It's become so successful that increasingly students are choosing it not because of brushes with the law but because they want a more hands-on program that will give them the support they couldn't get in a traditional high school.
On a clear Friday a week before Thanksgiving, Julieta Mendoza-Alba, 17, gave a tour of a small home that she and fellow students in the Rancho Cielo construction team had spent the last nine months building. She beamed as she explained the air circulation system that kept the home's air healthy, the modular building techniques that made it possible to easily move it, the cork exterior that provides insulation both fire and water resistance.
She was part of the Rancho Cielo team that in October entered the house they'd designed and built into the Orange County Sustainability Decathlon. The task was to build a net-zero model home that was both a solution to the state’s housing crisis and would mitigate against climate change.
They went up against 13 other schools, all universities, including Brigham Young, Virginia Tech and the engineering program at the University of California, Irvine. The Rancho Cielo team spent 23 days in Orange County, with Mendoza as one of their spokespeople, leading tours and answering questions.
They were the smallest school, the only high school and the program with the least resources.
In a stunning upset, Rancho Cielo won.
Mendoza grinned as she described it. Her local high school hadn't been a place she could thrive. “It was just sitting in class, there wasn’t the support I needed,” she said.
The Ranch led to a transformation. She’s gone from being shy and disconnected from school to excited about her future. “I learned to use a nail gun, to hang drywall, to paint,” she said, running her hand over the home’s exterior wall. She now wants to go into construction management when she graduates.
“I have a friend taking carpentry at Alvarez," she said of her old high school. "They just build birdhouses. We build real houses.”
Organizers went looking for kids to help
Monterey County is about an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco. Green and verdant in some places, brown and dry in others, the county is a study in contrasts. The Monterey Peninsula along the coast is home to some of the wealthiest areas in America, including the legendary Pebble Beach Golf Links, Carmel-By-The-Sea where Clint Eastwood was once mayor and the town of Monterey, home of the acclaimed Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Inland is the Salinas Valley, a rich agricultural area known as "The Salad Bowl of America," where more than 60% of the nation’s leaf lettuce is grown and 48% of its broccoli.
A vegetable garden at Rancho Cielo Youth Campus in Salinas, Calif.
Inland areas are much poorer. There is violence and gang activity, and in 2008 Salinas became known as the youth homicide capital of America. The year 2015 was even worse.
"I stopped counting at 26 murders," said Chris Devers, Rancho Cielo CEO. He had worked for years in Monterey County's Office of Education's alternative programs. "We had to do something."
To help turn things around, the Ranch went looking for the kids who needed the program most instead of waiting for them to come to the Ranch.
“County jail, foster programs, homeless, juvenile detention facilities. I kept saying, ‘Hey, you got a kid for us?’” said Joe DeRuosi, director of the school’s College, Career and Technical program. “We were looking for the worst of the worst.”
The students' behavior "isn’t who they are, it’s a product of the environments they’ve been in and the things they’re going through," DeRuosi said. Every child arrives with socio-emotional challenges. The staff's job is to turn things around and their zeal is apparent.
"When we get them," DeRuosi said, "they become the best of the best.”
The Ranch does its work using a unique funding model that allows for extras public schools can't always afford and training opportunities that are remarkable, said Steyer, who's spent her career working with abused and at-risk children.
"It's a public-private partnership in a way that we don't see enough of," she said. "They have restaurant and hotel owners, local businesses and local politicians, everyone coming together on behalf of these young people. It’s across the aisle politically."
The school provides intensive support and intervention to help students heal and succeed. It’s the kind of support middle-class families might take for granted but for many of these students it’s new.
If they need clothes, they get clothes. If they need transportation, they get a bus pass. If they need help with math or English or any other subject, they get it. Many students didn't have the money to pay for drivers ed, which isn't typically offered in California high schools anymore. Rancho Cielo created a driving instruction program and last year drove 38 students to the DMV where they got their licenses.
Enrichment programs teach everything from horseback riding to bike riding, along with the chance to work with the school's beekeeper or fish in one of its ponds.
Students also learn to write a resume, a cover letter and how to interview for a job, bringing in dozens of business leaders to run mock interviews so they can test their skills.
"It's cool," said Omar Amezola, 17. He doesn't mind the "upstairs" classes, which are more academic because there's so much time in the shops. "In my other school, it was all reading and writing. Here the teachers are more chill, you don't have to stay in your seat all day, you can do things that are hands-on."
