CALSA's Summer Institute 2026

This session highlights Centralia Elementary School District (CESD)'s CSBA Golden Bell Award-winning program, Student Attendance Support Re-imagined: A Restorative SARB to Re-engage Students, which reduced chronic absenteeism by nearly 50% in just one year.
Chronic absenteeism is often treated as a compliance issue, but at CESD, it became an opportunity to redesign systems around relationships, equity, and community. Following a significant post-pandemic rise in absenteeism, CESD shifted from punitive approaches to a restorative, family-centered model that addresses the root causes of student absence. Grounded in Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) and informed by Harvard’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, the program emphasizes early identification through real-time data, culturally responsive family engagement, and cross-sector collaboration with community partners, health providers, and social services.
Participants will learn how CESD built an integrated system that removes barriers such as housing instability, mental health needs, transportation challenges, and access to basic resources. Innovative strategies—including multilingual outreach, home visits, a District Neighborhood Resource Center, and creative solutions like the “Rain or Shine” toolkit—demonstrate how small, intentional actions can lead to significant impact.
This session will also elevate the voices of families and community partners, illustrating how trust, empathy, and collaboration lead to improved attendance, student well-being, and academic outcomes. Attendees will leave with practical strategies and a replicable framework to transform attendance systems into inclusive, community-driven supports that ensure every student is present, engaged, and thriving.

This session invites school administrators and their educational partners to explore how policy, governance, and system-level decision-making shape powerful Expanded Learning Opportunities Programs (ELO-P). Grounded in a whole-child approach, participants will examine how ELO-P can be strategically aligned with Early Learning, Multilingual Learners (MLL), Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Community Schools, and Special Education (SPED) to better serve culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Attendees will unpack key compliance components, including alignment to LCAP, SPSA, and ELO-P requirements, while centering student engagement, belonging, and equitable access. The session will also provide timely updates on legislation, fiscal policies, and funding structures, offering practical strategies for navigating budget constraints without compromising program quality or student outcomes.
Through a spotlight on a local LEA, participants will see how continuous quality improvement (CQI) practices and cross-functional collaboration can drive coherence across systems and improve outcomes for unduplicated pupils (UPPs).
Participants will leave with actionable insights to strengthen organizational alignment, advocate for sustainable programming, and lead with a systems-level lens that honors the assets, identities, and needs of Latino students and their communities.

Federal Program Monitoring (FPM) is often experienced as a high-stakes, compliance-driven process that can overwhelm systems, fragment ownership across departments, and pull leaders away from instructional priorities. This session shares how one district reimagined its FPM approach by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) within a broader system of distributed leadership, clear structures, and cross-department collaboration. Participants will learn how AI was strategically leveraged to streamline evidence development, draft responses to auditor feedback, organize large volumes of documentation, and increase efficiency without compromising accuracy or compliance. Beyond the tools themselves, the session highlights the leadership moves that made this work sustainable, including the development of centralized trackers, defined roles and responsibilities, structured communication cycles, and ongoing support systems for site and district teams. Grounded in real examples from a completed FPM cycle, this session will demonstrate how leaders can shift from reactive compliance to proactive system design—building coherence, reducing operational burden, and creating greater capacity to focus on student outcomes and equitable access.

This session highlights a powerful student-centered approach to advancing awareness of educational rights through youth leadership and advocacy. Led by Fredy Ruiz, Immigrant Relations Coordinator, this initiative equips students with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to understand their rights and educate their peers—particularly in the context of changing immigration policies and their impact on school communities. Grounded in resources such as Legal Protections for Immigrant Students , students engage in structured learning experiences that build their understanding of key laws, protections, and school responsibilities.
Through this model, students are not only recipients of information but become leaders and advocates on their campuses. Participants will learn how students are trained to develop and deliver presentations on educational rights, using accessible language and peer-to-peer strategies that increase engagement and trust. The session will also highlight how students design and implement advocacy projects tailored to their school communities—ranging from awareness campaigns and resource guides to student-led workshops and safe space initiatives.
This work centers student voice, agency, and culturally responsive leadership, while also strengthening school climate and fostering a sense of belonging. By empowering students to lead this work, schools create sustainable systems of peer education and advocacy that extend beyond traditional adult-led approaches.
Attendees will leave with practical tools and replicable strategies to implement student empowerment models that build knowledge, leadership, and advocacy capacity among students, particularly those from immigrant and mixed-status families.