The Chula Vista Elementary School District was honored for its work with students who come from military families.
The Military Child Education Coalition in Washington D.C. recently presented the elementary school district with the 2014 LtG. (Ret.) H.G. “Pete” Taylor Partnership of Excellence Award.
The annual award encourages and applauds the outstanding partnerships formed between military installations and school districts that serve military children.
The Chula Vista Elementary School District was chosen among a select few school districts across the nation for this honor.
“We are very proud of the recognition from the Department of Defense in partnership with USC for our work with military connected families,” said Anthony Millican, director of communications and community development for the Chula Vista Elementary School District. “It recognizes again the quality of work that we respectively do for our students, and it’s just an acknowledgment of what we do for our military students.”
The military work by the elementary school district in Chula Vista starts with the Building Capacity Consortium through the University of Southern California and is funded by a Department of Defense Education Activity grant.
“The goal of the program is to increase school engagement, belonging, academic achievement, well-being of the transitioning military students and parents,” said Melissa Minas, project manager for the Chula Vista Elementary School District.
“Another goal is to enhance awareness of the needs of transitioning military students and families and spread best practices and technologies developed by this consortium regionally and nationally.”
Chula Vista Elementary School District is one of eight military connected schools that are part of this consortium.
Within the district, eight school sites were focused on because they had the highest number of connected military students in the district.
The eight school sites are Veterans, Heritage, Olympic View, Salt Creek, Arroyo Vista, McMillan, Camarena and Wolf Canyon.
Millican said seven percent of its students districtwide come from military connected families.
He said at Wolf Canyon about 30 percent of the students are military connected.
To assist families and students who are military connected, the Chula Vista Elementary School District has created a plan to help students and their families transition into its schools.
That plan includes forming a student-to-student peer mentorship program where a new military student is teamed up with another student to help guide them around the school.
The school district helps efficiently provide information and records to families to assist them in transitioning to their next school.
“We help them when they come in, we help them when they need to exit,” Millican said.
