Achieve Charter Schools

Achieve Charter School of Paradise Inc. (Achieve) is organized as a non-profit, 501c3 public benefit corporation with an independent board of directors legally and fiscally responsible for operating one or more charter schools.  Achieve currently operates Achieve Charter School of Chico, a Kindergarten through 8th grade school authorized by the Chico Unified School District, and Achieve Charter School of Paradise, a Kindergarten through 6th grade school authorized by the Paradise Unified School District. Achieve also holds a 9th-12th grade high school charter, Achieve Charter High School, authorized by the Butte County Office of Education, that is currently non-operational and awaiting its rebuild in Paradise.  

 

We believe learning best occurs in a small school community where every student is known and develops strong relationships with adults and peers.  Achieve offers personalized learning, career exploration, a school-wide sense of community, emphasis on character building, a challenging learning environment with high expectations, academic and social-emotional supports, research-based instructional strategies taught by highly qualified and trained teachers, high attendance rates, and an increased number of instructional minutes.

 

In 2005, a group of educators, community leaders, and parents invested time, expertise, and personal finances to develop and submit a charter petition to the Paradise Unified School District for Achieve Charter School of Paradise. After first being denied because we were not likely to be successful, Achieve’s charter petition was eventually approved, and we opened, authorized by the Paradise Unified School District, with 100 Kindergarten through 5th grade students, 9 staff members, and a loan from Butte Community Bank. By 2010, Achieve expanded to middle school, serving 212 Kindergarten through 8th grade students with 20 staff and a healthy financial reserve. In 2012, Achieve joined the National School Lunch Program to provide free and reduced meals to students and became its own Local Education Area for Special Education. Achieve hired its own Special Education staff to provide a full continuum of special education services to students with special needs fully integrated within the general education environment. Since our inception, our goal has been to close the achievement gap, whether it be between high and low-income students or students from different races. A focus on school-wide instructional practices, strategic and preventative interventions, and personalized learning plans for each student resulted in Achieve being named a California Distinguished School in 2014, 2017, and 2023 for closing the low-income achievement gap.

 

In 2018, with the support of local business, industry, and town leadership, and in partnership with community colleges and state universities, Achieve opened Achieve Charter High School with a focus on technology and entrepreneurship. ACHS’s opening was a 3 year labor of love, originally denied by PUSD in 2016 and again in 2017 because we were “not likely to be successful.” After an outcry of community support, ACHS was eventually approved on appeal and authorized by the Butte County Office of Education. ACHS opened with 50 9th graders planning to add 10th through 12th grades over the following three years. That November, the Paradise Camp Fire destroyed the Achieve Charter High School facility and forced all schools in Paradise, including Achieve’s K-8, to relocate to surrounding cities. Achieve’s K-8 relocated to Life Church of Chico, and ACHS relocated to Living Hope Fellowship Church in Chico, where classes were held in sanctuaries, Sunday school classrooms, church nurseries, and outside spaces. That December, 90% of Achieve’s students returned to our temporary campuses in Chico, some driving 2 hours both ways from temporary housing. 100% of Achieve’s student population, 90% of Achieve’s staff, and all Achieve’s board members lost homes in the Paradise Camp Fire. Achieve leaders began brainstorming how to serve a student population who all qualified as homeless, provide mental health support to staff, students, and families in trauma, and got to work building a temporary school campus on the empty 2 acres behind Life Church. In January, 6 of the planned 18 portables for the new school were installed in the Life Church parking lot to provide office space for both schools and classroom space for the K-8 and high school students. Donations of supplies and funds poured in along with counseling services. By March, Achieve was breaking ground on the new campus in Chico but was also making the difficult decision to put ACHS on hold as uncertainty around future enrollment projections and the future of Paradise grew. 

 

As the 2018-2019 school year ended, the Achieve community was heartbroken as we said goodbye to ACHS staff, students, and families, and 70 of our K-8 students and families who moved away from the area that summer due to the fire. At the same time, we were extremely grateful for the outpouring of support we received from charter schools across the state, businesses, and organizations locally and nationwide, and specifically to the California Charter Schools Association, Fortune Charter School, Young Minney and Corr, the North Valley Community Foundation, the Chico Unified School District and the Butte County Office of Education. These schools, businesses, and organizations reached out to help us quickly recover and reopen after the fire. They provided resources, grants, expertise, and gifts to our staff and students, helped us build our new campus, and provided mental health services and support to our community.

 

Achieve began the 2019-2020 school year with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, celebrating the completion of our K-8 campus in Chico with supporters from across the country. Our staff welcomed 70 new students, all Camp Fire survivors who had relocated to Chico. Achieve leadership and staff focused on refining our multiple-tiered system of support, recognizing all of our students would need the most intense academic and social-emotional support available. With the support of the North Valley Community Foundation and the Butte County Office of Education, Achieve provided crisis counseling, mental health support, and social-emotional learning and instruction. These supports were integrated into daily all-school morning assemblies, classroom instruction, small group instruction, and one-on-one counseling provided by the school principal, school psychologist, trauma recovery specialist, crisis counselors, teachers, and paraprofessionals. Along with academic interventions, Achieve students showed improvements in mental health and academic growth from the fall to the spring. 

 

On Friday, March 13, 2020, Achieve received notice that all schools in Butte County would be closed for in-person instruction effective the following Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Achieve staff sent independent study work packets home with students that Friday and quickly got to work, developing a rigorous distance learning program that would continue to provide academic and social-emotional support to students remotely. We launched our distance learning program that Wednesday, March 18, 2020, losing no instructional days. 

 

Along with all public schools in California, Achieve opened the 2020-2021 school year in distance learning. However, Achieve staff spent the summer training and preparing new curriculum and online platforms that would allow for a higher quality of remote learning and would transition smoothly between remote and in-person instruction. On October 19th, 2020, with the support of the Achieve Board of Directors, staff, families, and the Butte County Public Health Department, Achieve was able to implement safety protocols to reopen for in-person learning for all students, five days a week, for five and a half hours per day. At the close of the 2020 fall semester, Achieve students continued to show improvements in mental health, and 70% of our students scored at grade level on benchmark assessments. Achieve was awarded the California Pivotal Practice Award in 2022 for recognition of our work in social-emotional wellness and academic intervention.

 

While the Town of Paradise was slowly rebuilding, many of our families began rebuilding in hopes Achieve would return to our damaged but not destroyed K-8 campus in Paradise. Windows, water pipes, the electrical and septic systems, along with four portable buildings and our playground, had all been destroyed. Our landlords, the St.Thomas More Catholic Church, put forth a herculean effort to get our campus ready for the return of our students. With the anticipated return to Paradise, many of our families who had decided to stay in Chico were hopeful we could turn our temporary campus at Life Church of Chico into a permanent home and provide much needed stability for hundreds of Camp Fire survivors in the Chico area. Created by the community, for the community, we set out to open Achieve Charter School of Chico and Achieve Charter School of Paradise in the 2021-2022 school year. 

 

Thanks to the collaboration and goodwill of the Chico Unified School District, the Achieve Charter School of Chico’s charter petition was quickly and unanimously approved by the CUSD Board of Directors on May 19, 2021. This allowed Achieve Charter School of Paradise and Achieve Charter School of Chico to officially open in the fall of 21-22 with 100 K-5 graders in Paradise and 181 K-8 graders in Chico.

 

Over the last two years, Achieve Chico has grown to 212 students, and Achieve Paradise added 6th grade in 23-24 and serves 143 students.