Education Insights: The Role of Contra Costa’s Superintendent
- jared2766
- May 14
- 30 min read
An Insightful Conversation with Lynn Mackey, Superintendent of Contra Costa County Schools
In the latest episode of the Capstone Conversation podcast, host Jared Asch sat down with Lynn Mackey, the Superintendent of Schools for Contra Costa County. This eye-opening discussion touched on various aspects of K-12 education, offering valuable insights into the superintendent's roles and responsibilities, the challenges and triumphs in the education sector, and the visionary steps being taken to shape the future of schooling in the East Bay.
### Understanding the Role of County Superintendent
Lynn Mackey explains the dual roles of supporting and overseeing school districts while managing specialized schools for alternative populations. Her position involves ensuring fiscal solvency, enhancing professional development, and addressing the diverse needs within the community. Mackey describes her path to becoming superintendent, sharing her personal story of perseverance, education, and passion for change, which fuels her dedication to improving educational outcomes.
### Identifying and Overcoming Challenges
Lynn highlights the complex funding system in California, explaining how schools are funded based on attendance rather than enrollment. This system presents ongoing challenges, especially when federal funding masks underlying issues. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining fiscal responsibility and supporting struggling districts without interfering in their spending decisions.
Social responsibility doesn't end there. Mackey stresses the significance of a supportive network and professional development for educators, while also navigating the reduced enrollment rates, which result from a declining birth rate and lower numbers of students entering teacher training programs.
### Addressing Educational Gaps Post-COVID
COVID-19 significantly affected students' academic and social-emotional development, with impacts ranging from lower test scores to speech-related challenges. Schools are adopting new literacy models and personalized learning approaches to bridge these gaps. Accelerated learning practices are helping teachers target students' individual needs, focusing on what they know and building from there, rather than remedial repetition.
### Embracing Technological Advancements
Technology plays a crucial role in modern education, with artificial intelligence paving the way for personalized learning experiences. However, Mackey cautions against over-reliance on technology, advocating for a solid educational foundation that blends traditional learning with technological tools to optimize outcomes and ensure all students can thrive in a digital age.
### Ensuring School Safety and Equity
Physical safety in schools has never been more critical, and new guidelines emphasize hardscaping campuses to control access and protect students. There's a growing recognition of the emotional and social safety needs of students, reflecting a holistic approach to education. School districts must also foster students' sense of belonging and community involvement to create a nurturing environment conducive to learning.
### Closing Thoughts
In a remarkably nuanced discussion, both Jared Asch and Lynn Mackey illuminate the complexities and initiatives within the East Bay's educational landscape, promising exciting developments in how children are educated. The Contra Costa County Office of Education is committed to driving these changes in equitable and innovative ways, ensuring each child's potential can be fulfilled in a supportive and dynamic environment.
Lynn Mackey's dedicated approach and passionate advocacy resonate long after the conversation ends, offering valuable insights and inspiration for anyone invested in education.
### Hashtags
The Full Transcript is posted below.
Welcome to the Capstone conversation where you learn about what's happening in the Greater East Bay. I am your host, Jared Asch.
Today we're gonna dive into the exciting avenue of K to 12 education here in the East Bay. Today I am joined by the superintendent of schools for Contra Costa County, Lynn Mackey. So thank you, Lynn, for joining me today.
Thank you so much for having me, Jared. I really appreciate it.
The first question, what is the superintendent of schools for the county and what do they do and what is their role? How does it differ from.
The school districts?
That is a great question, and it is one of the questions I get a lot. As there's 58 counties in the state and there's 58 county superintendents. Most of us are elected, so I am an elected official elected by the constituents of Contra Costa County. And in California, what we have is a system of every school district has local control.
They have their own elected school board, and then that school board hires their superintendent. They run their school locally with parameters, right? The state puts on parameters, which in turn, myself and the county Office of Education help support the districts in meeting those parameters. We review their budgets, we review their LCAPs.
We provide regional professional development or targeted professional development for school districts that might be struggling to meet some of the state mandates. There's a, there's a trigger point where the County Office of Education and my team will go in and support the school districts, and so school districts are there to serve all their students in the community and county Office of education.
