Pinole Valley High School
By Katelin & Jon
Pinole Valley High School
Pinole Valley High School
Pinole Valley High School
Leadership
Classrooms
Pinole Valley High School
Plaza
Surrounding Community
Sarah Shokrai
Will Heyward
Julia Brady
Timothy Finnegan
Staff Glows
The school’s greatest strength is its dedicated and collaborative teaching community. Teachers consistently support one another, uphold high expectations, and work together to create a positive, student-centered environment. Their shared commitment to meaningful programs and strong relationships fosters a culture of professionalism, care, and collective responsibility that benefits both students and staff.
Joel Frattini
Andrew Mcleroy
Michael Hersh
Sarah Shokrai
Will Heyward
Julia Brady
Timothy Finnegan
Staff Grows
The school’s main challenges center on time, student behavior, and uneven engagement. Teachers are working to build a stronger culture of respect and clear expectations while supporting many students facing trauma, distraction, or lack of motivation. Wide gaps in academic readiness make it difficult to meet every learner’s needs, and inconsistent consequences for misconduct strain classroom management. Staff also face heavy workloads and limited systemic support, which can undermine morale and sustainability.
Joel Frattini
Andrew Mcleroy
Michael Hersh
Thank you!
Questions?
Student Chairs Student chairs have tennis balls on the feet for noise + sliding. Some chairs have elastic bands for students to fidget with.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Timothy Finnegan
To my mind it's the thoughtful, dedicated teachers who care deeply about giving students the best education possible, even when resources are limited, classes over-enrolled, parents unresponsive. Beyond that, it's night and day compared to my last district with respect to the institutions deference to each individual teacher's professionalism; that is, I don't feel that I'm under a microscope. They give us room to maneuver, and I'm flourishing here because of that.
English Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
I teach English at Pinole Valley — two courses (English 2 for sophomores and ERWC for seniors) across five sections. Day to day, I’m focused on building the best curriculum I can within the realities of time, grading, and institutional guardrails. Because I’m still refining my practice, I take an experimental, exploratory approach — testing new tools, tech, and structures — while keeping an eye on evidence-based pedagogy so my experiments stay grounded. In short: I’m part tech tool dabbler, part curriculum craftsman, and part traffic controller of teenage energy.
I confide in staff I see exemplifying exceptional poise and leadership among the faculty (Both Villars, Shokrai, Brady, Frattini, Mack, Barrett, Jeanpierre, Fuko, Irving, etc.) I rely on the pvhs ela shared drive to access curriculum in apinch, though it could really use a tune up.
Will Heyward
Science Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
All of our teacher driven programs require those motivated and capable teachers and when they leave the programs tend to implode. It also puts even more pressure on those teachers who are already doing a difficult job
More people in the building. As much as I recognize that teachers need to be paid more to keep up with inflation what we also need is more adults here providing support to our students and our teachers. We lost our community outreach coordinator and we just lost our TRIO advisor. This is has been a slow but continuous grind down of the number of people who work at a school. We need more mental health workers, community outreach, enrichment services, tutoring, teacher's aids, but also custodial, CSOs, administrative staff, and administrators.
Theatre
Blackbox
Foyer
Arts Facilities
In the recent 2021 campus rennovations, new art facilities were installed. This included a new theatre, blackbox, band room, and several instrument and production materials. That being said, due to budget constraints the arts have been dying out. These facilities were not available while rennovations were being done, meaning several clubs (including the Visual Arts Academy) were lost.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Our school has lots of dedicated professionals that want to work together and make this community strong. Many of the members of our teaching team grew up here and attended this school, have kids who are attending PV or family who have graduated. Having so many educators who are rooted in the community helps us to understand the needs of our kids. We are invested in ensuring that the school is excellent.
Sarah Shokrai
Art Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
I teach art - I support students as they build skills and responsibilities, and help them to learn to express themselves
Other teachers, here. They are the people who understand the most.
Athletic Facilities
As part of a 2021 campus rennovation, new athletic facilities were installed including full football, baseball, and softball fields. There are also several tennis and basketball courts.
