About the Community School Initiative

What is the Community School Initiative?

The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) launched a Community Schools Initiative in September 2019. The initiative is currently underway at 15 high schools across LA county. Each school will serve as a hub for a range of support services for students and their families.

Duarte High School has partnered with the Los Angeles County Office of Education to become a Community School. The purpose of a Community School is to build equity for students by highlighting areas of need and leveraging community resources so that students are healthy, prepared for college, and career and civic ready.

As part of the Community Schools Initiative, Duarte High School has been provided with a full-time Program Specialist to coordinate services from participating agencies and a full-time Educational Community Worker to support parent engagement.

The program specialist role includes maximizing capacity of current resources and support systems to address the needs of our students and families. The goal is to collaborate with school staff including administrators, counselors, and teachers to identify, develop and implement school-wide support systems as we aim to reduce barriers and increase academic achievement for the students of Duarte High School.

The role of the Educational Community Worker is to support the enhancement of family and community engagement at Duarte High School. 

They are assigned to support Duarte High School and are on site Monday-Friday. Our Program Specialist is Nathalie Umaña. She is located in the main office. If you have any questions or would like more information, please feel free to contact Nathalie at (626)599-5712 or [email protected].