Championing the Success of English Learners
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Position: Fund Developer
Long Beach, CA [Another location in California is negotiable]
Exempt, Half-Time, Regular Position
Organizational Background:
Californians Together is a statewide advocacy coalition with the goal of better educating 1.2 million English learners by improving California's schools and promoting equitable educational policy.Position Summary:In the role of Fund Developer, you are directly responsible for identifying and qualifying various funding sources,including writing of grant proposals in implementation of the strategic plan, philanthropic partnerships, individual and major gifts. You will plan, coordinate and implement development plans to meet fund development and budgetary goals. Current overall annual fundraising goal is approximately $1 million,including grants, contracts and individual and corporate donors. Activities will also include research, drafting, proofreading, submitting, and tracking proposals; managing the grants calendar; and support of reporting requirements. Reports to the Executive Director. The position is a half-time, exempt position with potential full-time employment in the future.
Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Qualifications:
Personal Characteristics:
Compensation:
Salary is commensurate with experience and qualifications. Includes full health, dental and vision benefits, holidays, vacation and sick days. Office closes between Christmas Eve and New Year’s.
To Apply:
Please send cover letter, resume and (2) grant writing samples to:
Human Resources
By Martha Hernandez, Californians Together Executive Director
American schools’ responses to COVID-19’s sudden interruption to public education varied considerably across the nation as students went from daily classroom learning to stay-at-home orders nearly overnight. Now, a new survey reveals the limits of that patchwork response to the emergency — and indicates key lessons for schools’ reopening this fall.
Over the past several months, Californians Together, an English-learner advocacy organization, asked more than 650 educators to provide details about their schools’ distance learning plans, focusing particularly on how they served English learners. The results were sobering. Martha Hernandez discusses a 10-point road map for how Local, state leaders, and schools can address inequities as they prepare to relaunch public education in the fall.
COVID-19 hit California like a bolt from the blue. No one could have predicted the size and scope of the threat it posed until it was too late, and public institutions—especially schools—were largely left scrambling to sketch hasty plans to continue their operations. But as California approaches half a year of lockdowns, school closures, and economic restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is time to cease treating it as a crisis to be coped with and begin treating it as a situation to be managed.
Better mid- and long-term planning begins with an assessment of the chaotic spring. How well did schools respond in the moment? What worked well, what was left out then—and how can schools do better in the upcoming school year?
To help answer these questions, Californians Together launched a collaborative review process of 79 California school districts’ COVID-19 Operations Written Reports. This brief offers a window into local districts’ decision-making and can serve as a guide for future improvement.
SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter:
Read @caltog's NEW policy brief: “School Closures and English Learners: A Review of COVID-19 Operations Written Reports”. What worked well, what was left out then—and how can schools do better in the upcoming school year? https://bit.ly/2DmwC4K
Facebook:
NEW! Policy Brief from @CaliforniansTogether: School Closures and English Learners: A Review of COVID-19 Operations Written Reports. How well did schools respond in the moment? What worked well, what was left out then—and how can schools do better in the upcoming school year? To help answer these questions, @CaliforniansTogether launched a collaborative review process of 79 California school districts’ COVID-19 Operations Written Reports. These documents offer a window into local districts’ thinking and can serve as a guide for future improvement. https://bit.ly/2DmwC4K
As school districts kick off the 2020-21 school year and address the challenges presented by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, equity must be front and center. Equity in this context means that reopening plans consider the needs of the most vulnerable students and have explicit strategies and investments to ensure that opportunity and achievement gaps are not exacerbated. Given some of the gaps in access to education that have been documented from the spring closures, Californians Together recommends that districts ensure that the needs of English learners are addressed in their Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans.
Districts have an opportunity to describe their plans for school reopenings and how they will address the needs of our most vulnerable students through the development of their Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs), which must be adopted by September 30th. To ensure that the needs of English learners are addressed in their LCP, we encourage districts to provide a clear description and definition of the following factors.
To support districts in incorporating these factors within their LCP’s our EL RISE! Initiative (made possible with the support of an Educator Workforce Investment Grant [EWIG] to Californians Together from the California Department of Education) developed two tools aligned to the English Learner Roadmap.
We encourage all districts, schools, teachers, and community members to review the recommendations in these resources and to continue to do what they can to close opportunity gaps for English learners.
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For wide dissemination of the tools and the report, here are social media posts for each of the five factors:
California’s over 1.1 million English learners (ELs) deserve access to the full curriculum so that they are prepared for success in not just English language arts, but also in math, science, social studies, the arts, and all other subjects. It is all of these subjects combined that make learning relevant and support language development.
Unfortunately, we know all too well that access to rigorous coursework is still lacking for many ELs. When looking at achievement in Math, only 12.6% of ELs met or exceeded math standards in 2019. It is for these reasons that Californians Together has partnered with Education Trust-West to lead an advocacy effort focused on informing the 2021 Mathematics Framework revision.
Math Framework Timeline and Goals
The Mathematics Framework is currently being drafted by the Mathematics Curriculum Framework and Evaluation Criteria Committee (CFCC), which will continue meeting until December 2020. From then, the Framework will go to the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) in January 2021, for approval for an initial 60-day public review period. Moreover, thanks to the English learner roadmap and the new English Language Development (ELD) standards, California has an opportunity to better integrate strategies for ELs and ELD standards into teaching and learning in all subjects. This makes this the right time to engage in this process!
Central to this effort is to ensure that decision-makers hear from the perspectives of our diverse coalition partners in order to:
Our Progress
Over the past three months Californians Together and The Education Trust-West have been joined by ten other education organizations that signed on to one or both of the coalition letters for the May IQC Meeting and June Mathematics CFCC Meeting. In addition, during the June 24-25 Mathematics CFCC meeting, we were joined by six individuals in providing public comment in support of Equity and ELs.
“Ed Trust-West is proud to be working in partnership with CalTog and many other organizations to ensure that California’s revised math framework is grounded in equity and provides a clear instructional, research-based blueprint for serving diverse learners. Educators throughout the state are looking for clear guidance on how to implement the math standards in culturally relevant and engaging ways, including for students of color, students who are gaining proficiency in English, and those learning in multilingual settings. It is imperative that educators, advocates, students, and families, all have a voice in the framework revision process and we welcome additional organizations to join our coalition.” Rachel Ruffalo, Director of Educator Engagement at Education Trust-West
Based on our review of the chapters discussed at the June meeting, it is clear that there is a need to ensure that examples and strategies discussed consider the needs of our diverse learners, including a clear integration of ELD standards and strategies within the Mathematics standards. However, we found much of the discussions of the committee promising as there was a focus on expanding cultural relevance and ensuring that the purpose of learning math was expanding to understanding our world and solving complex problems.
Looking Ahead: How To Help
As we look ahead to the remaining Math CFCC meetings, including the one coming up on August 5-6th, we need your help.
You can help by doing one or all of the following:
If you are interested in supporting this effort or just want to stay updated, email Manuel Buenrostro at manuel@californianstogether.org.