Sarah Shokrai
Art Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
I would like to see more support by all staff for the boundaries, rules and expectations of students and more support for new teachers from the school and district. The quality of the teachers and how supported they are has the biggest impact on students.
We are still trying to build a culture of respect. Sometimes students who are hurting from trauma do not realize that they are traumatizing others. I think that our school has been learning how to implement expectations for conduct that apply to all students. As we do this we are getting better at supporting our students who are most at need. We have so many students who need support. But they also need clear expectations and boundaries.
Football field
Basketball
Tennis
Overhead
Brita!
Student Supplies
Students have access to this station throughout the school year, and can get up and grab things whenever they need.
- Tissues
- Stapler
- Pencil Sharpener
- Hole Puncher
- Binder Paper
- Spare laptop + chargers
- Figet toys
Joel Frattini
Social Studies Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
Challenges - student ability level is all over the place, making it difficult to reach and engage the majority of students.
Attendance.
Projector
Each classroom has three sliding whiteboards and a projector system. The presentation system is wirelessly compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems.
- Some sound issues with Mac compatibiilty
- Several writing surfaces in the classroom, on 3/4 of the classroom walls
Timothy Finnegan
English Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
More sharing of expertise needed. Tutorial videos or guides on how to access and carry out the most important tasks quickly. I'd like to see more skill shares and better organization of critical information by centralizing it to one-pagers full of links, or shared drives, or even within a single document.
On the student side: apathy, disenchantment, avoidance of the discomfort attendant to cognitively demanding work. Digital pacifiers in their laps, hijacking their attention. Oh, and weaponized naivete. (ask me more about that if you like) on the staff side: overly complicated click sequences for simple procedures (like filing a referral digitally), lack of support when it comes to behavior management (I feel largely on my own here apart from the ocassional admin coming to give them "a firm talking-to"). Nominal consequences that lack tooth or claw, which only serve to perpetuate behavioral status quo.
Michael Hersh
Art Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
Implement a student dresscode.
Not enough time.
Professional Learning Facilitator and Leadership Coach for the Leadership Programs and 21CLSA. He has a track record of leading multiple school communities that were struggling to meet state standards.
Todd Irving
Todd Irving
Recent PLI grad from Cal with 14 years of experience working as a school psychologist.
Experience working with teams that help schools become WASC accredited.
Adrianna Jeanpierre
Karen Fuko
Reading Nook! Students can sit and work here during collaboration. They can also checkout books.
Julia Brady
English Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
Cohesion with the staff, restriction from the district, grading the number of papers I have
Smaller class sizes!
Andrew McKleroy
English Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
I would steer our collaborative efforts away from putting out fires and direct our energies towards creating lasting frameworks and resources that can be continually developed and shared.
Our biggest challenge is the core group of students who are simply not motivated by grades, uninterested in being here, and whose main goal is socializing or disrupting the class. Frankly, they find entertainment in chaos. This dynamic is corrosive; it makes the learning environment threatening for our shy or introverted students and completely undermines the value of collaborative work. Beyond that, we deal with extreme learner diversity. Pinole Valley serves communities ranging from highly resourced, stable homes to families dealing with serious financial hardship, homelessness (McKinney-Vento), mental health crises, and trauma. I have students who are functionally illiterate sitting right next to students who read 500-page novels for fun. It’s a massive gap to bridge in one room.
Mr. Hersh
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Art Department
School is becoming stricter on enforcing cellphone ban and truancy.
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
Art Teacher. Focus on classroom management, providing assignments that are challenging to students level. Grading work and giving feedback.
Family, friends, coworkers.
Joel Frattini
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Strengths - diverse community, a lot of teachers and staff who have been here for multiple years and are ingrained in the school culture.
Social Studies Department
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
Role
I rely on my longtime colleagues. It is helpful to be reminded that many of the difficulties I am experiencing are widespread.
