Overview
Over the past 20 years, the Santa Clara Unified School District experienced a series of challenges in maintaining positive communications and relationships between its school board, district leaders, union leaders, and classroom teachers. CEC was brought in as a third party to offer a structured approach to the issue that could involve and encourage leaders from all constituencies to rebuild and reframe existing relationships.
Client: Santa Clara Unified School
Partners: Santa Clara Labor-Management Partnership
Impact area: Importance of strong labor management collaboration
Related Services: Labor Management Collaboration
October, 2019
Learn what happens when a concerted effort is invested in promoting healthy relationships between education leaders and practitioners. This is a case study that highlights the impact of the efforts to support stronger relationships and collaboration to improve teaching and learning in Santa Clara Unified School District, Santa Clara, California. CEC facilitated the effort to repair frayed communication throughout the district with the end goal of improving communication structures between the school sites and the district office, and elevating teacher and student performance and satisfaction.
The study, prepared by Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, an independent, national public education research and evaluation firm, focuses on the impacts throughout the District to enhance communication and collaboration across district, school, teachers, support staff and union leaders.
Additional support for this work was provided through the California Labor-Management Initiative and the California Teacher Union Reform Network.
The Santa Clara Unified School District serves over 15,500 K-12 students and an additional 6,000 students in preschool through adult school. About 41 percent of the district’s K-12 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and more than a quarter are English Language Learners. The district operates 28 schools serving multiple communities in the cities of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose, and Cupertino, California and covers a 56 square-mile area. For more information on the school district visit www.santaclarausd.org.