Dear families, friends, and benefactors,

We hope the summer months are treating you all well and that you’re able to take some time to recharge ahead of the coming academic year. After a thorough, 18-month process, we are thrilled to share our School’s first formal strategic plan, beginning with a very important announcement:

As our school continues to grow, we are reaching more audiences through more media and networks than ever before. We launched our first digital marketing campaign last summer, and results throughout the year were exceptional; our engagement rates outpaced nearly every benchmark for our area, which reflects the fact that our mission and curriculum very much stand out in the L.A. educational landscape and appeal to a broad array of families. Our social media presence is growing, we are listed on dozens of guides to L.A. independent schools, major employers and real estate agents in the neighborhood continue to point new families in our direction, our job postings are circulated through more outlets and professional networks than ever before, and our web traffic continues to reach all-time highs year over year. Now more than ever, then, the first impression we make on folks—and the immediate impact of our name and visual identity—is critical.

Our Episcopal identity has always been—and will continue to be—fundamental to our values and our ethos. It is the Episcopal tradition that informs our dedication to growing a uniquely diverse, pluralistic community. As we continue to expand our outreach throughout the city and across the country—both in an effort to grow enrollment and recruit mission-aligned employees—the reality is that the word “Episcopal” in our proper name often raises some issues regarding the immediate legibility of our school, our community, and our mission with folks who are encountering us for the the first time, and this can reduce engagement. Equally important, many foundations—as a matter of policy—do not work with parochial schools or organizations with formal religious affiliations, and while our school is of course neither of those things, the name on our letterhead nonetheless presents a speed bump as we work to grow institutional partnerships to support our unique commitment to tuition assistance.

This conundrum—the Episcopal tradition tells us to intentionally grow a “big tent” community, and yet the word ‘Episcopal’ is a bit of a mystery to the average person—is not at all new, and many independent Episcopal schools like ours have already come to understand the importance of operating under a name that clearly projects a welcoming, inclusive ethos. This conundrum is also not new to our own community, and it was reflected in the data we gathered from our students, families, and staff through the strategic planning process. There is broad enthusiasm for our Episcopal values vis à vis the student experience, the formation of young people in our community. This is a school where students come not just to acquire a certain set of skills and knowledge, but to learn who they are and what they care about. Still, many folks admit that the ‘Episcopal’ label and packaging may have been a hangup when first learning about or becoming acclimated to the School. There will always be some form of generative tension between the tradition we draw from and our commitment to steward a community across the boundaries that traditionally divide our society, and this is not something we shy away from. But the ways that our Episcopal identity connects to the most vital aspects of our school’s purpose and vision—beneath the title and the ornamentation—shouldn’t be short circuited by a word, a name, or any other superficial elements.

With all this in mind, we are excited to announce that we have officially updated the name of our school to “The School of Los Angeles,” leaning into the ethos of our urban campus, our commitment to treat the city as classroom, focus on experiential learning, and engage our community through service work—in short, to truly be a school of the city. In line with our Episcopal identity, we will continue to foreground our commitment to a vibrant, diverse student body that is representative of Los Angeles, as well as a grounded education rooted in the neighborhoods we come from.

In the coming weeks and months, you will see us updating all of our digital properties and publications, including the launch of a brand new website and the production of our first full lookbook. Our new name allows us to retain and enhance the visual identity and brand awareness that we’ve already cultivated and that holds substantial value in the secondary school ecosystem; there will be clear continuity for folks who know and respect the work we’re doing, including, especially, our feeder schools and colleges and universities.

You’ll see much of the rationale behind this updated name reflected in the broader strategic plan below—including reviving and expanding the use of our city as a classroom, dedicating resources toward professional development in experiential learning, continuing to push curricular innovation, and empowering every member of our community to speak about our unique mission and purpose with a clear and common language. You will also see a distinct commitment to institutional advancement—developing the necessary campus resources to scale enrollment, and growing a truly sustainable financial model to support our programming.

This is both an exciting and a critical time in our School’s evolution. As we wrap our 10th Anniversary Year and step confidently into our second decade, we are also transitioning from what many would call an “early startup stage” into our “growth stage.” This is the moment when organizations commit substantial administrative resources toward growing their endeavors both before they have established and in order to establish the revenue streams necessary to fund those resources. Our faculty and administration is the largest and most experienced it has ever been, and we are well positioned to grow our enrollment toward our 350-student target—the ideal size for our academic, co-curricular, and tuition assistance programs. This will require expanding or shifting our current real estate holdings within the next five years, which will require a substantial fundraising campaign, and the Board continues to field and pursue real estate opportunities in the neighborhood.

Net revenue will again set a high water mark this fiscal year, and, thanks to the incredible largesse of our friends and benefactors, we own our campus outright—which is fairly uncommon for a school our age, and which provides us some flexibility as we grow. While it’s true that our School is in its strongest financial position to date thanks to our real estate holdings, we have grown throughout our early startup stage and navigated the headwinds of COVID only by continually fundraising well beyond our estimated capacity. Now, in order to expand our campus and grow enrollment to a scale that makes our programming truly sustainable, we will need to accelerate our fundraising efforts beyond anything we’ve accomplished to date—to grow and diversify our circle of committed philanthropists—and we will continue to rely on the generosity and goodwill of our community and its many networks. The next two to three years, especially, will be critical in establishing the fundraising momentum we need within our own community in order to be able to confidently expand our external network of major benefactors. We are up for this challenge, and our School’s mission is more than worth it. 