In addition to providing the support for school districts and the oversight. Also run schools for alternative, some of the alternative populations. We run schools in our juvenile halls. We run schools in our jails. We run some special education programs for the school districts where they contract with us to run for their most intensive students that might not need may not fit in with their general population.
That's some of the differences, and we do run schools, but they're very specialized. And when we're serving those students, we know that we are actually serving the students of the school districts and with the hope that they'll transition back to their local school district.
If I'm a resident of Brentwood or Hercules or Martinez.
How do you impact my daily life as a parent?
That's another great question. Often what gets confused is people will think, I am the boss of the superintendents. And so I will get emails sometimes when they ha they're having a challenge in their own school district and they're, they went up the chain and then they emailed me.
And the truth is. The boss of the district superintendents are their own school boards. How I impact the students of Contra Costa County is one, by providing that supports and one, one of my number one goals is to keep school districts fiscally. Alive and thriving. That is our goal, is to make sure school districts are fiscally solvent, which is so important, especially right now that it always is.
And then by providing really rich professional development and then also making sure, ensuring that. School districts really are focused on meeting the needs of all the students that are outlined in their local control and accountability plan. That's looking at all the various student populations and making sure that, they're addressing all students, not just like the 80% who are doing fine
That makes a lot of sense. How big is your team of teachers, administrators, large administrative role and oversight here?
We have about 400 employees with also a small cadre folks that we hire on contract who are retirees that go in and help us, one of the roles that we do is every year in some school districts that might be struggling a little bit or they've had some indicators, we go in and make sure they have adequate textbooks and that their f their facilities are properly maintained.
And so that only happens for about six weeks for the school year. So we'll hire in retirees. So sometimes we get up to about 450. There's 18 school districts in Contra Costa County and there is an additional about 22 charter schools that we do all the budget review, that we read all the LCAPs, or at least for the school districts.
We have a small but mighty team that supports the a hundred and, 65,000 students in county.
There's a lot in there that I want to come back to, particularly around the fiscal side. But first, tell me a little bit about who Lynn Mackey is. What is your background and how did you arrive in this position?
I was born and raised here in Contra Costa County. Has actually born in Concord lived there until I've moved to Martinez. I've been in Martinez for about the last 22, 23 years. I went to school in the Mount Ablo school district, Westwood Elementary, then El Dorado, and then I started, I really had some troubles in schools and started getting kicked out.
Got transferred around, got kicked out of school, and ended up going to the county office run Golden Gate Community School, which is for expelled students and for students who might be chronically truant and they just aren't going to school anymore, which was my case. After that I just dropped outta school.
I dropped outta school at the end of middle school, went down a different path, and then came back around in my early twenties and went back to school. And when I graduated from college, I graduated from Mills College and in 19, what was that, 1996. And I got a job teaching in the county jails, which is run by the county Office of Education.
I just fell in love with the work and I really did feel because I was a GED student myself, that was my first entry in back into education was getting my GED. I was working with adults getting their GED, and I just felt like I knew how transformative it is, it can be to have a really great education because it really helped change my life completely around.
I got a job at the County Office of Education and. Basically have never left. , I'm on year 29 here. I did go off and work in school districts for two years. After I got my administrative credential, I went out and worked as a vice principal and then as a administrator in Alameda. And then came back here and was a principal here at the county office, a director, a deputy superintendent, and then I round for the office when my predecessor Karen Ada, was retiring.
I campaigned for it and just felt like I really had the heart for all the students we served. Know so much about the county office from being here so long and got elected and started my term in 2019 and have been here ever since in this role.
Wow. That's a, I just love that personal story, it makes you passionate about what you're doing and it shows just.
Hey, life is hard sometimes and people can get over obstacles.
It took a lot of help, so I certainly didn't, it wasn't just a pull your up self by your bootstraps kind of situation. I had a lot of support. I had great Diablo Valley College, so that's where I really got back into school and really was surrounded by a lot of great coaches and mentors and programs that helped me.
Because I don't think it's something that a person can necessarily do alone. I think it takes a lot of help to get back on a path once you've gotten off the path.
