San Mateo-Foster City gets $5M community schools grant 

“This grant is a testament to the district’s commitment to innovative educational strategies and strong community partnerships which are essential for strong and healthy communities,” Marcel Miranda, director of School Community Partnerships for the San Mateo County Office of Education, said. 

The community schools model aims to align community resources to ultimately improve student outcomes by working closely with school faculty and staff, its students and their families. 

This program aligns with district goals of addressing increased isolation resulting from the pandemic, dismantling the school-to-prison pipelines, and ultimately closing opportunity gaps, Director of School Leadership Christian Rubalcaba, said.

Funding will go toward a myriad of comprehensive services such as after-school programming, wellness centers and increased academic support. A full-time community school coordinator will be hired at each of the schools dedicated to encouraging ongoing community engagement. 

In addition to the four schools awarded the grant, Fiesta Gardens International School was also a part of the district’s application to the state. One of the gauges for awarding grants is the schools’ “unduplicated pupil count” that measures the percentage of students who are either English learners, foster youth or who meet the income eligibility for free and reduced meals. 

In addition to the four schools awarded the grant, Fiesta Gardens International School was also included in the district’s application to the state. However, it did not meet the demographics threshold for this cohort of grant awards based on its population in the 2022-23 school year. 

Superintendent Diego Ochoa said that this has already grown by almost 10% and hopes the school will meet the threshold in coming application cycles. The district is also looking to include more schools in future applications. 

Rubalcaba said the district will still establish Fiesta Gardens as a community school and dedicate the same funding as it would have received from the grant toward the school for implementation. The school is also set to move to North Central San Mateo in summer 2025, while the Mandarin immersion school currently there, College Park, will move to the Fiesta Gardens location.

“We’re going full steam ahead with the community school model because we know that that’s morally, ethically the right thing to do,” Rubalcaba said. “We’re not leaving anyone behind who was a part of this vision from the very beginning.” 

The district was initially awarded a $200,000 grant two years ago to engage five of its schools to collect needs assessments for each community in preparation for the extensive application required for the final funding grant. 

“I knew we were going to get it because of just the level of engagement and investment from the families was beyond my expectations, beyond anyone’s expectations as part of the process,” Rubalcaba said.

 The district budgeted an allotment of funds if none of the five schools received the grant, and will keep that money reserved to maintain community school models after the five-year grant. Ochoa said the grant itself is “only part of our reason for doing this work.”

“I’m extremely grateful that we’ve had so many awesome people participate in this process to help us earn these grant dollars, but these grant dollars will go away,” Ochoa said. “It’s our responsibility to budget effectively and prudently to make sure that we have money set aside.

Ochoa said the values outlined in community schools is something that he will continue to maintain during his tenure, regardless of state funding support. 

“As long as I’m the superintendent, I’ll continue to align funding to make sure that our students get additional tutoring, get longer summer school programs, have more access to medical and dental and mental health services and the variety of actions that go along with our community schools,” Ochoa said.