Small School District Association: Developing career technical pathways for small rural high school districts

The SSDA team consists of four small school districts ranging in size from 80 to 1000 high school students: La Honda-Pescadero located on the Central Coast, Wheatland in the northern Central Valley, South Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Mountains, and Modoc in the states far Northeast corner. Each community faces poverty, isolation, and lack of opportunity that contribute to pregnancy rates, substance abuse, and mental illness.  

Project profile:  These SSDA school districts will focus on creating safe, supportive learning communities for all students. Each community will take a different approach, and will share strategies, progress, and outcomes as they complete the implementation process. 

  • Pescadero High School will partner with Sacramento County Office of Education’s virtual CTE program to provide students with five courses: sports medicine, culinary, business entrepreneurship, and two computer science classes.

  • South Tahoe High School plans to develop a strong sense of community belonging for students and staff by leveraging CTE programs to create community and content connections between career technical and core classes. 

  • Modoc High School will inspire students with visits to companies like Tesla and Crucible.  Students will also travel to take industry certification tests and participate in statewide industry competitions. 

  • Wheatland High School’s Business Entrepreneurship Academy will create internship opportunities by developing a school store with local business advisors that will sell student-created goods and school pride items.”

“We started as four school districts with different needs. Through the design sprint process we discovered that we were a team focused on building community within our schools, towns, and regions. Because of this work, some exciting regional partnerships are already happening.”

— Design team, Small School District Association of California

Design is an iterative process where we share work in progress. Over the course of two months, Small School District Association practiced design thinking and created a prototype. See below for a video of this early prototype.

Year 1 Update


Although the funding made this work possible, the process allowed it to happen. This project is a partnership between four different school districts: Modoc, Lake Tahoe, Wheatland, and La Honda-Pescadero. The challenge of identifying a distinct need is difficult with a cohesive group, but with four independent districts, it was often frustrating. On many days, progress felt our of reach. In the end, each district found a focus. When they each shared their vision, it became immediately apparent that building school communities was a common theme. Suddenly, it all started to come together—the group found common ground.

The districts implemented four different prototypes focused on building community. Since this work is built upon relationships, districts first worked on developing relationships with stakeholders, capacity building, and infrastructure. As the project evolved, two districts (Modoc and Tahoe) found it necessary to amend their original ideas due to the realities of working in a post-lockdown world. While La Honda-Pescadero spent this first year developing the relationships required to start Dual Enrollment and online CTE courses for their students.

Due to prior-planning and the leadership of two dedicated teachers, Wheatland's project moved forward quickly . Modoc had planned to use the bulk of their funding for students to travel to work sites and colleges throughout Northern & Central California. Unfortunately most employers and colleges were still not accepting outside visitors, so this became a near impossible task to accomplish. After a team sharing meeting, Modoc was inspired by the work of Lake Tahoe to pivot toward building capacity within their local community.

The power of a multi-district team has been the ability to share ideas and learn from each other. This has been our biggest value-add. The group plans to continue the collaborative convening in year two, including a virtual retreat in October to share progress and evaluate outcomes. There also plans to hire a videographer to visit each district to capture project images and community impact, so that each district will be able to witness outcomes from the entire team.

To learn more about this project contact Louise Stymeist at lstymeist@gmail.com