Ed&IS researchers share expertise with 21CSLA, a statewide collaboration to support principals, districts, and educational leaders in learning from divergent voices, guiding with equity.
Nancy Parachini has seen it all. From her time as a classroom teacher and principal for LAUSD to becoming a member of UCLA’s Center X in 2006, the UCLA alumna (B.A., Psychology/Sociology; Ed.D., Teacher Education Program, Educational Leadership Program) has distilled her vast experiences across K-12 education into a new role as associate director with the 21st Century California School Leadership Academy (21CSLA), a statewide partnership between the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, the UC Berkeley School of Education, and the California Subject Matter Project under the leadership of Rebecca Cheung, associate dean of the the Berkeley School of Education.
In 2022, Parachini transitioned from director of the UCLA Principal Leadership Institute (PLI), to executive director of leadership initiatives and international partnerships at SEIS. She contributes her expertise and UCLA’s mission of service and social justice to 21CSLA along with many Center X and SEIS colleagues, Tawny Laskar, a PLI alumna who is a Universal Transitional Kindergarten trainer for 21CSLA; UCLA Professors of Education Tyrone Howard, Anna Markowitz, John Rogers, and Daniel Solórzano, as well as Annamarie Francois, SEIS associate dean of public engagement, have recently presented webinars to enrich 21CSLA’s professional development resources.
Through 21CSLA, Parachini and her colleagues across California aim to provide high quality, equity-centered professional learning for educational leaders of schools and districts in California that receive Title II funds. These programs, which are of no cost to participants, include leading for equity and continuous improvement. There is an emphasis on leading equity issues to improve instruction and achievement outcomes – including through distance learning and rural education, supporting multilingual learners, neurodiverse students, and other historically marginalized and underserved populations. 21CSLA also provides coaching for new leaders who have completed credentialing courses and are in the field for the first time, without a mentor or a coach. The initiative also has a focus on supporting leaders who serve universal transitional kindergarten.
“We do it through multiple ways,” notes Parachini. “We have communities of practice, where we discuss how to bring leaders together who have common issues, common problems, common challenges. Sometimes the leaders participate in affinity groups. It might be [at] cross-levels, for example, teacher leaders, site leaders and district leaders, to work together on some areas of interest [such as] neurodiversity, multiple language or multilingual students, or how leaders support teachers to address the needs of their students.”
In April, the UCLA Center for Community Schooling and the John W. Gardner Center at Stanford co-hosted a leadership event at the UCLA Luskin Center, on building capacity for youth learning, development, and success in California high schools. Leaders and staff from county and district offices of education as well as other stakeholder organizations participated in the gathering, which was funded by a public interest grant from the Stuart Foundation. As director of the UC Berkeley 21CSLA State Center, Cheung presented the innovative processes and goals of the statewide work supporting leaders across the state of California, along with Parachini and Laskar in a panel discussion using the metaphor of jazz improvisation to illustrate the power of bringing divergent voices together for collaboration and innovation.
Marisa Saunders, associate director for research at the UCLA Center for Community Schooling says, “We have so much to learn from 21CSLA. The leadership piece is such a core component of the work of community schools and other youth-serving initiatives.”
“The thing that stood out for me across those two days of learning was the practical examples,” she says. “We were able to provide a lot of evidence-based research and couple that with examples of what this work looks like on the ground.” According to Saunders, “that is what we heard from Nancy in the 21CSLA presentation and it was what folks needed to hear.”
The event was focused on the next four years for California high schools, and the opportunity for educators to reconceive them as transformative spaces that can prepare youth for positive social and emotional development, engaged citizenship, and lifelong learning, through the state’s historic investments in its Golden State Pathway Program (GSSP), the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP), the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI) and the state’s evolving Integrated Student Supports Framework.
“21CSLA [is] modeling how different [stakeholders] can come together to do this work collaboratively,” says Saunders. “With the passage of these historic investments in whole child education initiatives, we want these folks to build relationships, learn from each other, identify where there are important intersections, and start building a coherent strategy.” In preparing for the two-day event, Saunders shared how “it became really clear to us that collaborative leadership and this investment in 21CSLA by the state was a really important piece of the puzzle.”
Saunders, whose work with the UCLA Center for Community Schooling encompasses developing strategies for coherence and sustainability for CCSPP grantees across California, hopes the two-day event inspired leaders to reimagine what schools can be. The UCLA Center for Community Schooling serves as the State’s Transformational Assistance Center for the CCSPP, in partnership with the Alameda County Office of Education, National Education Association and Californians for Justice.
21CSLA is funded by federal and state grants, and supports seven regional areas across California, including Mt. Shasta to Imperial County. Parachini says that each service area has its autonomy, but that overall, they work as a collective unit.
“It’s not one-size-fits-all,” Parachini says. “It’s very contextual [based on] what the participants need, which is similar to the community schools movement. We must value the assets of each community and what might be required for the specific context, where the students go to school, where the leaders serve. The connecting point is that we build relationships with the participants and people we serve to address inequities in the schooling systems and to serve the most underserved. The goal is an equity-centered leadership focus so that we can dismantle inequities and address the challenges that we see across the state of California.”
Above: Nancy Parachini, executive director of leadership initiatives and international partnerships at SEIS (third from left), and Tawny Laskar, an alumna of the UCLA Principal Leadership Institute (PLI), presented their perspectives on bringing together divergent voices for innovation in equitable school leadership during a statewide conference at UCLA’s Luskin Center. L-R: Jorge Ruiz de Velasco, deputy director, John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University; Rebecca Cheung, associate dean of the the Berkeley School of Education and director of the 21st Century California School Leadership Academy; Parachini, Laskar; and Carrie Usui Johnson, director of coaching partnerships, UCLA Center X and 21CSLA coach and Universal Transitional Kindergarten consultant.
Photo by Joanie Harmon