In Anaheim, Health Starts in School

In its first year as a state-recognized community school, Sycamore Junior High in Anaheim opened a two room community center. Staff coordinated monthly campus visits for a mobile dental unit and organized a monthly food pantry for the neighboring community. But mostly, explains Araceli Huerta, community school coordinator for Sycamore, they listened. They listened to parents, students, other staff and community members.

“The students frigging loved it,” Huerta said, speaking in between a brief campus tour and a parent meeting on the first Tuesday of the summer break. “The students love being heard.”
 

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Collaboration is a hallmark of the community school model, which envisions the campus as a locus of physical and mental health, as well as academic growth.

The community school concept is simple: Students need to be healthy to achieve their best. If something can help a student, such as a meal, doctor visit or counseling, bring those resources — free or reduced-fee lunch, mobile dental units, on-campus mental health support and aid for parents and community members — to school.

As concern for the mental and physical health of young people continues to grow, Sycamore and other school-based health centers will become pivotal to delivering support to those who need it the most.

California recently awarded more than $750 million in grants to dozens of schools across the state that serve low-income communities of color to implement a community school model.

Anaheim Union High School District received $24 million from the state last year to support its efforts at 13 schools, including Sycamore. Just a few weeks ago, two more schools in the district were awarded more than $2.6 million to develop as community schools. State education officials recognized Sycamore as an example of the community school model and has scheduled dates throughout the fall and next spring to host California school officials interested in learning more about the method.
 

The federal government has also pledged funding for community schools, with more than $2.3 billion tucked into the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond attended the community center’s ribbon cutting in September. Thurmond made a connection between community schools and his own experience as a child, recalling how he and his siblings depended on public school food programs to eat.

“School programs provided, and these public programs helped my family overcome poverty,” Thurmond said. “The most important public program was getting a great education.”

In contrast to the excitement of the opening, most of Sycamore’s first year was actually spent mapping community assets and needs at the school and its neighboring community. That meant meeting with school clubs, parent teacher associations, school unions, teaching departments and even students nicknamed “frequent flyers,” the ones often sent to the principal’s office. The district’s parent survey drew an overwhelming response of nearly 80%, said Carlos Hernandez, director of community schools and family and community engagement for the Anaheim Union High School District.

“It was a lot of hearing, a lot of listening,” Huerta explained. “That’s hard for people, especially when there’s money. The instinct with money is to start right away.”

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Community schools are not new; they grew, with support from the federal government, beginning in the 1970s. But the concept is increasingly catching on as a direct method to provide health care to children and teenagers. Between 1999 and 2017, the number of schools with on-site health services doubled. In 2021, the state adopted the California Community School Partnership Act, outlining support for the model. The following year the state launched a $3 billion community schools grant program.

“By bringing medical and behavioral health services to youth under one roof and in a setting where they spend most of their time, we can overcome many of the inequities to receiving care,” explained Samira Soleimanpour, senior researcher for school health evaluation & research at the University of California, San Francisco. “Families do not have to miss work to get their children to appointments. Youth feel more comfortable accessing care because they know the SBHC [school-based health centers] staff and see them regularly on campus. Medical providers can make immediate referrals to behavioral health providers and vice versa while youth are at the clinic or can easily return, which increases the opportunities for youth to receive needed initial and follow-up care and minimizes missed school time.”

The federal government has also pledged funding for community schools, with more than $2.3 billion tucked into the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act as well as support within the federal budget and the announcement in January of $63 million in additional grants for community schools. Funds are explicitly meant to deliver mental health providers to students; create programs to lessen student social isolation; and support the professional development of school-based and youth-serving mental health care providers.

“The gaps are in serving the social, emotional and mental health of students,” said Grant Schuster, a middle school history teacher who currently leads the teachers’ union for the Anaheim Union High School District in Orange County. “The school is the place where parents go daily, where students go daily, and the ability to deliver services to them as they are entitled.”
 

“We have found that youth who use [school-based health centers] are twice as likely to report receiving counseling when needed … compared to their peers who do not use SBHCs.”

~ Samira Soleimanpour, senior researcher, University of California, San Francisco

 
Decades of research have identified the positive impact that community schools and SBHCs bring to both students and community.