That's awesome to hear. I wanna come back to fiscally solvent was a phrase that I think you had said, and you talked about how you have oversight to help and you weigh in to help schools who are having trouble planning for their budgets.
There's a couple of school districts within the county that are having current fiscal problems or have had worse problems. What goes wrong? Why do they have those problems at the start? Is it mismanagement? Is it fraud? Just talk us through that and help educate us.
In Contra Costa County, in my history here I don't know of any cases of fraud in the school districts, and it's certainly current currently that is the case.
It's not a managed matter of mismanagement or. Our schools are funded in such a interesting manner in ca, California. So we are funded and it's always, the school district budget is always in a state of flux and you never exactly know how much money you're getting because it is based on attendance rather than enrollment.
Let's say you have a. You're budgeting on a hundred students, and that is the budget, and then it turns out 20 of them have been chronically absent all year or just had difficulties and haven't come to school. Your budget changes for the next year because only a certain number of students have showed up.
You still need the same number of teachers. You still need the same number of supports, but. You just don't have the funds for that any longer. And then also what happened currently that got a couple of the school districts into some, one has had a little more long-term. And then one, it's been really recently that they've had some troubles.
I. We got such an influx of federal funding at Covid that really masked the problem and we were able to like backfill positions and keep positions on the books that probably should not have stayed on the books for so long. My opinion and and so that's where the troubles are. And then also because it really is important to all our school districts to try to have competitive salaries for our teachers, that there are a lot of raises given out in the last couple years.
Very important raises to, we live in the Bay Area, it's very expensive. Yep. But you always have to match your raises with either generating more revenue or making cuts, because that's just how it works. And. We've had declining enrollment in most of our districts due to a number of factors due to just a lower birth rate.
Just, there's a number of factors that we have a declining enrollment and so our budget, we are not being as fully funded as we used to be. So what we do, we set up, we have a number of trainings. We have trainings for all the new fiscal folks at the districts. 'cause we don't tell the districts how to spend their money.
We just try to keep them in line with the legalities of spending their money and helping them, like they have to turn in a three year projection with us. They have to, when they're making a raise, they have to outline how they're going to make that work. And then we offer supports. We offer a lot of training in our bus business department for the school districts.
And then when something goes astray happened in one of our districts. And you get, you can have three types of budgets positive, which is great, qualified, which means you're on the cus. And then negative and negative means things are really going astray. And if you are in a qualified budget for too long, we are going to work with the statewide fiscal crisis team.
We're gonna go in and we're gonna put it in an advisor and we're gonna look work really closely with that school district to really push for the cuts or generate more revenue in order to support the budget.
That statewide attendance number I understand is trending down. The same things happening in a community colleges.
Why is that? Is it just, you said low birth rate, is it just, hey, everybody's moving to Texas, kind of thing or what?
I was just in, I was just in a meeting the other day where they were talking about this 'cause at one time we were thinking everybody's either moving away or. Getting homeschooled.
And the truth is, it's a little bit of everything, but a lot of it really is just on the birth rate, the number of students rising up to enter the schools. That's the majority of it. It's just fewer students are being born into our area and coming into our schools, and that's just. Just what it is.
It just was, it is really the key thing to do would be to change our, change the way we're funded so that we don't lose a bunch of funds when we have a low, a year of low a DA when we still need the same amount of teachers, the same amount of infrastructure, the same amount of staff.
I gotta think that system.
Favors certain school districts versus others, or disproportionate, I should say, some are disproportionately probably impacted, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Because we do, one thing that happened a number of years ago was we did change our funding model in California so that school districts that have a higher rate of, students who need more support do get a higher dollar amount. So that is great. That is really important where you're in a community where families might struggle more or where you're in a community where you might have a higher incident rate of asthma or other sickness, so students stay home more.
Or where families struggle and it's not as easy to get your child to school, you'll just lose a DA that way. And so you'll have a higher kind of chronic absenteeism rate. Some of these more struggling communities and though they did set up a funding model to try to mitigate that, it's still only based on students who show up.
So it is still only based on those students who show up that you get a higher funding apportionment for.
