Community, Creativity & Connection in Inyo County: A Conversation with Serena Johnson

Serena Johnson has been a Community School Coordinator at the Inyo County Office of Education, since October 2023. While new to the education field, she brings extensive experience in early childhood education as the First 5 Director of Inyo County, along with a strong background in public health and community organizing through her roles with the Toiyabe Indian Health Project and Inyo County Public Health. Serena is passionate about the mission of community schools—to connect the education system with community resources, ensuring all children have the support they need to thrive. 

Serena Johnson discusses her work in rural California, specifically in Inyo County.   Inyo County, with its diverse geography and 19,000 residents, faces challenges in community school outreach. Johnson's initiatives include a consortium approach with five school districts and creative solutions like a 60% response rate for a parent survey using a Scholastic Book Fair incentive. She also emphasizes the importance of consistent communication through a monthly newsletter, translated into Spanish. A successful partnership with the county library in Independence enhances reading scores and community engagement.

Transcript

Serena Johnson, Joanna Marrufo

Joanna Marrufo  00:08

Welcome to Beyond Academics, connecting classroom and community. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of community schools and explore how they're transforming education for students, families and communities. We are hearing from educators and community members who are at the forefront of creating change and meeting the needs of the community, be it basic needs, health care, social services, support or social emotional learning. I'm Joanna maruffo, your host, integrated supports outreach specialist with San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. And in today's episode, we're honored to welcome Serena Johnson Inyo County Office of Education's community school coordinator, who's going to share how she is navigating community schools in rural communities in California, specifically in the eastern central part of California, Serena Johnson has been a community schools coordinator at the Inyo County Office of Education since October 2023 while new to the education field, she brings extensive experience in early childhood education as the first Five director of Inyo County, along with a strong background in public health and community organizing, through her roles with the toyabe Indian Health Project and Inyo County Public Health, Serena is passionate about the mission of community schools to connect the education system with community resources, ensuring All children have the support they need to thrive. We're so excited to have you share your expertise. And would love to start by asking you, Serena, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and how did you get into this community schools work.

Serena Johnson  01:55

Thank you, Joanna. I am so pleased to be here today and chatting with you a little bit about myself. I am a mother and a wife and a sister. I call Bishop California home, and I am a fiber artist. I love to quilt and crochet, and I love being outdoors. I love nature and being enjoying the beauty of this world and how I got into this community. Schools work. I'm going to take you all the way back to my childhood and my favorite book, which is Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. And in that book, a little girl is challenged by her grandmother to make the world a better place, and she finds that solution in spreading Lupin wildflower seeds in her neighborhood and making beautiful flowers grow and as commonplace as it might sound, making the world a more beautiful place, this has been A driving force behind my work throughout my life, and I think it led me to what you shared my work in community education and public health. I worked with the 4h Youth Program, leading volunteers, and I worked with public health in dental access, helping families get access to dental programs. And in disaster preparedness, making sure the community is safe. I worked with toyabe Indian Health Project in nutrition and physical activity in our Native American communities. And then most recently, I worked in early childhood education with first five Inyo County. And I think all of those, the commonality is helping our community, helping our world be a more beautiful place. And I earned a reputation as a convener of partners. So one thing that I really love doing is facilitating and getting groups of people to sit around a table and talk and find solutions and make changes to make the world a more beautiful place, some collaboratives that I was proud of previously in my professional career, the Inyo County perinatal Task Force, really looking at supporting our new mothers and infants, and team Inyo for strengthening families, really looking at supporting our families. So all of that work led me to this community. Schools work in inyo County, and like you said, I am new to education, but I like to call that my superpower, because I'm walking into this education community without preconceived notions of how it should be or what should happen, or where we're going. And so I like to think of myself as a bridge between the schools and the community organizations bringing awareness of resources and making new connections.

Joanna Marrufo  04:47

Thank you so much for sharing your background. It is so rich in diversity and inclusion, and I just can hear your passion from even like your childhood of. Um, experiences reading that book and how that has really just shaped who you are. So I really appreciate you sharing that um, can you describe Inyo County and the population that you serve in the work that you do?

