Merced Union High School District Transforms Public Education

Fearlessly addressing issues to make the student experience more powerful and relevant than it is today

Every year, Alan Peterson, superintendent of Merced Union High School District (MUHSD), sits down for lunch with chosen senior high school students from all the district’s various high school campuses. He values their insights on what changes they would like to see if their siblings were to enroll at MUHSD. This feedback is then transformed by the district’s Board of Trustees into goals for actual implementation moving forward.

“We’re not afraid to try new things and push the edges of public education, which needs to change in a lot of areas,” says Peterson, who introduced structural reforms to MUHSD when he took on its leadership in 2015. “Each of our students has distinct dreams and circumstances, and we have to react to deal with those. We’ve changed what we could to make education more relevant.”

MUHSD is among the few school districts that started requiring CTE (Career Technical Education), which provides students with relevant industry and academic skills. The district is also the first to sign up with the UC (University of California) Merced Automatic Admission Program, which gives priority to MUHSD students coming to UC Merced. To support these initiatives, MUHSD has increased its class periods from six to seven per day.

“Our society changes every year, but schools are famous for being decades behind society; that just can’t happen anymore,” Peterson says. “High school is foundational, and it is where we hold our kids’ hands and walk them through. We’ve come in with new requirements, goals, and outcomes to help our students overcome the barriers and challenges they face in life.”

Learn more about Merced Union High School District at muhsd.org.