Interesting. Yeah. One thing that's talked about a lot in the news is the teacher shortage. People say there's a lack of teachers. They also say there's a lack of police officers. There seems to be a surplus of firefighters though.
Talk about that, especially with declining numbers. There just less people going to be, become teachers. Do they only wanna work in, cooler districts? What's, give us a perspective on this problem and how it's being addressed.
We do have, so we have fewer students entering the college courses in order to become teachers.
Okay. And I actually think, I really do think that we need like a public service campaign on. The benefits of teachers now. 'cause we do hear a lot about, they aren't paid well and they, working long hours and it's just the struggles. But when I talk to teachers and I talk to teachers at the end of the profession, and when you think about getting a pension at the end of your career, which that's pretty rare when you think about summer's off.
Some summers, or nowadays they have what's called a modified year round school. So you have these chunks of time off all throughout the year. You know when you have the kind of hours that allow you to go be at home in the evening with your children. And when you really think about the impact you can make on another human being in the classroom, is it is a really wonderful dynamic profession.
People aren't seeing it that way, and it is also very challenging. I don't wanna downplay it all, how hard teaching it. It is very challenging to do, especially these days where Kid Children's just, their attention level is so much different. You have to be so much more vibrant and creative than you had to be, 40 years ago.
But we are seeing a lower enrollments into the colleges that help foster teaching and then that has an impact, of course on principals and administrators. So we're seeing lower, we're also seeing people wanna retire as early as possible. And so I think there's also combination of just general burnout from staying in a pos profession that is that challenging for so long.
Can be, I really do believe that we need a lot of time off when we're in the kind of position where you're in a classroom with, between 40 and 35 kids every day. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of work. What we've been doing, and a lot of districts have been doing, is trying to really. Go in and reach students at a high school level.
We have a number of programs through our regional occupational programs in Contra Costa County, where it's like an internship where we are getting, trying to get students. Really excited about teaching and the colleges have also adjusted. A lot of places now you can leave, you can get your BA simultaneously while you're getting credential, where historically it's been you have to get your four years and then you go off and do another year, and then you have two years of induction once you get a job.
It's a really long process to be a fully credentialed teacher.
And more student debt and other states don't do that credentialing process. Let's dive into Covid. I'm a parent of, I talk about it on this podcast. I have three daughters, 10 and under. My, my oldest though, as we're talking about teacher shortages, was just voted by her fifth grade class as most likely to become a teacher.
Yay. She was actually excited about it. And then, but she was also in that kindergarten class that shut down and she didn't finish. Covid didn't have first grade and second grade very difficult as we were coming out. Yeah. Talk about how have schools overall, and I know you're in a different position at the county versus the school district, but give us an overall perspective.
How does schools. Working with students to catch up on that to help them with the social, emotional and academic losses. Test scores, I think are down historically as a result of this. How are schools working with us and parents and kids to improve this?
I think a couple of things that have really pivoted in, I know in Contra Costa, probably in the state in just the last couple years coming out of Covid, one is really a focus on the whole child and mental health social emotional learning. And then also for the younger grades, it's really working on a changing the way we're doing reading and literacy countywide, right?
So we are all shifting to more of a structured literacy, which, really is gonna set up a much a better foundation for students learning to read. And sometimes people think, oh, is that just like swinging back and just teaching phonics? And isn't that boring just teaching phonics when it's not.
There's, there's five components really of teaching reading, but it's making sure that students have like a real foundational, really have that phonics really are working on their comprehension, their fluency. Then also really building students' knowledge base around whatever it is, making sure they're, learning deeply.
There's lot of talk about really learning deeply. One of the programs that a number of our districts really dove into afterwards, and that we had a grant to help facilitate. We were one of, three county offices in the state that got a grant to help facilitate what's called accelerate accelerated learning.
It's a way of, instead of remediating we think of remediating where you go back and you just kill and Jill and grind and try to get kids to, when you're doing accelerated learning, you're. Really building off what students do know and really looking for their gaps and their specific gaps.
Not just like guessing what their gaps are or 'cause all students and think about your own child you don't know, like all students didn't miss the same stuff. There's different gaps in different students due to covid due to were they having a particularly bad day on if they were doing the Zoom schools.
