Pete Constant RJUHSD TA2

Pete Constant RJUHSD TA2

Pete Constant

Placer Purple Star Challenge

By

Pete Constant
Op-Eds & Opinion

A challenge to every school district in Placer County

As published in Gold Country Media · April 30, 2026

Let’s be the first county in California where every school earns the Purple Star.

By Pete Constant · Guest Editorial

I want to tell you about a mother I’ll call Sarah.

Her husband was deployed unexpectedly — orders came fast, the way they always do — and within days she was alone with three children, ranging from second grade to eighth, living off base in Placer County. She was new to the area. She didn’t know the district boundaries. She didn’t know which schools her kids were zoned for, or whether they were even in the same district. She didn’t know who to call, what paperwork to bring, or whether the credits her oldest had earned at their last school would transfer cleanly.

So, she started calling. She got voicemail. She got transferred. She got conflicting information from two different front offices about what documents she needed. She drove to three separate schools in a single day — two different districts, different enrollment processes, different staff who had no common system for receiving a military family mid-year. By the time all three children were finally enrolled, they had missed nearly two weeks of classroom instruction. Two weeks of math. Two weeks of reading. Two weeks of the social fabric that holds a kid together when everything else in their life has just been upended.

That scenario plays out in Placer County schools more than most of us realize. Beale AFB is thirty miles north of Lincoln, and military families routinely choose our communities — Roseville, Rocklin, Lincoln, Auburn — to settle when stationed there. These are our neighbors. Their kids sit in our classrooms. And on average, a military-connected student will change schools six to nine times before they graduate high school. Six to nine times! For families like Sarah’s, that means navigating this alone, over and over again.

Placer County’s schools are great schools. But “great” and “ready for military families” are not automatically the same thing. Being ready takes a specific kind of intentionality — a staff member who knows how to fast-track enrollment, a web page military parents can find before they move, a student who will walk the new kids through the building on day one, a counselor who understands that a transcript from a school in Georgia, or Michigan, does not map perfectly onto California’s graduation requirements. Without those things in place, families like Sarah’s lose weeks they can never get back.

This is exactly what the California Purple Star School Designation is designed to address. Created by state law in 2024, the program recognizes schools that have formalized these supports. There is no grant to apply for, no new budget line to defend. There is an application, four concrete requirements, and a designation valid for three years that tells military families: this school is ready for you.

I serve on the Roseville Joint Union High School District Board. This year, our district became the first in Placer County — and the first in all of Northern California — to earn Purple Star Designation at four school sites. I am proud of that. But I want to be honest: I do not want to be the only district in this county who can say that.

So, I am issuing a challenge, and I mean it as a genuine invitation rather than a competition: let’s make Placer County the first county in California where every eligible school earns Purple Star Designation. I believe we can do it within two years. And RJUHSD will help. We will share our application materials, connect you with the Beale AFB School Liaison, walk your staff through what we learned, and sit alongside you through the process.

The Auburn Journal, the Lincoln News Messenger, the Placer Herald, the Press Tribune — the communities these papers serve all have military families in them. The Sunset Whitney families in Rocklin, the families near Twelve Bridges in Lincoln, the households throughout Loomis and Auburn who are quietly navigating a school system that was not designed with them in mind.

We can change that. It does not take a lot of money. It takes intention. It takes a commitment.

If you lead a school district in Placer County — as a superintendent, a board member, a principal — I am asking you to look into the Purple Star program today. If you’re a parent, call your local school board and ask them to join us. The next application cycle opens this fall. That gives us a full spring and summer to prepare. Start with one school if that is where you are. We will take it from there together.

Sarah’s kids eventually found their footing. Not because the system was designed to catch them, but because good people at their new schools made it their personal business to help. Imagine if the system itself was designed that way — if every front office had a designated liaison who knew exactly how to receive a military family, if every school had a web page Sarah could have found before she ever made that first phone call, if a student had been ready to show her kids around on day one instead of day fourteen.

That is what a Purple Star school is. Let’s build more of them — right here.

Pete Constant is a Trustee on the Roseville Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees, Chair of the Department of Public Policy at Jessup University, and a resident of Roseville. Read how RJUHSD earned the Purple Star →

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California Military Children

By

Pete Constant
Op-Eds & Opinion

California’s military children deserve schools that are ready for them

As published in the Sacramento Bee · May 2, 2026

The Purple Star School Designation costs nothing — and signals everything.

By Pete Constant

Every school day, somewhere in California, a child walks into a new classroom carrying the weight of a parent’s deployment orders. They left behind their friends, their team, their teacher who finally understood them. They arrive in your district with a backpack full of records from a different state, a different curriculum, and a different set of expectations — and they are hoping someone on the other side of the enrollment counter is ready.

Most of the time, we are not.

California is home to more than 213,000 active-duty service members and National Guard and Reserve personnel — the largest concentration in the nation. Their children attend our public schools. And because military families receive relocation orders with little warning, these students can expect to change schools six to nine times between kindergarten and graduation — three times more often than their civilian peers. Each move means re-proving themselves. Each move means starting over.

