Building it
on Our Own
How one district
leveraged the think
tank atmosphere of
the CCEE with the
support of WESTed
to further their
service to students
16
Leadership
Like many other districts in
California, Mount Diablo USD’s demo-
graphics reflect those of our state. Some stu-
dents are from areas of wealth, some from
areas of poverty, and everything in between.
We are proud of and celebrate our diversity
and cultural responsiveness, embrace and
advocate for dual language and language
immersion programs, and the ability to be
biliterate and bilingual in an increasingly
global society. We have more than 30,000
students, representing more than 53 different
languages and dialects. The socioeconomic
status of our families is equally broad. Our
poverty rate hits 50%, 15% of our students
are English learners, and 15% of students fall
into the ‘category’ of Students with Disabili-
ties. We receive supplemental but not con-
centration funds.
It is also some of these shared character-
istics that make us unique and set us apart,
and motivate us to reach deep into the root
causes of our achievement gaps, and push
to create innovative solutions that help lift
up those students who struggle or who deal
with any of a number of barriers. We also
challenge ourselves to design solutions that
also uncover overarching lessons and paths
to success for all other students as well.
Being a veteran of the “intervention wars”
that provided supports in many different
ways, this time we had to push to do some-
thing different yet again. This meant taking
ownership of our challenges as a districtto
become a unified, collaborative district le-
veraging a sense of urgency to create our
own supports. What worked in the past
may not work as effectively now, and may
not work for all children, or enough chil-
dren. We tapped into what was working. We
tapped into researchers who provided flex-
ible tailored support, and we tapped into our
own community to help build a multi-fac-
eted connection to our work that is enhanc-
ing a sustainable, scalable and responsive
approach to teaching and learning.
By: Dr. Nellie Meyer