th |
| San Diego | Clairemont High | 9–12 | 9th |
| Whole School | |||
| Milpitas | Calaveras Hills Alternative High School | 9–12 alt | Entire student body (105) |
Rationale By LEA
Milpitas Unified School District · The Secondary Continuum, With An Equity Case At The End Of It
Milpitas selected across its full secondary range: Rancho Milpitas Middle, Milpitas High and Calaveras Hills High, the district’s alternative high school. Rancho and Milpitas High are comprehensive campuses with established if still-developing behavioral health staffing. Calaveras Hills was selected on explicitly equity- and need-based grounds: its enrollment of roughly 105 is small enough to make universal schoolwide screening feasible rather than requiring a targeted subgroup, and a school community event in spring 2026 heightened the district’s urgency about behavioral health support on that campus.
These sites also give Milpitas a chance to evaluate and validate its existing contracted mental health model, led by the district’s lead social worker, overseeing a team of contracted associate marriage and family therapists and social workers deployed across sites by need.
Milpitas structured onboarding as individualized, site-specific planning sessions for each of the three schools rather than a single district kickoff, reflecting how differently the three sites are staffed and scheduled. Rancho Milpitas serves only grades seventh and eighth, the district’s elementary schools run K through sixth, so the school has just two years with each student. The district’s target is seventh grade, prioritizing the first year a student arrives so that staff can build relationships and establish a baseline early, within the limited window they have with that student population.
Mount Pleasant Elementary School District · Infrastructure Present Against Infrastructure Absent
Mount Pleasant selected three of its four schools, spanning grades TK through 8 across the district, and paired them deliberately. August Boeger (grades 6–8) and Robert Sanders (grades TK–5) are both designated Community Schools with existing behavioral health staffing and programming to build on, though the depth of that infrastructure varies between them. August Boeger is the more developed of the two: it operates a dedicated on-site wellness center and has the most consistent implementation of the district’s existing screening instrument. Robert Sanders shares the Community School designation and uses the same screening instrument, but implementation there is newer and less consistent, and the site does not have a comparable dedicated wellness space.
The third site, Ida Jew Academy (grades TK–8, co-located with Valle Vista Elementary, grades TK–5), was chosen as the contrasting case: one of the district’s largest school communities, carrying documented behavioral health need in its middle-school grades, and without the Community School designation, a wellness center, or the screening instrument the other two sites use in some form.
District leadership described the pairing as intentional: it allows the district to observe implementation across a spectrum of existing infrastructure, from most developed (August Boeger) to partially developed (Robert Sanders) to none (Ida Jew/Valle Vista), rather than a simple binary. For the project’s purposes this is the most analytically useful selection any LEA made, and it is discussed again under Element 6.
Sunnyvale School District · A Limited First Release, Scoped By The District
Sunnyvale is a TK–8 district with no high school to select, and its composition follows that structure: both of its middle schools and one elementary. The two middle schools qualified in part because both currently receive social work services, an existing-service indicator consistent with the cohort’s readiness criteria.
Lakewood Elementary was scoped to 5th grade only, and this was a district decision rather than a constraint. Leadership chose a deliberate limited release: begin with one grade in one building, expand in future years based on what the first phase shows. That is a district treating participation as a multi-year systems change rather than a one-time compliance activity, and the project records it as such.
Lake Tahoe Unified School District · Full TK–12 Continuum, And The Cohort’s Rural County
Lake Tahoe selected Bijou Community School, South Tahoe Middle and South Tahoe High: one elementary, one middle and one high school, exactly the composition Exhibit A describes, and the only LEA in the cohort able to produce it because it is the only participating district operating a full TK–12 continuum. Lake Tahoe also contributes El Dorado County, the cohort’s only non-metropolitan member and the reason findings from this project can speak to rural California at all.
The three sites also give the district one campus at each grade band with behavioral health provision already in place. Bijou is named in the district’s $4.7 million Community Schools implementation plan under the California Community Schools Partnership Program. South Tahoe Middle operates an on-campus wellness clinic and South Tahoe High a wellness center, both staffed through the district’s standing partnership with El Dorado County Behavioral Health under grant agreement #24MHSOAC008.
Rio School District · Deliberate Socioeconomic Spread Within One District
Rio selected Rio Lindo Elementary, Rio Vista Middle and Rio Del Sol STEAM Academy, and district leadership described the distribution as intentional. Rio Lindo was identified at kickoff as the district’s highest-need site: the largest concentration of students with moderate-to-severe special needs and the lowest household-income profile of the three. Rio Del Sol is the opposite end of that range: a lottery and waitlist site described as the district’s most sought-after school and its most affluent participating population. Rio Vista sits in the middle.
The California School Dashboard ↗ confirms the spread the district described. Socioeconomic disadvantage runs 54.9 percent at Rio Del Sol, 68.8 at Rio Vista, 81.0 at Rio Lindo; students with disabilities run 9.3, 14.0 and 20.2 percent across the same three. The purpose is to observe implementation across meaningfully different socioeconomic contexts inside a single district, holding district policy, staffing model and leadership constant while varying who walks in the door. All three sites volunteered.
San Diego Unified School District · Vertical Articulation And Continuum Of Care
San Diego’s selection developed over the recruitment period. The district first identified Creative, Performing and Media Arts, Innovation Middle and Madison High after the August 5 kickoff, on a vertical articulation rationale: both middle schools fed Madison High, so one student population could be followed across the transition. Those three were profiled and assessed on that basis, and Creative, Performing and Media Arts carried a comparatively high volume of existing mental health referrals.
The district then refined the selection to Pacific Beach Middle, Mission Bay High and Clairemont High. Vertical articulation carries forward: Pacific Beach Middle feeds directly into Mission Bay High, and that pair preserves the continuous view of one student population moving from middle school into high school. What the second selection adds is an established continuum of care. Each of the three campuses operates an on-campus wellness center with a wellness coordinator, and the district’s interest is in using screening data to measure how well services already running are working, rather than in standing up a first layer of support.
Clairemont High has administered a behavioral health screener before. Its multi-tiered system of support meets weekly, with the site administrator, the school counselor and the wellness coordinator at the table, and screening results route into that existing meeting rather than into one built alongside it.
More schools in the district wanted to take part than the three the project scopes at each LEA, and the district asked whether it could bring more. Participation was held at three so the cohort stays narrow enough for implementation lessons to be legible, which made selection at this LEA a matter of choosing among willing schools rather than finding them. The selection moving once before it settled is what that longer process looked like in practice.
No LEA selected three interchangeable schools; every district built a portfolio, and grade design targets the transition years: third, sixth and ninth.