Serena Johnson  05:17

Yeah, I am really passionate about the beauty of Inyo County, both the natural beauty and our really close knit cohesive community. And so it's so interesting. I think if you talk to anyone from Inyo County, they will start with the geography, because we're a very dramatic landscape, and we have such magnificent natural diversity and you just have to start there to understand where we live. If you can imagine, we have Mount Whitney, which is the highest peak in the lower 48 states. We have the Death Valley, which is the lowest point in the United States. And then we have the Great Basin Bristlecone pines, which are the oldest life forms in the world. I mean, these are just astonishing natural things we have here in the Inyo County. If you ask someone from Inyo County, what is Inyo County, where is Inyo County? It's known as the other side of California, we're very disconnected from California. Often, people will say it's where the desert meets the mountains. So if you take your hands and you cup them, sort of like a V shape, maybe like you're cupping water. I like to say you're creating the Owens Valley. And on one side, we are to the east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which includes Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental US. So 14,000 peaks of the Eastern Sierras. On one side. On the other hand, the other side are the White Mountains, which also include 14,000 foot high mountain peaks. So you can imagine these enormous mountains. And then in the middle, at the base of your cup of your hands, is the Owens Valley, and that's where we live. And it runs north, south in California. And highway 395, is our main highway, connecting all our communities. And so you could say there are 19,000 people in Inyo County from the 2020 census. And so if you divided the distribution, there are two people per square mile. But that's not how we live. We're not equally spread out across the county. There's huge geographic spaces in between our small communities that all lie on highway 395, so you can kind of imagine these very close knit small communities surrounded by vast open spaces with this these enormous mountains. So that's our geographic landscape where we're very cut off from California. Often our families go to Nevada for services, and so who are our families? Who are the people who call home in Inyo County, like I said, there's 19,000 people. Our largest ethnic groups are white and Hispanic or Latino, but we have a significant population of American Indian or Native American residents. We have five sovereign tribal nations in Inyo County. In terms of our education landscape, we have six school districts with 2500 students. Our largest school district has almost 2000 students, and our smallest school district has 17 students. So a lot of variation in our school districts too, and many small school districts, our student population is 42% Hispanic, 32% white and 14% Native American, and we have 63% socio economically disadvantaged students, 15% of our students With Disabilities, and 10% of our students are multi language learners. So great geographic diversity, great diversity in the human beings who call the Owens Valley home, and it's just a really special place. I hope someday you get to visit. 

Joanna Marrufo  08:55

Thank you for sharing that visualization of how beautiful the landscapes are, and also how the communities live in certain areas, and depending on where they live, it's, you know, makes up their neighborhoods. So thank you for sharing, because it's coming from more populated areas. It's hard for us to imagine parts of California that look that way, and geographically, we have some of the most beautiful landscapes. So I can only imagine how that highway really kind of is the connector right for those communities. So thank you for giving us that background. So what are some of the challenges you face in supporting community schools.

Serena Johnson  09:42

So we are a planning grant as part of the community schools statewide, California Statewide rollout in cohort two. So it's a two year planning grant that began in fall of 2023 and so one of our primary activities. Was building a steering committee and completing the needs assessment as part of those planning grant activities. What's unique about our planning grant is we are a consortium approach. So being small in terms of our numbers, being rural, we thought a consortium approach might be the best way to approach this work. So we brought together five school districts, as I was describing along the highway, 395 to work together on this planning grant, which I think is often a strategy applied to smaller or more rural areas, where you kind of collaborate, connect, to bring these bigger programs to our small rural areas, right? But one challenge is, because of that large geographic area, right? There's the driving time, there's the number five different school districts to liaison with, right? That's five different superintendents, many different principals, right? All that, that breadth of the number of people you're interacting with, but still one community school coordinator, right? And so I think the biggest challenge we faced was getting to that depth and breadth of reach that community school encourages, right? There's a 75 to 100% reach for students, families, staff and community partners as part of the needs assessment. And that's what's so beautiful about the community school approach, right? It's really hearing from everyone. And so here we were tasked with doing that across a consortium of five school districts. I am so proud of what we did accomplish, but I think I would have wished to go a little deeper, to be a little more.

Joanna Marrufo  11:38

Wow That's so impressive. The way you were able to bring everyone through this consortium, and, you know, despite the distance and really bringing that public health lens that you bring working from, you know, first five in the Department of Public Health and things like that, I think that's, I'm sure, one of the that grassroots approach right, is where, where you came for doing that. So thank you for sharing that. What are some of those solutions you have seen in Inyo County with the work you've been creating with community schools,