There is a straightforward, no-cost way for California’s public schools to say to these families: we see you, and we are ready. It is called the Purple Star School Designation.

Established in California law in 2024 under Senate Bill 920 and administered annually by the California Department of Education, the Purple Star program publicly recognizes schools that have taken four concrete steps: designating a military family point-of-contact on staff, providing professional development on military-connected students’ needs, maintaining a dedicated web page with family resources, and running a transition program — which can be student-led — to welcome incoming military students socially and academically.

That’s it. No new funding required. No new mandate. Just intentionality, formalized — and then recognized.

In 2025, only 179 California schools held this designation. In a state with more than 10,000 public schools, that is a fraction of one percent. Forty-four other states have Purple Star programs. Florida alone has more than 450 designated schools. California, with its enormous military population and its longstanding commitment to equity in education, should be leading this movement, not trailing it.

I serve as a trustee on the Roseville Joint Union High School District Board, and I am proud that our district recently became the first in Placer County — and among the first in greater Northern California — to achieve Purple Star designation at four school sites. We did not do it because it was required. We did it because a military family should never have to wonder whether their new school is prepared for their child.

The research bears this out: the practices that serve military-connected students — structured transition protocols, designated liaisons, culturally aware staff — benefit every student. When schools get better at welcoming newcomers, all newcomers benefit. This is not a niche program. It is good schooling.

I am calling on school districts across California to act. Apply for Purple Star designation in the next application cycle, which typically opens in fall 2026. Spend the spring and summer getting ready: identify a staff liaison, build the web page, and start a student-led welcome program. The investment is modest. The return — in belonging, in continuity, in a student’s belief that this new school actually wants them there — is profound.

Military families don’t ask for much. They serve, they move, and they hope. The least we can do is be ready when they arrive.

Pete Constant is a Trustee on the Roseville Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees and an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Jessup University in Rocklin, California. Read how RJUHSD earned the Purple Star →

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Supporting Military Families

By

Pete Constant
Supporting Military Families

We see you, and we’re ready

A military child changes schools six to nine times before graduation. Here’s how ours became some of the first in the region ready to catch them.

It started with a phone call. A graduate of our own schools — someone who had gone on to work on military-family issues in Washington — asked me a simple question: why don’t Roseville’s schools have the Purple Star designation? I had to admit I’d never heard of it. By the time I hung up, I knew we were going to earn it.

Why it matters

Here’s what I learned. A child in a military family can expect to change schools six to nine times between kindergarten and graduation — roughly three times as often as their classmates. Every move means a new campus, new friends, a new curriculum, and often a new tangle of graduation requirements to sort out. Somewhere in America, about 200,000 military-connected students change schools every year, and California — home to the largest concentration of active-duty, National Guard, and Reserve families in the country — sends many of those kids into classrooms like ours. They don’t wear their sacrifice on their sleeve. But they carry it.

What Purple Star actually is

The Purple Star School designation, written into California law in 2024 and administered by the state Department of Education, recognizes schools that have made real, structured commitments to these students: a staff point-of-contact who helps military families with enrollment and the maze of requirements; professional development so staff understand what these kids are navigating; a dedicated web page of resources; and a student-led program to welcome new arrivals and help them belong. Notably, none of it requires new money. It requires intention.

First in our region

We earned the designation at four of our campuses — Adelante, Antelope, Roseville, and Woodcreek — making RJUHSD the first district in Placer County, and among the first in the greater Sacramento region, to do it. When ABC10 covered the news, the story that came through wasn’t about a plaque on a wall. It was a message to families: when the orders come and you land here mid-year, we’re ready for your child.

Now we’re taking it countywide

I didn’t want this to stop at our district line. So I’ve been sharing our application, our materials, and our staff’s time with neighboring districts — and I put a challenge out publicly, in an op-ed and in person: let’s make Placer County the first county in Northern California where every eligible school earns the Purple Star. Districts across the county are now working toward exactly that.

“This is the kind of thing government should do more often: it costs almost nothing, it asks only for a little intention, and it tells families who sacrifice for all of us that we’ve got their kids.”

I spent my career in public safety before I ever sat on a school board, so I carry a particular respect for the families who serve. Getting this right isn’t political, and it isn’t expensive. It’s simply the right thing to do — and I’m proud our schools were among the first in the region to do it.

Pete Constant is a retired police officer, a university professor, a parent of five Oakmont graduates, and RJUHSD’s Trustee for Area 2. See the full Family & Community Engagement record →

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How I Govern

By

Pete Constant
How I Govern

I didn’t learn governance on the job

Most people come to a school board wanting to help and learn how it all works along the way. I came at it from the other direction.

Serving well on a public board is a craft. Most trustees, understandably, learn that craft while they’re doing it — a meeting at a time. I’ve spent the better part of my career on the other side of it: studying how public boards actually work, and then teaching it.

I teach this for a living

By day, I’m a professor and the chair of the Public Policy Department at William Jessup University, right here in Rocklin, where I teach courses like public-sector leadership, public administration, and state and local government. The work of a governing board isn’t abstract to me — it’s the subject I stand up in front of a classroom and explain. I’m even finishing a doctorate built around it, with a dissertation on how public board members actually make their decisions. It turns out that if you want to serve on a board well, it helps to have spent years asking why some boards thrive and others come apart.