Teacher - my main focus is running my classroom and instructing my students.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Will Heyward
I am likely bias but i think we have strong teacher driven programs, ASL Engineering, VAPA and our health academy
Science Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
i am a teacher and lead for the health academy
Unfortunately I rely on other over worked teachers because that is honestly all that is left in our schools. Everyone else has been slowly cut away and our community is itself being crunched by economic forces as well.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Andrew McKleroy
The strength of the school is a core group of teachers who have been here for several years who strive to contain or beat back the increasing dysfunction that is symptomatic of our district and public schools in general. Whether it’s someone like Richard Snaith fighting hard to get an shoddy HVAC system fixed, or Corrina Carlile single-handedly getting us ready for the entire WASC audit, these teachers are the true functional backbone. The teachers put out the fires, hold administrations accountable and band together to keep the wheels on this rickety bus we call public education.
English Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
I mainly rely on a few trusted colleagues. Ms. Carlile is a consistent resource, acting as my former TIP mentor, a true friend, and a reliable source of information. Joel Fratini is another strong contact, offering valuable insight and empathy in his roles as UTR rep and Social Studies Co-chair—he genuinely cares about this school and our students." However, I’ve learned to rely most heavily on myself. Teaching in a dysfunctional environment forces you to handle difficult situations in isolation and project an outward appearance of stability, even when the classroom environment is anything but controlled. Relying too much on administration for support can be counterproductive; It is my opinion that they often perceive it as a weakness, which leads to reduced trust and questioning of your competence. Teaching, in this way, is inherently performative and lonely at times. It is easy to become siloed and to avoid sharing too much about your challenges. This is a culture am trying to change in our English Dept.
I am an English 2 teacher with 5 sections of Sophomores. I co-chair the English Dept and ILT and sponsor Spartan Iink, our school newspaper, and Girls United, a club dedicated to community service. I am also a mentor in the TSAP program which supports long term subs with emergency credentials.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Julia Brady
I think we have a very positive and passionate community. The students have a lot of joy. I think the staff who work here are very interested in doing what's best for the students.
English Department
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
Role
Coworkers in my department or the health academy. The health center.
English Teacher
Baseball and softball fields
Pinole Valley High School
Katelin Chao Tharp
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Transcript
Pinole Valley High School
By Katelin & Jon
Pinole Valley High School
Pinole Valley High School
Pinole Valley High School
Leadership
Classrooms
Pinole Valley High School
Plaza
Surrounding Community
Sarah Shokrai
Will Heyward
Julia Brady
Timothy Finnegan
Staff Glows
The school’s greatest strength is its dedicated and collaborative teaching community. Teachers consistently support one another, uphold high expectations, and work together to create a positive, student-centered environment. Their shared commitment to meaningful programs and strong relationships fosters a culture of professionalism, care, and collective responsibility that benefits both students and staff.
Joel Frattini
Andrew Mcleroy
Michael Hersh
Sarah Shokrai
Will Heyward
Julia Brady
Timothy Finnegan
Staff Grows
The school’s main challenges center on time, student behavior, and uneven engagement. Teachers are working to build a stronger culture of respect and clear expectations while supporting many students facing trauma, distraction, or lack of motivation. Wide gaps in academic readiness make it difficult to meet every learner’s needs, and inconsistent consequences for misconduct strain classroom management. Staff also face heavy workloads and limited systemic support, which can undermine morale and sustainability.
Joel Frattini
Andrew Mcleroy
Michael Hersh
Thank you!
Questions?
Student Chairs Student chairs have tennis balls on the feet for noise + sliding. Some chairs have elastic bands for students to fidget with.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Timothy Finnegan
To my mind it's the thoughtful, dedicated teachers who care deeply about giving students the best education possible, even when resources are limited, classes over-enrolled, parents unresponsive. Beyond that, it's night and day compared to my last district with respect to the institutions deference to each individual teacher's professionalism; that is, I don't feel that I'm under a microscope. They give us room to maneuver, and I'm flourishing here because of that.
English Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
I teach English at Pinole Valley — two courses (English 2 for sophomores and ERWC for seniors) across five sections. Day to day, I’m focused on building the best curriculum I can within the realities of time, grading, and institutional guardrails. Because I’m still refining my practice, I take an experimental, exploratory approach — testing new tools, tech, and structures — while keeping an eye on evidence-based pedagogy so my experiments stay grounded. In short: I’m part tech tool dabbler, part curriculum craftsman, and part traffic controller of teenage energy.
I confide in staff I see exemplifying exceptional poise and leadership among the faculty (Both Villars, Shokrai, Brady, Frattini, Mack, Barrett, Jeanpierre, Fuko, Irving, etc.) I rely on the pvhs ela shared drive to access curriculum in apinch, though it could really use a tune up.
Will Heyward
Science Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
All of our teacher driven programs require those motivated and capable teachers and when they leave the programs tend to implode. It also puts even more pressure on those teachers who are already doing a difficult job
More people in the building. As much as I recognize that teachers need to be paid more to keep up with inflation what we also need is more adults here providing support to our students and our teachers. We lost our community outreach coordinator and we just lost our TRIO advisor. This is has been a slow but continuous grind down of the number of people who work at a school. We need more mental health workers, community outreach, enrichment services, tutoring, teacher's aids, but also custodial, CSOs, administrative staff, and administrators.
Theatre
Blackbox
Foyer
Arts Facilities
In the recent 2021 campus rennovations, new art facilities were installed. This included a new theatre, blackbox, band room, and several instrument and production materials. That being said, due to budget constraints the arts have been dying out. These facilities were not available while rennovations were being done, meaning several clubs (including the Visual Arts Academy) were lost.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Our school has lots of dedicated professionals that want to work together and make this community strong. Many of the members of our teaching team grew up here and attended this school, have kids who are attending PV or family who have graduated. Having so many educators who are rooted in the community helps us to understand the needs of our kids. We are invested in ensuring that the school is excellent.
Sarah Shokrai
Art Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
I teach art - I support students as they build skills and responsibilities, and help them to learn to express themselves
Other teachers, here. They are the people who understand the most.
Athletic Facilities
As part of a 2021 campus rennovation, new athletic facilities were installed including full football, baseball, and softball fields. There are also several tennis and basketball courts.
Sarah Shokrai
Art Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
I would like to see more support by all staff for the boundaries, rules and expectations of students and more support for new teachers from the school and district. The quality of the teachers and how supported they are has the biggest impact on students.
We are still trying to build a culture of respect. Sometimes students who are hurting from trauma do not realize that they are traumatizing others. I think that our school has been learning how to implement expectations for conduct that apply to all students. As we do this we are getting better at supporting our students who are most at need. We have so many students who need support. But they also need clear expectations and boundaries.
Football field
Basketball
Tennis
Overhead
Brita!
Student Supplies
Students have access to this station throughout the school year, and can get up and grab things whenever they need.
Joel Frattini
Social Studies Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
Challenges - student ability level is all over the place, making it difficult to reach and engage the majority of students.
Attendance.
Projector
Each classroom has three sliding whiteboards and a projector system. The presentation system is wirelessly compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems.
Timothy Finnegan
English Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
More sharing of expertise needed. Tutorial videos or guides on how to access and carry out the most important tasks quickly. I'd like to see more skill shares and better organization of critical information by centralizing it to one-pagers full of links, or shared drives, or even within a single document.
On the student side: apathy, disenchantment, avoidance of the discomfort attendant to cognitively demanding work. Digital pacifiers in their laps, hijacking their attention. Oh, and weaponized naivete. (ask me more about that if you like) on the staff side: overly complicated click sequences for simple procedures (like filing a referral digitally), lack of support when it comes to behavior management (I feel largely on my own here apart from the ocassional admin coming to give them "a firm talking-to"). Nominal consequences that lack tooth or claw, which only serve to perpetuate behavioral status quo.
Michael Hersh
Art Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
Implement a student dresscode.
Not enough time.
Professional Learning Facilitator and Leadership Coach for the Leadership Programs and 21CLSA. He has a track record of leading multiple school communities that were struggling to meet state standards.
Todd Irving
Todd Irving
Recent PLI grad from Cal with 14 years of experience working as a school psychologist.
