Earlier this year, Shelton Yip attended a graduation ceremony at a juvenile detention center.

As a trustee on the Yolo County Board of Education, Yip had pushed for improvements to schools that serve incarcerated youth. Now, he was getting to meet the students who have brighter futures now thanks to education.

“That’s what makes it all worth it,” he said. “[I told the students,] you know, this is only the beginning of your journey. And the one thing that no one can take away from you is your education.”

Since retiring as Napa County SELPA director in 2016, Yip has continued to serve marginalized youth, including foster youth and students struggling with mental health. This dedicated service to young people and his selfless desire to improve his community have earned him ACSA’s Robert E. Kelly Award for Outstanding Community Service, which is given each year to retired individuals who help advance the high quality of public education through volunteer work.

“Shelton Yip has no rival,” said Sam Neustadt, in a nomination letter for the award. “Honestly, he works harder as a retiree than when he was gainfully employed. He is better characterized as ‘re-wired,’ rather than ‘retired.’”

Back when he was a student at UC Davis studying Asian American history, Yip didn’t think he’d become an educator. He wanted to be a community organizer. He said he went into teaching just to survive — he was a teen parent and had to provide for his young daughter. Yip took jobs as a special education teacher and counselor in Dixon USD just to make ends meet.

But it wasn’t long before greater opportunities presented themselves. He got his first administrative job after an unfortunate accident where his continuation school’s principal was badly injured in a plane crash. The superintendent who tapped Yip for the job had two requests: get credentialed and join ACSA.

“There was no plan of action for me” he said. “When a door opens, think about it. If you want to walk through the door, you walk through the door. I must be blessed or something.

“Or I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack,” he continues, with his characteristic jovial laugh.

Throughout his education career, Yip encountered marginalized youth who he took under his wing. Gang-affiliated youth. Runaways. Youth exposed to family abuse. It’s a theme that has continued into several of his post-retirement pursuits.

“The types of kids that I was seeing, they were kids who were marginalized. People gave up on them,” he said. “I didn’t give up on them. We worked through it.”

In 2012, Yip was elected to the Yolo County Board of Education. As a trustee, Yip has pushed for the juvenile hall and alternative schools run by the county to be accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, giving these students access to a quality education.

For almost 10 years, Yip has also been on the advisory council for Breaking Barriers, a statewide collaborative of leaders in child-serving organizations that bridges gaps to provide better mental health services for youth. In Yolo County, that effort is known as Roadmap to the Future, a long-term plan that has brought together local leaders to better allocate resources. Yip also helps organize an annual Breaking Barriers symposium where young people and leaders can share ideas on how to improve mental health services.

While Breaking Barriers impacts young people statewide, Yip has also directly impacted the lives of a handful of foster kids in Yolo County as a court-appointed special advocate. This volunteer role requires him to attend IEP meetings and court proceedings to represent the best interests of foster youth, supporting them through some of the most difficult years of their life.

Yip can relate to some of these students’ struggles. He didn’t go to kindergarten — he was working at the family’s two businesses: a Chinese bakery and a shoe store. He learned to count back change to customers at the age of 4. His father died when Yip was 8 years old, leaving his mom to provide for four kids.

“How did I become who I became? I have to go back to Mom. Mom was strong. She was ahead of her time,” Yip said of his mother, who earned an 8th grade diploma at a time when Asian women didn’t do that. “I’m on the shy side of things. But because of all the years of having to take care of things, I had to overcome that.”

Another of Yip’s roles is serving as president of ACSA’s Retirement Committee, where he has been a tireless champion for all administrators. Yip sits on a national task force working to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — two federal laws that unfairly reduce or eliminate Social Security income for public sector employees. He also devotes time to ACSA’s Legislative Action Days and with the California School Boards Association, representing his vantage point as an elected official who was once a school administrator.

“He is actually more influential than ever in retirement. Lobbyists are amazed at his access to key staffers they regard as their currency in trade,” Neustadt writes of Yip. “Influence is a relationship business, and he is all about relationships.”

Indeed, Yip has developed many relationships after a 42-year career in education. Former colleagues regularly text him to say hi or ask for advice. He stops to chat with community members on morning walks through his neighborhood. He stays connected with a handful of former students on Facebook and enjoys seeing what they’ve made of their lives.

Yip says it’s the reason he gets up in the morning. “That’s the driving part of it,” he said, “I just really do enjoy people.”