“Study results demonstrate that SBHCs are potentially reaching youth with many social and emotional needs who are traditionally less likely to seek health care in other settings, including youth of color,” according to an article in the Journal of School Health.

Soleimanpour shared additional findings from her work via email.

“Our research on SBHCs in Alameda County has shown that many youth rely on SBHCs as their primary source of care and that the SBHCs are decreasing disparities in receipt of care among historically marginalized populations. We have found that youth who use the SBHCs are twice as likely to report receiving counseling when needed and that they have talked with a health care provider about their mental health or how school is going, compared to their peers who do not use the SBHCs.”

While the total amount awarded to the Anaheim Union High School District is impressive, when broken down to a school-site level, the money does not actually translate to hiring dozens of new staff. In many ways the funding is meant to support a critical evaluation: What do the work staff and faculty actually do? How do staff and faculty improve what isn’t helpful? How can the school support what does work?

The Anaheim Union High School District has been able to hire coordinators like Huerta at each awarded school. In addition, staff work to identify and create partnerships so professionals within the community, including doctors, dentists and counselors, are on campus to deliver their services.

“It’s organizing your resources to create what you want,” explained Huerta.

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Six miles southwest of Sycamore Junior High, school farmer Jackie Perez pulls up to the gate of Magnolia High in a white, full-size pickup truck you’d expect to find out in the country. She’s here to escort me to the farm, aka, the Magnolia Agriscience Community Center. Tucked behind the 1,600 student campus that receives state community school funding, the farm provides education, food and jobs for students and community members. Perez, co-farmer Jose Mosqueda and Magnolia graduates Kenny Cortazar, 19, and Aya Baazizi, 19, are busy with morning work: cleaning and setting out tools for the day, turning soil and clearing away vines left over from harvested sweet peas.

Perez and Mosqueda oversee about one acre, or half a soccer field, of vegetable and fruit production. Seventy-three rows of lettuce, cabbage, onions, chiles and carrots, as well as figs, herbs and spices, grow on a strip of land southwest of the campus that was once left untended, abandoned.

The campus garden club, working in a space about the size of a classroom, wanted more land to grow and learn. Magnolia science teacher and project coordinator Sabina Giakoumis suggested the patch of dirt behind the wood shop. The garden spot is now just one part of the farm that is dedicated to blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, nearly a dozen fruit trees and egg-laying hens.

The farm currently employs 30 former students and students from the University of California, Irvine, who coordinate lesson plans and field trips. For now, Perez and Mosqueda are paid through local nonprofits with an understanding that eventually, they will become district employees with benefits.
 

“I think what is important isn’t the produce. That’s finite; there’s a limit. What we are doing is teaching food as medicine so our families can thrive.”

~ Kenny Cortazar, Magnolia Agriscience Community Center employee

 
Every Monday, the school cafeteria at Magnolia and a nearby junior high get notice of the farm’s inventory. Cooks select what they want, and produce is delivered and prepared for students through the week. Interns devised a business plan that delivers one box of food to a family in need for every box sold.

Kenny Cortazar is a recent Magnolia graduate. On the Tuesday after Memorial Day, he clears a row of sweet peas, grabbing clumps of vine three feet tall to be wheeled to the compost site nearby. Already sweating during the morning drizzle, Cortazar reflects on the opportunities that have come to his former high school.

“I think what is important isn’t the produce. That’s finite; there’s a limit,” said Cortazar. “What we are doing is teaching food as medicine so our families can thrive.”

By the end of 2024, Perez said, the farm will have nearly tripled in size to 2.5 acres, with more row crops and an orchard of fruit trees that will reach the edge of the school parking lot.

“Having affordable food for people here — that’s food security,” Perez said. “They know where to go.”

*   *   *

The recent developments in the Anaheim Union High School District are the result of intentional, methodical work. Before the state awarded the district funding, students, families, educators, administrators and community partners began to imagine a new vision of school as a community center. They sat together. They listened to one another. Then they considered feasible collaborations.

When school officials visit to learn about community schools, Hernandez says they are often daunted by the work. But he cautions perspective unique to their community.

“The approach doesn’t require a building. It’s the understanding we have to do things differently,” Hernandez said. “It’s the mindset that is really the model. It’s the trusting and collaborative environment.”

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