And I’ve done it, not just studied it

The theory only counts if you’ve lived it. I’ve sat as a trustee over multi-billion-dollar public pension funds, where a single vote can affect thousands of families’ retirements. I’m a founding board member and corporate secretary of the Equable Institute, a national, bipartisan nonprofit that helps governments keep their retirement promises sustainable and honest. That combination — the classroom and the boardroom, the research and the responsibility — is what I bring to our schools.

You never stop going back to school

Here’s the part my kids tease me about: I don’t think you ever graduate from this. Even now, decades in, I still go back to school for it — this year I completed executive programs at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School on corporate governance and on being effective in the boardroom. Nobody made me. I did it because the families of this district deserve a trustee who treats governing as a skill worth sharpening, not a title to sit back and enjoy.

What this means for our schools

It means I don’t have to guess at the best way to run a board — I’ve helped write it, and I’m regularly asked to teach it. Over the years I’ve been invited to train city councils and school boards, to lead board retreats, and to speak at conferences across the country and beyond on how good governance turns a board and its administration into partners instead of rivals. When neighboring districts want to get this right, they’ve asked me to come help. I’m proud of that — but the point isn’t the training. The point is what it protects.

“Good governance is the quiet work behind the walls. You don’t notice it when it’s done right — you just notice that the lights come on and the house holds. That’s the job.”

A well-run board keeps the focus where it belongs: on students, and off the drama that has swallowed so many districts. It settles the boring questions — who decides what, how a policy gets made, when the budget gets set — so the important ones get the attention they deserve. That’s not glamorous, and it rarely makes the news. But it’s the foundation everything our kids get to stand on. I’ve spent a career learning how to build that foundation, and I’d be honored to keep building it for Roseville.

Pete Constant is a university professor and department chair, a former public pension trustee, a parent of five Oakmont graduates, and RJUHSD’s Trustee for Area 2. See the full Governance & Accountability record →

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Family & Community Engagement

By

Pete Constant
My Priorities · Family & Community Engagement

We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel — or even buy new tires

The hardest family issues split other districts into lawsuits. We brought parents and teachers to the same table and got it right — together.

I want families to experience our district as a genuine partner — one that respects them, keeps them informed, and actually hears them. That sounds simple. But over the last few years, some of the hardest questions in public education have landed squarely on school boards, and how you handle them tells families everything about whether you see them as partners or as problems.

Getting parental notification right

Across California, districts on every side of the parental-notification debate ended up in court or in labor disputes. I didn’t want to pick a political fight. I wanted to do what’s right for students and families and stand on solid legal ground.

So I framed our policy the way the issue actually presents itself to a school — not as any one hot-button topic, but as a universal question. The same tension shows up with a teen pregnancy, with substance abuse, with a student in a mental-health crisis: when a student’s privacy and a parent’s right to know are in conflict, how do we resolve it? So we wrote it plainly into board policy: clear respect for our students’ rights, clear respect for parents’ rights, and a commitment to work diligently to balance the two in the best interest of our students and families — and when a child’s safety is at risk, safety comes first. We discussed it all in public first, worked closely with our teachers, and adopted it unanimously.

It has drawn no legal challenge. While districts up and down California ended up in court or tangled in labor disputes over this very issue, we came through it without a single lawsuit, court order, or labor grievance — a distinction few, if any, of the districts that took it on can claim. Other boards have since asked to borrow our approach. As I put it at the time: we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, or even buy new tires. We just needed an alignment.

A Purple Star for our military families

The other work I’m proud of here started with a phone call. A graduate of our own schools, who’d gone to work on the issue in Washington, asked me a simple question: why don’t our schools have the Purple Star designation? I’d never heard of it.

Here’s why it matters. Military-connected kids move six to nine times before they finish high school — new school, new friends, new everything, again and again. The Purple Star program recognizes schools that ease those transitions with a dedicated staff liaison, real support, and a student-led transition program. We applied and earned the designation at four of our school sites — among the first in Placer County and the greater Sacramento region to do so. And now we’re working to help other districts earn it too, with the goal of making our county a model for the whole state.

What engagement really means

Underneath both of these is how I understand this job. When you elect someone, you’re not asking them to parrot your words back to you. You’re entrusting them to use good judgment on your behalf — out in the open, where you can watch. A school board serves several communities at once: the residents who elect us, the students and families who fill our classrooms, and the teachers and staff who serve them. Every one of them deserves a seat at the table.

“The measure of engagement isn’t whether everyone agrees. It’s whether every family walks away knowing they were respected, informed, and heard.”

That’s how you keep politics out of our kids’ schools — not by avoiding hard issues, but by facing them together, with respect, and getting them right.

Pete Constant is a parent of five Oakmont graduates, a retired police officer and university professor, and RJUHSD’s Trustee for Area 2. See the full Family & Community Engagement record →

If you want a board that treats every family as a partner, add your name.

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