California Heritage YouthBuild Academy

“Adults have to keep that delicate balance when making a meaningful connection with teenagers. Adults need to stay young-at-heart, while at the same time recognizing that teenagers are longing to be treated as adults.”

This is one piece of wisdom Ryan Franco has gleaned in his role as principal at California Heritage YouthBuild Academy (CHYBA). Much of Ryan’s empathy for his students comes from spending a significant portion of his Shasta County youth in poverty with a high number of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). Through hard work and perseverance, he was able to heal and pursue a successful career and he knows that this background has equipped him to inspire youth to break generational cycles.

CHYBA students gain marketable construction skills as they learn to build framing for wooden structures.

At CHYBA hard work and perseverance rebuilds lives

CHYBA’s motto is “Rebuilding young lives, Rebuilding the community” and the school’s dedicated staff is making this happen—one youth at a time and one construction project at a time. A hiring criterium for each new staff member is that they truly want to help kids and to also uphold CHYBA’s mission; one main part of which is to teach students the skills for building structures from start to finish. Building projects include Redding’s Micro Shelter project at St. James Lutheran and, more recently, a home build in Shasta Lake City. Soon students will have the chance to help build CHYBA’s new facility in Redding.

Ryan says, “Some of our students have been homeless themselves and being involved in the Micro Shelter projects is an active way to show them that hard work and perseverance makes transformation possible.” Like Ryan, these students can be the first generation in their family to graduate high school, attend college or establish a trade.

The school was launched 13 years ago from future CHYBA Executive Director Cathy Taylor’s table. Several educational leaders were discussing the epidemic of disenfranchised youth in the area. Those youth who didn’t fit the traditional education model still deserved a quality education. In starting CHYBA, they wanted to offer these youth tangible skills such as construction and culinary arts.

A personal journey from poverty to public service

Ryan’s own educational journey has been anything but traditional. “I was dealt bad cards in life and, I believed unless I was somehow reincarnated into a different person, I would always be a failure.” Having a daughter at age 15 could have kept Ryan from breaking free of those feelings of failure but then he met his future wife, Shara.She insisted that Ryan work as a mason with her father and motivated him to take intentional steps to parent his daughter well. Ryan started taking college classes at age 25. Twelve years later, he had six degrees including an MBA. Shara was by his side in every class and also came away with six degrees including an MBA. She and Ryan are now parents of eight children, six of whom are adopted.

Ryan’s first job after college as a family dynamic group counselor and student support aide at a group home provided him an opportunity to discover a way to help youth break the cycles of poverty, child abuse and neglect. “I led a one-room school filled with probationary students from Sacramento and the Bay Area,” Ryan says. “Under my direction, we achieved a record number of graduations for a probationary school in Shasta County in our first year.”

This experience solidified Ryan’s passion for working with youth, guiding them to see that through hard work and perseverance, they could achieve their dreams. His vision is to provide stability and direction for youth before they continue a destructive path. CHYBA is the perfect platform to continue the mission of helping the youth of Shasta County transform their lives. “Our amazing, dedicated staff at CHYBA and our active collaboration with multiple professionals makes this a true team effort,” Ryan says.

Learn more about how CHYBA is guiding students aged 16-24 to earn high school diplomas, develop positive relationships and gain the leadership and technical skills necessary for post-secondary education, successful careers and a productive life at chybacharter.com.