Sacramento City Unified School District is the 11th largest
school district in California and one of the oldest in the
western United States (established in 1854). SCUSD serves 47,900
students on 81 campuses and is home to a 2010-11 California
Distinguished School, two 2010-11 California Achievement Award
schools and the only public Waldorf-inspired high school in the
nation. Alumni from SCUSD’s schools range from U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Anthony Kennedy to nationally renowned political scholar
Dr. Cornel West. Graduates from SCUSD’s Class of 2011 are
currently attending Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and
host of other prestigious universities.
Our Board-adopted mission statement promises the community that
our students will “graduate as globally competitive life-long
learners, prepared to succeed in a career and higher education
institution of their choice to secure gainful employment and
contribute to society.”
The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, in conjunction
with Time magazine, has named Sacramento “America’s Most
Integrated City,” a place where “everyone’s a
minority.” SCUSD’s student population reflects this
diversity: 36 percent Hispanic or Latino; 18.3 percent Asian;
16.3 percent African American; and 19 percent white. About 7
percent of students are of two or more races or ethnicities.
Residents within SCUSD speak more than 40 languages; 38 percent
of students do not speak English at home.
Since the adoption of Strategic Plan 2010-2014: Putting Children
First in the spring of 2010, SCUSD has launched several
initiatives to meet commitments to the community in three focus
areas: Career- and College-Ready Students; Family and Community
Engagement; and Organizational Transformation.
While preparing students for the 21st century, SCUSD is also
working to ensure that the world they inherit in years ahead is
clean, healthy and safe. The heart of this work is Project Green,
a grassroots, green school movement that student-centered. Based
on the strength of the Project Green initiative and on the
district’s commitment to greening its schools, SCUSD was awarded
at US Green Building Council (USGBC)’s Center for Green Schools
Fellow in January. SCUSD is the only school district on the West
Coast – and one of only two in the United States – to have a
sustainability director fully funded by USGBC.
An important step to reaching the district’s vision of preparing
every student for a career and college is to build a stronger
support network for the earliest learners. Children in
California may begin kindergarten at age 4 (the cutoff birthdate
is December 2) — a younger age than almost all other states. To
ensure student readiness, the district created Early Kinder, a
two-year program to give targeted students an additional year to
mature socially, emotionally, cognitively and physically.
Students with an expanded linguistic repertoire will be better
prepared for careers and college and better positioned for
success in a globally competitive, international economy. SCUSD’s
Language Immersion programs, expanded in the past 12 months,
provides a pathway for students to become literate in both
English and either Chinese, Hmong or Spanish. In fact, SCUSD is
the only district in the region to offer a Hmong language
immersion program. Language Immersion is a method of
teaching a second language in which the “target language” —
Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish or Hmong — is used for instruction.
For children whose primary language is the target language, the
educational benefits are well-documented. Fifteen years of
research shows that English language learners in dual or two-way
immersion programs perform as well as or better on tests of
English than their peers who have been instructed only in
English.
Common Core Standards
While some districts are delaying implementation of the
standards, SCUSD believes students cannot wait for changes that
will better prepare them for success beyond high school.
This year, the district began a gradual adoption, centering its
work on a subset of the English Common Core Standards per grade
level.
Through ConnectEd — The California Center for College and Career
– SCUSD is implementing the California Linked Learning
Initiative. Approximately 3,000 students are enrolled in
academies throughout the district linking them to professions and
colleges. The newest Linked Learning academy is the Law and
Public Policy Academy at C.K. McClatchy High School, which opened
this fall.
SCUSD introduced a new Integrated Thematic Instruction (ITI)
Program for students at O.W. Erelwine Elementary School in
September, replicating a successful program at another SCUSD
school, Leonardo da Vinci eK-8. Both programs focus on
individualized student learning and the emotional, social and
physical needs of each child. Students are encouraged to develop
such life skills as perseverance, patience, humor, curiosity,
common sense, problem solving, flexibility, caring, initiative
and responsibility. At da Vinci, thematic focus is
preserving and creating beauty in our cultural and natural
environments. At Erlewine, the focus is developing a curiosity
about preserving and sustaining the environment.
The Family Academy project provides parents with workshops,
classes and family learning activities to help them support their
children’s education. It serves as a clearinghouse for
learning opportunities being offered to families by our district
staff and outside partners. The program is sponsored by a grant
from Target.
In the few years between John Sutter’s arrival at the American
River on Aug. 12, 1839, and the start of the public school system
in Sacramento on Feb. 20, 1854, much changed in that frontier
settlement. Prior to Sutter, there were few white settlers.
Although it was under Mexican control, most of the population was
American Indian.