Serena Johnson  12:13

one example I'm really proud of and so excited to share with you all today here because of that limited depth or breadth of reach like I was sharing with our needs assessment, we did not hear from families as much as we had hoped for. Right? I'm sure, like many of my community school colleagues are, our first tactic with hearing from families was to create an online survey and post it to parents square right the app that many schools use to communicate with parents. And so that's what we did in spring of 2024 and pushed it out to the school district and got some good responses. Bishop Elementary is our largest Elementary School, and it's our largest school overall in the county, and we got a 9% response rate. So we heard from around 60 families, which was, was great. And we got data, and we looked at it, and I brought it back to the school team at Bishop Elementary, and they just said, No, this isn't good enough. Like, how many voices are we not hearing from? Like, yes, this is telling us something, but it's not very many families. And they really said, We want to hear from more parents. We can do better. And the reason this was a creative solution is we then said, well, what could we do better? What could we do differently? And we did it again. We didn't say, oh, that's all we could do. That's the best that we could do. The team really looked at, okay, what do we want to do differently? So at our school team meeting, brainstormed as a group. You know, we had parents in the room, we had staff, we had community partners really saying, What could we do differently? And so they wanted to do a second survey, and we discussed doing it in paper, which is huge. When you're talking about 850 students, that's a lot of paper. But we felt like what we've learned from in other areas of sending home flyers, things like that, sending paper home in the homework folder is the best way to reach parents. So we said, let's send home another survey as paper in the homework folder, and let's have an incentive. Coincidentally, we had our Scholastic Book Fair coming. The PTO was busy planning it, so some of the parents at the table said, Hey, book Fair's coming, but if we said, for any survey returned, the student gets a $5 coupon to the book fair. And so we thought that was a great idea. We ran with it, and it was just so amazing to see the response rate we I mean, we didn't know what we were going to get, but as it started coming in, so we the Book Fair was open for a week, and so we made that the deadline. That whole week, if surveys came in, the teacher would hand out a $5 book fair coupon for each student who. Who turned in a survey. So Monday, some came in. Tuesday, more came in. Wednesday, even more came in. And I think one of the reasons this was so successful is the students became our advocates. Because they were taking the survey home. They knew they were going to get a coupon, and then they saw their friends getting coupons. So then it became, you know, they Mom, mom, dad, dad, grandma, you know, fill out the survey. I need to bring it back. I need my coupon. As a parent at the school, I was volunteering at the book fair, so I got to see this firsthand, of the students bringing in their coupons and using them, you know, maybe their parent gave them $5 and then they use the book fair coupon to be able to get a $10 book. So we really saw and it was a win win too, right? Because not only were we getting our survey responses back, the Book Fair saw an increased visit, because maybe the students brought their coupon, plus some of their own spending money. And so we got more visits at the book fair as well. So I think reaching parents where they were at, using a strategy, you know, engaging the students for their enthusiasm, and just not accepting that 9% was acceptable. And so we ended up getting an almost 60% response rate. So we got back around 370 family surveys from that strategy.

Joanna Marrufo  16:23

Thank you for sharing that wonderful collaborative approach to, you know, looking at, how can we solve this lack of, you know, like lack of survey engagement, and really digging down and rolling up your sleeves and saying, Hey, this is this is this is a need, right? And how can we really support our parent, parent engagement, so that that's really creative, and bringing in the Scholastic Book book fair, because I believe most of the schools have that coming in, it's a creative way for the springtime. So I know you shared with me another solution, regards to bridging that communication for your consortium by sharing like your newsletter. Do you mind sharing a little bit of like, how that came to be and what, what specifically you do to support that?

Serena Johnson  17:20

Yeah, when I started at the beginning of the planning grant and was learning about the community school framework and the family and community engagement pillar, I knew my role as community school coordinator was to be that bridge right between the school, which is the hub, and our community partners. And I began with having a one on one interview with any community partner I could think of. Maybe I already had a relationship, so I was reintroducing myself, or maybe I was reaching out to them for the first time to introduce myself. And that felt like a really powerful way to begin the planning grant activities and this community school work in Inyo County, and then I felt like I needed something more to stay in touch, right? And meanwhile, we were working very closely with our schools, with our steering committee, with our school teams. We were rolling about or out the needs assessment. So there were so many things happening, and I felt like a newsletter would be a good strategy to be transparent in what we were working on to all our partners, school staff, families and community partners, and to be held accountable. Right to say we set out to do these things, and we are going to be held accountable to them and report back to you as our partner that this is what we're doing. And so I created, I set myself the intention of a monthly newsletter. Sometimes it went bi monthly if we got busy, but I'm proud to say that we have stuck to at least a newsletter every month or every other month, really just highlighting what we are up to, trying to include some pictures, talking about what our partners are doing, and then translating it into Spanish to reach all our partner languages, and posting it on our website, and then emailing it out to just a constantly growing list. So just as I would have a meeting with someone, I'd say, Hey, do you want to read our newsletter? I'm at a community meeting, and I would say, Does anyone else want to join our newsletter list, we've had success with connecting with a key staff person at a school like maybe a secretary or an administrator, and they will forward it out to all their staff. So really, using that newsletter for transparency, of saying this is what we're working on and why we're working on it and using the newsletter for accountability, really saying this is what we told you we were going to do, and we are doing this

Joanna Marrufo  19:50

I love that you're building that trust with the community by, you know, bridging those resources and ensuring that the community. Is along with the process you write, because this community schools work started last year. So if you want to share, like, what were some of those impacts of having that consistent communication? 

