OCHO

Dear ACSA Region 8,

Dear ACSA Region 8 Leaders,

It is both an honor and a privilege to serve as your President for the 2025–2026 year. I’m excited to build on the strong foundation laid by our past leaders and to work alongside you as we pursue continued growth, innovation, and impact.

This is a pivotal time in public education. While we’ve navigated many challenges over the past year—and undoubtedly face more ahead—our collective leadership, resilience, and commitment to students remain essential. Let’s continue to stay engaged, informed, and inspired as we advocate for our schools and communities.

This year, I invite each of you to get involved, share your voice, and help shape the future of ACSA Region 8. Our strength lies in our collaboration, and I look forward to supporting your leadership journey as we grow together—both individually and as an organization.

Thank you to those of you that I connected with at our Awards Dinner in April. I hope that I continue to meet many more of you throughout the coming year at our local events and at ACSA Leadership Summit this November.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any ideas, questions, or concerns. I’m here to listen, learn, and lead with you.

With gratitude,

Lisa Katimbang

President-Elect

Congratulations! You have completed another year of serving students through your participation in ACSA and other events for the 2024-25 school year. There have been challenges, obstacles, disappointments, and weariness, yet somehow, someway, you were able to call upon your reserve energy supply to make it through the year. And trust me…our students appreciate your efforts towards making their educational experience one of learning, wonder, and discovery. They may not tell you how much they appreciate you, yet I know that our students secretly marvel at the wonderful academic, socio-emotional, and physical growth they’ve experienced under your leadership.

Now, it is time for you to pat yourself on the back for the individual and organizational accomplishments you executed through your efficacious mindset. Think of all of the successes you experienced this year. Take credit for the small victories and the BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals) that you achieved. Yes, you had several Aha moments, multiple successes, and a countless number of professional successes this year. If we do not take the time to celebrate the good, we will dwell on the bad and that is not good for any of us.

I have appreciated serving as your Region 8 Executive Director again this year and I wish each and everyone of you a summer of rejuvenation, peace, and joy. May you feel the breeze of satisfaction knowing that you led students and yourself to yet another rewarding school year. Yes, you did it! Take the win my friends!

As always…Be Efficacious,

Summer is Here and it's time to celebrate all the accomplishments of the 2024-25 school year!

Come on out and Celebrate in ACSA STYLE with your colleagues at the Summer Membership Event planned for Friday Jun 20, 2025 @ Willard Hicks in Morgan Hill. We are hosting light snacks and refreshments from 5-7 pm. Here is the link to register for the event.

Join ACSA

Download the ACSA APP

Membership Login

To update your profile or renew your membership? Please contact Member Services @ 800-608-2272 ormemberservices@acsa.org

If you have Region 8 Membership questions, please feel free to contact me @ dputney@sccoe.org

Thanks so much for your continued participation in ACSA Region 8 and for all you do on behalf of our students and community. We Are Better Together!

The Council of Equity Leaders had our last meeting on June 4. ACSA Partner with Purpose, 6crickets, an expanded learning management platform, provided a presentation.

The last step in moving from a Committee to a Council was to confirm our mission statement/purpose. The Equity Council builds transformative equity-conscious leadership and cultural proficiency among educators across California. By confronting systemic inequities and eliminating opportunity gaps, we strive to foster belonging, inclusion, and justice-centered learning environments for all students. Through research, policy advocacy, leadership development, and strategic alliances, we empower educational leaders to create and sustain equitable practices at every level of the system. Together, we will influence change and build sustainable pathways toward educational justice.

To accomplish this purpose, we will:

1. Identify, analyze, reflect on, and communicate pressing equity and diversity challenges to inform policies and practices that support equitable learning opportunities

2. Advance equitable recruitment and retention efforts that strengthen our diverse educational community

3. Support the development of empowering tools and learning resources for equity-conscious leaders

4. Build and sustain strategic alliances and communications that elevate our visibility and collective impact

5. Guide the Board in embedding equitable practices and policies throughout the organization, including the strategic plan and implementation process

Check out The Critically Conscious Classroom hosted by Dr. Tracie Noriega, Senior Director, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Professional Learning Services, and Anthony Robinson, Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. And mark your calendar for the Equity Institute March 25-27

This month the ACSA Leg Policy discussed these three CA bills amongst other bills to watch during this legislative session:

• Senate Bill 848 (Perez) Pupil safety: school employee misconduct: child abuse prevention

• Adopt Board policies and school safety plans that include; requirement for student curriculum on prevention and identification of abuse; describes safe boundaries and appropriate interactions between students and adults on campus; broadens mandated reporters to include unsupervised volunteers, contractors who are on campus, and school and district leaders i.e. board members; and establish database of classified employees who have engaged in misconduct

• Assembly Bill 84 (Muratsuchi) School accountability: Office of the Education Inspector General: school financial and performance audits: charter school authorization, oversight, operations, and contracting: data systems

• Creates reforms for Non-Classroom Based (NCB) Charter School accountability

• For those small district authorizers to continue to be authorized by existing chartering authority if the district employs four executive level staff members with responsibilities in the areas of Superintendent, CBO, SpEd, and Curriculum.

• For those already in existence who don’t have the 4 exec staff, the thresholds will be amended to districts less than 10,000 ADA could authorize up to their ADA

• Directs the State Board of Ed to reassign NCB charters that are authorized by small districts to larger district authorizers within their county for their next approval

• Dependent county charters shall have no adjustment to funding, others continue on sliding scale of funding depending on time that students are actually in person vs virtual

• Create the Office of the Education Inspector General to provide investigations and audits of school programs and operations (similar to FCMAT)

• Senate Bill 414 (Ashby) School accountability: school financial and performance audits: chartering authorities: tort liability: educational enrichment activities: flex-based instruction

• Rename NCB to “flex-based” charter schools

• Requires Certified Public Accountants to complete bi-annual training in charter school finance, audit standards, and flex-based instructional models

• Limits SBE’s authority to reduce or revoke funding for flex-based charters to only those cases where it makes a formal finding of financial abuse, profiteering, or grossly excessive administrative expenses

Our legislators make decisions on hundreds of bills every legislative session, which is why our One Voice is essential to assuring they understand how legislation supports, facilitates, or hinders learning in our schools. Collectively, we represent 235,000 learners in Santa Clara County -- your voice matters!

Dear Region 8,

Thank you for joining us at our final program event of the year. We hope you found the information valuable and that it will help strengthen the important work you’re doing in your community.

Jamie Nunez, our presenter, has shared the slide deck, AI Evolution with our region. Please feel free to distribute it to your organizations to ensure that the insights are accessible to all.

Wishing you all the best as we move into the remainder of the 2024-2025 year. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and engaging in even more enriching conversations in 2025-2026.

In Partnership

OCHO is the quarterly online publication that serves as a tool for sharing information from Region 8 leadership and committees with the 20 local charters and over 850 Santa Clara County ACSA members. Our Region 8 leadership will contribute to each edition as will representatives from key Region 8 committees and the Presidents of the different charters. To find all Region 8 news, announcements, calendars of upcoming events, and past editions of OCHO, check out the ACSA Region 8 website.

The next regular edition of OCHO will be distributed in June. Please reach out if you have suggestions of how to better our Region 8 communications. bschmaedick19@gmail.com

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson