Civic Center Secondary School

Civic Center Secondary School is one of several San Francisco County Community Schools which provide educational services to students in grades 7-12 who are assigned due to expulsion proceedings, recommended by Juvenile Probation, Foster, Homeless, and/or Social Services, or through truancy or behavioral intervention. The County Community Schools function as an interruption in the educational system, breaking the pipeline to prison design for many underrepresented students. The staff, students, parents and community partners openly struggle to interrupt the cycle of low expectations, neglect and institutionalized racism that is characteristic of the educational experience for at risk students. Our focus is our efforts to create a caring, inclusive, safe educational space where building relationships is the focus.

The instructional pedagogy is a small classroom setting managed by multiple adults; special education instructor, general education instructor, and counselor or social worker. Teaching teams are provided with collaboration time and professional development to support their professional relationship building and planning. This support-enriched classroom experience creates a trauma sensitive school environment where students, adults and families benefit from healing through utilization of trauma informed classroom practices. In our support enriched classrooms with our community partners we provide support for job and career readiness, substance use awareness, and individual case management.

Our County Community Schools serve a population that is both transient and lopsided. At the end of last year 63% of students were male and 37% female. 32% of students were African American, 38% Latinx, and 8% Pacific Islander – all widely disproportionate to the city as a whole. 43% of students have IEPs. Nearly all students are low income and more than half of students are identified as foster, homeless, and/or on probation. Nearly all have significant patterns of truancy and significant academic skill gaps. They collectively embody the resilience of a troop of Arctic explorers.

To serve the complex needs of these young people and their families, the County Community Schools operate the main campus of Civic Center Secondary School and additional satellite campuses across the city. At the main campus of Civic Center Secondary School, we offer three classrooms for high school students as well as one classroom for middle school students. The satellite campuses consist of one Center for Academic Re-Entry (C.A.R.E.) classroom at the Bayview YMCA, another Center for Academic Re-Entry (C.A.R.E.) at the Buchanan YMCA, and two small classrooms comprising the Youth Chance program at the Embarcadero YMCA. Each self-contained classroom supports a cohort of generally less than 15 students. Instruction is highly personalized and culturally relevant. All students receive intensive orientation and intake support, develop an individual learning plan, are intensively case managed, and supported to achieve their own learning and transition goals. The programs are open-entry/open-exit with students enrolling when they need to and making a transition when appropriate. Typical enrollment is between one semester and one year, but there is no minimum and no maximum.

While they are far more similar than different, each campus has a slightly different set of structures and supports optimized to meet slightly different needs. The main Civic Center campus has a dedicated Principal, Assistant Principal, and Counselor on site as well as three certificated staff co-teaching in every classroom. The three satellite campuses are supported by a different Principal and Counselor, and they integrate certificated SFUSD staff and YMCA staff to support students and families. In a city with entrenched gang and turf issues, the different campuses provide an important safety outlet for students who cannot safety come together or even pass through certain neighborhoods. The programs are in rapid change in response to a rapidly changing San Francisco, where economic upheaval is restructuring the neighborhoods occupied by our most vulnerable youth and where the Board of Supervisors has recently voted to close juvenile hall and restructure many of the systems in which our students are enmeshed.

San Francisco County Office of Education and San Francisco Unified School District is one agency operating under one Board of Education and Superintendent. The county schools are fully integrated into the district’s support structures for everything from curriculum support to accounts payable. However, we strive to provide an additional safety net and a different experience for students who were not well served in the larger system. We are able to offer students all the advantages of being part of SFUSD – such as seamless transitions back to comprehensive high school – while also offering additional options only available to youth in county schools such as alternative credits and an accelerated diploma pathway.