What were they missing? Were they having a bad day? Particular for the younger children? It was very challenging, right? Was their household too chaotic that day to get that learning? So there was quite a bit of training going around, going on countywide in the last few years about how to really look at each student as an individual, what are their gaps, and then how to, get them the information and support them and meeting those gaps. I also know I don't have the data on it, but I know it from my own grandson who's nine. So same thing and all that masking and all the speech. I know that the number of speech referrals went up so much after Covid, and I really do think.
It was because of all that masking where it's so important for young people to see the mouth, see the shapes right, and really be able to hear, and that ties in with reading. Also, to be able to hear it, see it say it, super important. That was a long answer to your one question.
Yes, but important becasue its on a lot of people's minds. That's interesting about speech and and I know there's a lot of kids who missed years of high school and graduation, so I know it was tough in a lot of ways. What were within that though? What were some lessons learned from CO overall?
One, of course. We did get to see teachers everywhere and schools everywhere be very nimble.
And really, if you think about it in hindsight, how quickly they were able to flip to this other model that was pretty, pretty amazing. Also, just the resiliency of students is a total lesson learned. Kids are very resilient and I know some kids that actually thought their way of graduating.
Was amazing. They loved doing the drive by. They loved doing that kind of really personal graduation that they did. They loved putting together the videos. It was almost like in the era of YouTube doing that kind of thing so that students are resilient, that schools are more important that we even Remi, that we even knew like how important schools are for not just academics and education.
Really as a core structure of our society, right? We really did see what happens when we took schools away, and it is such a core element of our society. I know that no teachers wanna ever be called like a childcare, but we did see that to certain extent. School's function as our childcare also so that adults can go out and learn.
I think it helped foster creativity in a lot of most teachers that I know got really creative and really dove in and really learned how to do some really interesting work doing this new kind of lessons. And I also know that some people just felt so fully frustrated that they didn't wanna stay in the profession.
You talked there about creativity and embracing new kinds of work, and I know your role is a little different, but how are you seeing technology evolve? And I use chat. GBT is just the simple example, right? Three years ago, it wasn't existing. Two years ago, a lot of people probably in academics thought it was.
Was stupid and not gonna go anywhere. And now you're kidding yourselves. If I didn't use it three times today, which I have, and high school students and college students are utilizing it in different ways. But as I was just at a forum with a futurist and is that's not cheating. It's finding the use cases.
. Another example is I was hearing from somebody who does how data and utilizing that could create individual learning lessons. Instead of, there's this theory that students, teachers teach to the lowest common students in the class, what is, if you could personalize that with technology, any thoughts on just.
Those overall or how schools could work to embrace, I know it's hard to change in K to 12 schools. It's not so easy to adopt to this technology.
Technology is moving so fast, and I know that in CLE Costa County, we are working to make sure that it's a, that AI is like a, and technology is a tool for learning, not a distraction, right?
There's a big difference between a tool for learning. Or being distracted by all that's out there in the world of technology. And I do think that AI is going to change how students learn and how they, how we work with them in education. I was just in two classrooms today. I. One of the great privileges I get is I get to go into the absolute best classrooms in Contra Costa County because I get to go visit the teachers of the year every year.
All the teachers of the year I get to visit. And today I was watching both a TK and a third grade classroom and it made me think about AI and technology 'cause one. They weren't using it and the teacher was using it. And that's changed quite a bit is how even in primary grades we have just as a standard now, a way of incorporating technology like on a big screen and pulling up videos and clips really easily.
But what they were teaching was some really foundational work that I really do think young people will need to have before they dive off into the world of ai other than just fun. I was in a third grade class where they're, they were doing a writing workshop and she was really teaching some high level aspects on how to write, and they were doing writing workshops.
And I really think those are key things to do before you use the tool of ai. And I do think ai, I use chat GPT also, and I use it as my, the best spell check I've ever had. Thank you. Because I need that. I use it to crunch data when I don't have, I, I use it to summarize things. I use it for a number of things, but the truth is I know how to do all of that stuff already.