Experience working with teams that help schools become WASC accredited.
Adrianna Jeanpierre
Karen Fuko
Reading Nook! Students can sit and work here during collaboration. They can also checkout books.
Julia Brady
English Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
Cohesion with the staff, restriction from the district, grading the number of papers I have
Smaller class sizes!
Andrew McKleroy
English Department
If you could improve one thing about how the school works, what would it be?
What are the biggest challenges or pain points you experience in your role?
I would steer our collaborative efforts away from putting out fires and direct our energies towards creating lasting frameworks and resources that can be continually developed and shared.
Our biggest challenge is the core group of students who are simply not motivated by grades, uninterested in being here, and whose main goal is socializing or disrupting the class. Frankly, they find entertainment in chaos. This dynamic is corrosive; it makes the learning environment threatening for our shy or introverted students and completely undermines the value of collaborative work. Beyond that, we deal with extreme learner diversity. Pinole Valley serves communities ranging from highly resourced, stable homes to families dealing with serious financial hardship, homelessness (McKinney-Vento), mental health crises, and trauma. I have students who are functionally illiterate sitting right next to students who read 500-page novels for fun. It’s a massive gap to bridge in one room.
Mr. Hersh
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Art Department
School is becoming stricter on enforcing cellphone ban and truancy.
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
Art Teacher. Focus on classroom management, providing assignments that are challenging to students level. Grading work and giving feedback.
Family, friends, coworkers.
Joel Frattini
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Strengths - diverse community, a lot of teachers and staff who have been here for multiple years and are ingrained in the school culture.
Social Studies Department
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
Role
I rely on my longtime colleagues. It is helpful to be reminded that many of the difficulties I am experiencing are widespread.
Teacher - my main focus is running my classroom and instructing my students.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Will Heyward
I am likely bias but i think we have strong teacher driven programs, ASL Engineering, VAPA and our health academy
Science Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
i am a teacher and lead for the health academy
Unfortunately I rely on other over worked teachers because that is honestly all that is left in our schools. Everyone else has been slowly cut away and our community is itself being crunched by economic forces as well.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Andrew McKleroy
The strength of the school is a core group of teachers who have been here for several years who strive to contain or beat back the increasing dysfunction that is symptomatic of our district and public schools in general. Whether it’s someone like Richard Snaith fighting hard to get an shoddy HVAC system fixed, or Corrina Carlile single-handedly getting us ready for the entire WASC audit, these teachers are the true functional backbone. The teachers put out the fires, hold administrations accountable and band together to keep the wheels on this rickety bus we call public education.
English Department
Role
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
I mainly rely on a few trusted colleagues. Ms. Carlile is a consistent resource, acting as my former TIP mentor, a true friend, and a reliable source of information. Joel Fratini is another strong contact, offering valuable insight and empathy in his roles as UTR rep and Social Studies Co-chair—he genuinely cares about this school and our students." However, I’ve learned to rely most heavily on myself. Teaching in a dysfunctional environment forces you to handle difficult situations in isolation and project an outward appearance of stability, even when the classroom environment is anything but controlled. Relying too much on administration for support can be counterproductive; It is my opinion that they often perceive it as a weakness, which leads to reduced trust and questioning of your competence. Teaching, in this way, is inherently performative and lonely at times. It is easy to become siloed and to avoid sharing too much about your challenges. This is a culture am trying to change in our English Dept.
I am an English 2 teacher with 5 sections of Sophomores. I co-chair the English Dept and ILT and sponsor Spartan Iink, our school newspaper, and Girls United, a club dedicated to community service. I am also a mentor in the TSAP program which supports long term subs with emergency credentials.
What do you see as the strengths of this school and community that support students and staff?
Julia Brady
I think we have a very positive and passionate community. The students have a lot of joy. I think the staff who work here are very interested in doing what's best for the students.
English Department
What resources, people, or community assets do you rely on when things get tough?
Role
Coworkers in my department or the health academy. The health center.
English Teacher
Baseball and softball fields