North Star Summit Award Winner: Peninsula Union School District
This award celebrates a school or district that is boldly navigating the path toward becoming a thriving community school. With care, collaboration, and persistence, they are climbing toward the summit and embracing the full scope of the model. They are demonstrating what’s possible when students, families, educators, and partners move forward together.
Just west of Eureka, California, on a narrow, windswept peninsula, lies the unincorporated community of Samoa, a place reachable only by bridge or by a small, winding road from Arcata to the north. This resilient community is growing steadily, redefining themselves. Once a lumber community, Samoa is now showing its strength every day, despite being isolated and under-resourced. Samoa has no grocery stores, no clinics, and few of the essentials most communities rely on. Yet despite these challenges, the Peninsula Union School District stands as a beacon of resilience, and is the 2025 recipient of North Star’s Summit Award.
At the helm is Raven Coit, who serves as both Principal and Superintendent of the single-school district. Samoa’s population began to decline when the timber industry faded in the 1980s. Today, it faces the compounded challenges of geographic isolation, economic hardship, and limited access to food and transportation. "I’m the principal and the superintendent and the substitute for any job on campus," Coit shares, reflecting the hands-on, all-in nature of leadership in a rural district.
Yet rather than being discouraged, Coit and her team have transformed adversity into action.
At the heart of this effort is the district’s Wellness Center, which provides a vital lifeline to both students and their families. Monthly Family Nights bring the community together over shared meals, child care, and expert-led discussions tailored to local needs. After a recent earthquake and tsunami warning, the school invited a representative from the National Weather Service to lead a tsunami education session, especially important in Samoa, which sits squarely in the Ring of Fire near the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
The school also ensures every child receives breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack daily, served in group settings to eliminate any stigma. School supplies and essentials like jackets and shoes are freely available. These supports aren’t extras: they’re a foundation. And they’re working. Since adopting this whole-child approach, academic scores have steadily improved.
Principal Coit works closely with Vince Yorton, their Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) acting as their Community School Planning Manager, whose role is to build bridges between school staff, families, and community organizations. By meeting regularly with all stakeholders to assess the community's needs and their strengths, Vince co-creates Peninsula’s community school strategy in a way that is exactly what their school community needs.
The North Star Summit Award was given to Peninsula’s incredible team of educators in recognition of this seamless integration of the community school model, a model that isn’t treated as a standalone initiative, but is infused into every moment of the school day.
Felicia Doherty, Program Manager with the Humboldt County Office of Education, nominated Peninsula Union for the award calling attention to the comprehensive integration of the community school model across the entire school day infusing community school values throughout their operations.
In a place where there are few physical gathering spaces, Peninsula Union has become much more than a school. It is a community hub, a safe haven, and a launchpad for possibility, proof that with vision and heart, even the most remote places can become centers of hope for students and families.
Septmeber 2025