I use it as a tool and not as the machine. The machine is still my brain. And I use AI as the tool. I was around when the internet came out, like when the internet got into schools. I was actually on curriculum council here at the county office as a curriculum. I was a curriculum coordinator or something.
I. I remember somebody saying, we won't even have to teach kids how to memorize. They can just, they'll just be able to do that. And I'm like, oh, I don't think that's good for kids' brain. I really still think they're going to need to use, know how to memorize and we're gonna have to teach 'em that. 'cause otherwise their brains, we want them to have a thinking brain in order to use these really dynamic tools so that they are using the tools and the tools are not using them.
And that is very important. And I do think they're amazing tools and I am not what do I wanna say? I almost said I'm not afraid of them. And that's not quite what I mean, I just think they are tools. They aren't going away. I know all the districts are really working on policies and practices so that they can be used.
'cause our kids. They're gonna out, they're going to outpace us if we don't get on board and really learn how to use these tools.
From your perspective, what advice do you have for educators and for students and as this technology is rapidly evolving?
Don't be distracted so.
I really come at it from a place of getting to know the tools do your due diligence and get to know as districts, as systems. We really do need to think about digital equity. Are there places that are not going to have access to this? Like we need to have some common threads and I'm confident something will come out.
Where we will integrate it into like the technology standards so that we know that all students will have to have some type of literacy and education around using these tools because we wanna make sure I, especially thinking countywide, don't want some. Schools one way or the other. 'cause you do know some of the most affluent private schools, they sometimes keep technology at the door, right?
Because they want people to use their brains. They want you to do, use their hands, use their brains, really be thinking. But we also don't want, we want all schools to have the same amount of access to all the tools that we'll be offering students so that some students aren't getting, left behind in the digital, the digital playing field.
We don't want there to be a digital divide.
Exactly.
The father of three daughters. I don't want a glass. I don't want to teach my kids necessarily about the glass ceiling. 'cause I want it to not be there. It's finding that balance
and. In a world where we can't go through a school year without something bad happening, kidnapping weapons being used, what do you, what thoughts do you have on that and how do we improve it?
School safety, and I'll just speak for Contra Costa, it is always evolving and I know that now when we talk about school safety, we're talking about physically, emotionally, and a sense of belonging.
I think what. When we talk about the hard scape of it, like making sure that we are very well trained, making sure there's access points, making sure that strangers aren't able to just wander into a school. The state has put down a lot of new guidelines in the last few years that all of our districts adhere to as far as.
Making sure they're following safety protocols around entrance, exit, all of that kind of hardscaping. And then there's like the more proactive stance also of really developing sense of belonging and caring with all students to make sure that students aren't feeling isolated and turning against schools.
There is that type of training, which is much more proactive, much more upstream as you would say. And I do know that conflict resolution, mental health supports, making sure every student feels connected to the school, while at the same time making sure that you are keeping a very safe and secure atmosphere.
Kids feel safe. Now, my. Grandson moved his school, moved into a new school, and every time a new school is built now, there are certain criteria where you'll see a more hardscaped fencing around it. Yeah. So you'll see these new schools with the fence where there really is just one entrance and exit.
And my grandson, who's only nine years old, said. It's like a prison. It's like a prison. We're all fenced in here. So that is his perspective of it is when he sees it, even though it is really a beautiful school. Beautiful new school, beautiful grounds, but it is, very secure.
And that is the way schools are moving. Absolutely. To a much more secure atmosphere.
Because there's a lot of schools that, that I've seen some that are locked up like you said, but I can name a few. I won't, but I can name a few that you could just walk onto campus in the middle of the day.
Now maybe their outdoor room is locked, but if you're on campus, the, like the locked door isn't gonna stop you. You gotta stop 'em on the outside. Is that shifting or.
Existing school. So some of it's and I agree with you. I've been on a couple can campuses recently where I thought, I'm so glad that they have the locking doors in the, on the classroom because it's such an open campus from, because there isn't a, there's no way to even do a perimeter fence all the way around some of the schools because of the way they're built.
