CORE Districts (CORE), a collaborative of nine of California’s largest and most diverse urban school systems, has been awarded a two-year, $750,000 grant from the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE) as part of the Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program (SSRPP).
CORE joins a statewide network of partners committed to rethinking secondary education so every student is known, supported, and prepared for a rapidly changing world. This grant strengthens that collective work while supporting transformation efforts already underway in CORE districts.
CORE recognizes that this investment represents a starting point. Redesigning a secondary system built for another era will require sustained commitment, coherent policy, and significant long-term investment – far beyond a single grant cycle.
A Collaborative Effort with Deep, Complementary Expertise
A hallmark of CORE’s secondary redesign work is its unique collaboration with three partner organizations:
- National Equity Project (NEP), bringing liberatory design and equity-centered leadership to ensure students, families, and educators most impacted by inequities help shape the redesign;
- Transcend Education, providing nationally recognized expertise in community-based design, model development, and future-ready learning; and
- Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), offering research-practice partnership capacity and leveraging one of the most robust P–12 data infrastructures in the nation to support continuous learning and inform policy.
Together with CORE’s system-level reach and more than a decade of cross-district governance infrastructure work, these partners form a collaborative engine uniquely positioned to help California learn how large systems redesign secondary education in ways that are equitable, coherent, and sustainable.
This integrated collaborative is central to the power and promise of CORE’s approach – and is a major reason CORE’s work is able to bridge system design, community-based innovation, equity leadership, research, and policy learning.
Building on a Ten-Year Commitment to Future-Forward Secondary Systems
In 2024, CORE launched CORE Schools-Thriving Youth, a decade-long commitment to build Future-Forward Secondary Education Systems. The first four districts leading this work – Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Long Beach, and Oakland Unified School Districts – are advancing secondary redesign through community-based design, data-driven learning, and systems-level alignment. As the work progresses, additional CORE districts have an opportunity to join, making this an expanding network rather than a closed pilot.
Across these four districts, CORE Schools focuses on designing systems that:
- Ensure every student is known and supported;
- Redesign learning for deeper knowledge, skills, and purpose;
- Advance pupil success and equitable outcomes;
- Promote measurable growth in engagement and learning; and
- Develop sustainable structures that endure beyond short-term initiatives.
The SSRPP grant accelerates this agenda and links CORE’s local and cross-district learning to a broader statewide effort.
What the Grant Will Support
Over the next two years, SSRPP funding will allow CORE and its partners – NEP, Transcend, and PACE – to:
- Design and launch student experience pilots that strengthen belonging, deepen learning, and expand equitable supports;
- Engage students, families, educators, and community members as co-designers of future-ready learning experiences;
- Align central office conditions to ensure redesigned learning environments are supported and sustained;
- Leverage CORE–PACE data systems to track belonging, readiness, and academic progress and inform continuous learning; and
- Coordinate cross-district learning and statewide sharing, ensuring that insights contribute to broader policy and practice.
A Start, Not a Finish Line
For CORE and its member districts, this grant represents foundational support for a much larger transformation effort. While it enables important early learning and coherence-building, full system redesign will require aligned policy, durable partnerships, and continued investment over the next decade.
About CORE Districts
CORE Districts is a nonprofit collaborative of nine of California’s largest and most diverse urban school systems: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Ana Unified School Districts. Together, these districts serve nearly one million students.
Founded on the belief that no district can solve systemic inequities alone, CORE uses innovation, continuous learning, data, and research to transform education systems for equity and excellence – so that every student can thrive.