Serena Johnson  20:13

Great question. What just came to mind is this last week, we've held our steering committee meeting. So this is when all five school districts come together and guide our efforts, because we are nearing the end of our two year planning grant, I really created the meeting to be more of a reflection space of looking at what's gone well, and what could we do differently. And one thing that I heard from our school partners, that they saw as a success of our collaborative and our planning grant was the continued communication and regular updates. And so what I really heard from them was that the consistency of communication was really important for the words not coming to me, but it almost inspired them to continue to show up, because that communication was there. So I think the newsletter really led to, instead of us disappearing in the background, we stayed to to the forefront. So even if I'm not directly corresponding with a community partner, but they're seeing my email in their inbox once a month, and they're like, Oh yeah, community schools, they're doing that thing. And so then maybe when I reach out to them for Hey, can you come to this meeting? Or can you give me some input on this? I'm still front and center in their awareness.

Joanna Marrufo  21:42

Serena, I know we've talked previously about how you're just leveraging community assets and county partners in this community schools work. Do you mind sharing a little bit of how you're elevating the public libraries?

Serena Johnson  21:59

This is such an exciting example that I am thrilled to share with everyone today. This is with our Owens Valley Unified School District in Independence California, and they just have this great example of the county library partnering with the school district. So about two years ago, when ELOP was really coming out and launching the superintendent and the county library director connected and really came up with this creative partnership solution to have the county library space on site with a full time librarian who also leads The after school program. So it is a win win for both agencies. It's so inspiring. I got to visit them last week and tour the site. It's a beautiful space. The county librarian is there on site every day. The elementary classes visit once a week, and the middle and high school students have the opportunity to visit every day. The after school program is for tk to fifth grade students every day, and they focus on a reading club and steam activities. And both the county librarian and the superintendent just highlighted that the mentor volunteers are the heart of the program. So as part of this reading club, community member volunteers and high school students come in and read individually with the after school students for 30 minutes every day, and they just shared one story that just caught my heart, where there's not always enough community member volunteers and high school students to meet with every student, to read with every student every day. And sometimes there's tears when the students don't get paired up with like their favorite community volunteer. So the students just love that relationship, that connection, so much. In addition to the reading club, they have individualized activities. The librarian shared with me that the kids really love to do art, but she makes sure it's individualized and follows students interest. She said she has a couple students who love to build things, so she has a lot of creativity and art different steam activities, they do complete homework, and all these activities are incentivized by a cozy corner reading club where they receive points for the activities they participate in and then receive prizes. So the students are giving a lot of autonomy in choosing how they're spending their after school time. So some of the successes of this program are the county library has seen a success in the increase of the number of books being checked out and the number of patrons accessing their library services, the school has seen success in the reading scores increasing so all students in their school have been seeing in gains in reading scores, but the students who are attending the after. School Program regularly are seeing greater gains. So the superintendent is really proud of that. So I think this is just such a great example of two organizations, you know, school and a county agency, coming together with their own priorities, but finding that middle common ground and both seeing greater success by working together.

Joanna Marrufo  25:25

 Thank you so much for sharing that amazing example of just leadership and library enthusiasm. I feel like a lot of folks don't it's underutilized, right? There's so much knowledge, and so the services that the library provides and, and the fact that they were able to successfully partner with that school and after school program and just build those, those things that, you know, those children are always going to be going to that library for the rest of their lives, you know, just Seeing that, that beautiful connection and love for reading and then that gift for those volunteers to come in from the neighborhood or the community and read to them, that just warms my heart as well, just hearing how positive and affirming they feel when someone comes In and reads to them that's beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and just your love for creativity and like creating those solutions, even when it's it may be a little challenging, but you're able to navigate those challenges by leaning in to the expertise of the folks that you work with and being able to problem solve together with, you know, with those students and those families to make sure their needs are met. So bravo to the work you're doing, Serena, and I just want to say thank you so much for joining us today and sharing with you, with the entire community, about how you're doing the work out in your in your county community, and showcasing the efforts in your corner of California, which I'm really happy to just elevate that storytelling and creating those, those systems that that in the same systems you're creating here you're creating in Inyo County. So thank you so much

Serena Johnson  27:27

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

Joanna Marrufo  27:30

Thank you for joining us at Beyond Academics, connecting classroom and community, where we dive deep into the stories from people who are making a difference in school. They are the change makers who bring community schools to life by making an impact for families and children by meeting their needs. Don't forget to connect with us on social media accounts. You can find us on X at SI_RTAC Instagram at SBCSS_IEBRANCH  at our website, CCSPPSIRTAC.org, tune in for more episodes.