And that's why I do know as they have, and to build a school. Is very expensive. I do know slowly and steadily in their plans, they are working on hardscaping it a little more and hardscape. When I say hardscape, I do mean the fencing, the one point of entry, the, so there's ways you can fence off part of the school.
So they have to come in through another way and schools are, as you'll go into districts, you'll say, why is, why are a couple of these schools over here this way? But this one not yet. It's because it's a very expensive proposition and there's one score at a time. They're also, something that's I think has changed quite a bit in the last few years is our deeper partner with law enforcement.
Throughout the county, and that is really built into our safety plans where we have to have an ongoing communication with law enforcement and our community partners and just to really build greater relationships with them and then with our students and our community.
Circling back to the county board of Ed, I know we've been talking overall about some education. It what? What else should I be asking you? On your role in our community and with students.
And you mentioned the county board of education, which is a very different, it's different from the county office.
It's different from the county superintendent, but they do play a very rule important and distinctly different from a school district board. So our county Board of Education, who I work with, and we have partnerships and they have a very important role at the county office. They also do the appeals for school districts.
If there's a a charter school that wants to open up in a district and the district doesn't vote to approve it, it can come to a county board for approval. If there's boundary issues. Is the county board. That does the appeals. If there's an inner district transfer, it's the county board. They support the work of our young people in our juvenile halls and in our special education programs.
They're very distinctly different, but they do partner. There is a Contra Costa County School Boards Association, which is the school districts, boards and the county board, and they work together to find areas of advocacy. And they work to advocate for education for Contra Costa County.
Yeah. Lot of different layers to, to understand everybody's role and function, but that's why this episode is Yeah. Important to show how that structure goes. Yeah.
I think some of the other things that I want to share with you is some of the good work we do around countywide, we run academic events for students.
We host mock trials. Every year we rent out the court courthouse. We get judges to come sit in and play the role of judges. We work with school districts. It's usually juniors and seniors, sometimes sophomores, and they get a. Criminal case or a civil case. And they have to practice being both the prosecutor and the defending side.
And they come and do mock trials and we have, two weeks, sometimes three weeks worth of court cases here at the courthouse. And then the winners go off to the statewide mock trials. We also help support things like poetry out loud countywide, and we just try to really, celebrate students countywide.
We, we do the Teacher of the year celebration where we host all the teachers of the year and celebrate them. There's some uplifting, fun stuff we do too. It's not just oversight. And monitoring. We do some, celebrate celebrating our school districts too, because I have to tell you, and we have schools of distinct, distinguished schools throughout our county.
We have some excellent schools in every single school district in our county, and we have some, amazing work being done. And then we also have some challenges. Every district has both those two things simultaneously. If you are having a good experience and your kids going off to college, you're like, yes, this is the best.
If you're having challenges, which there's many families, you're like, this is unacceptable. How can we make this better? So we're always trying to support both ends of that conversation.
I can appreciate that holistic. Look into education that way. And that's important.
We're recording this at the end of April.
This episode will come out in mid-May. There's a lot happening in Washington DC the. The president has said we should close the US Department of Education, push this to the states move some of the funding around. How is this impacting your job funding for students? What are schools? What should they pay attention to, and what should parents know as of now when it's still in flux?
We've had so far since January, we've had seven executive orders aimed at K 12 education. A couple of them were just a reaffirming of the executive order early on, doing away with anything, DEI, some things around the, there's only men and females, right? Some things around gender equity. We have these seven.
And a phrase that I've been hearing a lot and which I really believe is we need to take them seriously, but we don't know if we need to take them literally. Because when you read them, they don't really spell out exactly what school districts need to do with this information. Sometimes I've read one.
I'm thinking, okay, I'm not indoctrinating anybody. I'm not discriminating against anybody. I am, I'm doing, and I also do, I do a lot of DEI work, diversity, equity, and inclusion. How could you not do those things and run a school system? Those are very important. I know that term gets used sometimes as some kind of slur or some type of affirmative action thing, but really in school systems, I.
We have to think of equity and giving everybody what they need and inclusion and including all students and yeah, it's just, it's what we do. We're working with all students so it doesn't make sense. Funding wise, so far we haven't taken a hit. We do not know we have to take it seriously.
