What We Offered

Peggy says, “PVUSD’s superintendent at the time had learnt of Heartwise and could see that Kendra was really a leader in the space, so brought her on board to support the organization through the whole process of applying for funding and then building community schools from the ground up.

When I was appointed as the lead for community schools in July 2024, I began working closely with Kendra and Heartwise. Kendra's just been such a great partner in the learning curve that I was going through. She valued my expertise in terms of school site leadership but she saw that then she could help fill in some of the gaps that I had on the technical side of community schools and how schools need to make some transitions in distributed leadership for example.

Working Together

Heartwise supports districts to build coherent strategies, align efforts, train staff, and center student success. For PVUSD, this meant regular meetings to shape the grant application, guide the rollout, and provide training and workshops for newly appointed community school coordinators.

Peggy says, “Kendra was able to guide me a little bit, give me resources. But mostly she’s just been a great thought partner. With Kendra's assistance, she was able to fill in the gaps in my learning around community schools in particular and give me resources to investigate how a school district like ours could make the transition from schools to community schools.”

One of the things we worked on together was how do we bring on our community school specialists? These are our school site leads at each of the 24 sites. So Kendra was really helpful in just helping me to plan how we could onboard them in a way that honors their experience while also identifying the areas where they're going to need assistance.

Kendra also helps me when I have a gut feeling about doing something, but I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do. She can affirm what I'm feeling in my gut, or other times she can say, okay, that's a good point, but let's think about it through this lens.

The Impact

Heartwise’s ability to see the bigger picture, guide long range planning, and bring deep community schools experience has been central to PVUSD’s transition. Their support helped the district build steady structures, create a coherent approach, and navigate a major period of change. This partnership also strengthened the district’s new community school specialists, who benefited from predictable meeting rhythms, thoughtful planning support, and a framework that encouraged collaboration, sharing of strengths, and problem-solving. The structures Heartwise helped put in place also supported Peggy and district leaders with the messaging and long term thinking needed to keep the work focused, sustainable, and grounded in the needs of students and families.

Peggy says, “We've been able to create a very strong network of our community school specialists. We meet with them regularly. Heartwise helped us set up this structure.”

They can see the value in the relationships that they have with each other, in addition to the relationships that they have on their school campuses.

We’re building foundations that are going to pay off over the years.

I would absolutely recommend working with Heartwise. Here's why: having a trusted thought partner who understands public school districts and the constraints with which we live is so helpful.