Veronica Coates is the Assistant Superintendent for Tehama County SELPA in rural Northern California. She  has lived in the northstate all of her life, growing up in the far north east part of California.  She is an advocate for ensuring equity for students living in rural areas and strongly believes that your zip code should not determine your access to services. She is a leader in ensuring the full continuum of services in her local area. She also currently serves as the Executive Director for the Pathways to Partnership, Special Education Resource Lead (SERL) project in the California State System of Support. Her origin in education is as a school psychologist. She is also a member of the board of directors of the California Mental Health Advocates for Children and Youth (CMHACY). 

Veronica's foundational approach centers around preserving relationships between LEAs and Families to ensure the common goal of servicing students is always the primary focus in this work. Veronica worked to secure 550 million dollars in the California Budget to fund Dispute Prevention and Learning Recovery efforts due to the impacts of the pandemic for Students with Disabilities. She was a strong supporter and advocate for the creation of a California lead for ADR to build the continuum for dispute prevention and resolution in special education and seeing this come to fruition is truly a dream come true, professionally. Locally, she led her SELPA in creating a continuum of ADR, specifically in hiring one of the first neutral directors of ADR for a SELPA in the state of California. She is certified in the Straus Institute, Pepperdine School of Law's Mediating the Litigated Case Program.

She is a member of the Executive Committee for the SELPA Administrators of California. The Association is a group of committed members of SELPAs across the state providing advocacy efforts and technical assistance locally, statewide, and nationally. 

Locally, she leads the Tehama County Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) as well as all regionalized special education services operated by the Tehama County Department of Education. She feels immense responsibility and honor in serving the educators, families, disability community, but most of all the students of Tehama County, to ensure their rights are realized. 

Veronica's passion outside of work is family, most of all, her husband Jesse and their son Holden. Veronica and Jesse spend the majority of their time watching Holden engage in his passion for sports on the basketball court and swim deck, when they are not out adventuring with their Mini Aussie, Buck. 

Please do not hesitate to contact Veronica related to all things special education, equity, access and advocacy.