We don't know what it will literally mean yet. Contra Costa County, we. As a whole, we get about $200 million in federal funding for K 12 education. Some districts just get a little bit, some get a lot. It's really, those funds usually go to serve the most vulnerable students in our schools. It goes to Title one schools, right?
It go right. It goes to our special education students. It's hard to imagine. Somebody literally taking that money away from those students. And so far we do know we're getting our allocation that we were promised for this year. We don't really know what's gonna happen in the future on all these federal orders.
We don't really know. We wait for a response from our state, right? The federal orders come out, our state responds. I think one of the. Most painful to see is the work around immigration and the fear of our families, that families in our community, because schools should be a safe space for every single student.
Families should not have to worry about sending their kids to school. Kids should not have to be worrying about what's happening with their families at home. What I know is I know all our districts. Have done work with their families and, have pulled forums and supporting families just about knowing their rights, knowing how, who to reach out to, and knowing what to do in that situation.
I was talking to one nonprofit recently who has a Department of Labor grant, and they were, when they got the memo about the DEI programs, what they said is, okay, so maybe we don't mention it and promote it. That doesn't change. Our goal is to help everybody equally. And. We could just be a little quieter with it.
I thought that was an interesting take. One other thing that I thought of I did wanna ask is we've gone to TK in all the public schools now, right? That changes is I think five, six years old or less. How has that gone? Have we recruited enough teachers? Did schools have capacity? Any insight?
I was just in a TK classroom this morning and as I was walking the campus with the principal, he was showing me where they're gonna put two more classrooms or having to build two more TK classrooms because in their community it is booming.
'cause this is this year coming up, we're doing the next step where it will be the younger level of student will be able to come to school. And for the most part, we have found the teachers. Space has been an issue in a lot of school districts, because you need to have little tiny toilets. You need to have little, right.
You need to have these specialized classrooms. And those are really hard to just suddenly find space. So often parents struggle with, sometimes for tk, their kid will have to go somewhere else to a different school that has the TK classrooms. And then their other kids are at a different school, but.
I think TK has been really a wonderful experience because it's still so play-based. It's like being in preschool, but it's getting 'em ready for kindergarten. We have so far, knock on wood, we seem to have found the workforce for tk. Teachers. It's a smaller ratio, so you have more, usually more adults in the classroom.
And I think it's, I think it's really good for education. I really do.
Is it people who were mostly in a preschool before and have shifted over to the public? Is it people who were not in any preschool and were just at home, or a combination of everybody, everything everywhere.
I actually think it's a common combination. All of that because it's one, it's not compulsory, just like kindergarten still is not compulsory. You don't have to send your child, but it is the best thing. Tk just, it allowed for younger students to start transitioning into school and there was a slow rollout.
You're right, it's been about the last four or five years that we've had a rollout of backing up the birth date where you can start school. And so they're getting younger and. Really doing more. It really is preschool because it's play-based. It's getting kids ready, but really being developmentally appropriate in it.
I still know in a lot of people, they like their preschool. They're gonna stick with the preschool, I do also think oftentimes TK is only a half day. It's all, TK is always a half day, and if the school doesn't have an extended day or a childcare right on campus, it's very challenging for parents.
So some of them will put 'em in a full day preschool as opposed to kindergarten. We've been doing training with a lot of our, we also run what's called the local planning council that works with. Childcares and preschool, and it's working with all of them about the TK standards to get students ready for school.
Just to make sure that all students, whether you choose to be in your private preschool or you're doing friends and family and you have a, a grandparent that is taking care or any kind of parent family member taking care of your student till they start school, is making sure they're getting all those building blocks to so that they're ready for school.
That's essential. And some of it I'm learning as a parent is just creating good habits. That you gotta sit down for my five-year-old who's in tk, she's gotta sit down and she's got to, this is your desk, this is where you're gonna do your homework. It can only take you two minutes.
That's fine. I don't care if you do it right. You just have to sit down and do it. That's a way,
it's a little habit, right? Little habit. That you do a little bit of schoolwork.
All right. I appreciate you being here today.
Superintendent of Contra Costa County, Lynn Mackey.
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