Over the past year, as part of the strategic planning process, we have surveyed our core constituent groups multiple times—current families, faculty and staff, alumni, administration and Board members—and conducted in-person focus groups with student leaders, the Parent Grade Council, and monolingual Spanish-speaking parents and caregivers. Our consultants compiled the data into a single dashboard, and the strategic planning committee met bimonthly to digest everything, analyze trends, and build a comprehensive strategic plan for our School based on the collective reflections and wisdom of our community. We are excited to share it with you below.

Jeannette Zanipatin
Chair, Board of Trustees

Dr. Kenneth Rodgers, Jr.
President & Head of School

Our mission is what we are made of, and it has always provided the foundation, the animating force, that has propelled the growth of our unlikely and inspiring project—to bring together a community of students that reflects the vibrant diversity of our city, to cultivate a space that nurtures souls and minds, allows students to form uncommon bonds, develop an understanding of who they are and what they care about, and hone the tools they will need to make a difference in the world.

The School of Los Angeles has always attracted mission-driven students, families, faculty, and benefactors. Our mission is the kernel that unites all of us. As the School has evolved dramatically during its early years—growing from a handful of rented classrooms to a substantial urban campus, navigating our current political and economic circumstances as well as a global pandemic—all the specific, concrete ways our mission is made manifest in our programming have also evolved. Growth, change, experimentation, iterative improvement—these, too, have been fundamental to our shared project. At the outset of almost every year of the School’s first decade, roughly 30–40% of our student body was brand new to our community.

With so much rapid growth, particularly for an institution working in unique ways against the grain of the private school ecosystem, it can sometimes feel challenging to maintain a shared understanding, a shared language, of all the ways our mission connects directly to our daily practices. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a major obstacle to some of our most important programming—the use of our city as a classroom, our dedication to sustained, pedagogical engagement with our broader community through service work and reflection. For a school that was only seven years old at the outset of the pandemic, a two-year hiatus had an outsized impact on our ability to feel and articulate what it is we do and why we do it—though it also provided us a new context in which to innovate.

Now we have an opportunity once again to engage our city—our home, our namesake—and continue unifying around our common purpose. We will celebrate all the ways our mission connects to the daily accomplishments of our students, and we will empower all members of our community to uplift that mission and share it with others.

We will:

• Conduct a review of our mission statement to ensure it reflects the School’s current ethos and continues to provide a path for future growth.

• Promote a common language that empowers all constituents to communicate and uplift our mission and values.

• Strengthen and celebrate connections between a) our stated goals and values and b) our programming and daily practices.

We will care for and grow the School’s community—a community in which all members share a sense of purpose, seek opportunities to collaborate, and find joy in the student experience.

Bringing together an uncommonly diverse community has always been about cultivating lifelong—and life-changing—relationships. Everything we do, ultimately, is in service of the student experience. A more connected community—of students, parents and caregivers, faculty and staff, alumni, and benefactors—provides both a more nurturing and a more dynamic environment for intellectual, social, and spiritual formation. 

The people who make the School of Los Angeles what it is—those who participate directly in its daily life, and those in our broader community who continue to make that life possible—come from all walks and from all corners of our sprawling (and gridlocked) city. The role of our School, then, is to make unlikely connections and transformative relationships more and more possible every day, to hold open the time and the space that strong communities require—through celebration, stewardship, and collective study. 

Through the years, we have hosted brunches, barbecues, and coffees on campus, invited guest artists to present to our community, or to facilitate bilingual poetry workshops for our students, parents, and caregivers. We have incorporated live, simultaneous translation into every major event and developed programming for our monolingual Spanish-speaking families, facilitated grade-level picnics at parks in the neighborhood and special events at nearby venues. We have experimented with after-school seminars for parents and caregivers, guest lecture series, and have invited families to participate in our service and justice programming.

With this groundwork, we will focus on expanding unique programming for our families, faculty, and friends to share their wide array of talents and experiences with one another and with our students. Part of the work of nurturing a vibrant community is also to provide a window into daily campus life through which parents, caregivers, and benefactors can look and see the accomplishments and joy of our students. Moving forward we will be increasing our formal communications through the website, printed publications, email campaigns, and social media in order to share out and celebrate our students’ remarkable endeavors on campus and out in the city.

We will:

• Continue to cultivate a community in which students develop an understanding of who they are and what they value.

• Take time to celebrate and share student work and accomplishments.

• Expand resources to promote every student’s mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.

• Develop systems in which faculty and staff are empowered to contribute meaningfully to the growth of the School.

• Further involve families, alumni, friends, and benefactors in the communal life of the School, creating opportunities for all constituents to share their talents and experiences.

• Create an environment in which families from all backgrounds feel comfortable and are eager to engage with the School.

This is both an exciting and a pivotal moment in the development of the School of Los Angeles. After navigating the headwinds of the pandemic and celebrating our 10th Anniversary Year, we have stepped confidently into our second decade, transitioning from our early startup stage into a critical growth stage.

We are still young, still experimenting and innovating—but we now have an established track record, a proven product. Our seniors continue to matriculate to an incredible diversity of undergraduate institutions, including some of the most highly selective research universities, liberal arts colleges, and visual and performing arts programs in the world—and our students receive, on average, over $130,000 in scholarships toward their undergraduate educations. Moreover, our oldest alumni are out in the world making an impact in myriad fields—education, politics, community organizing, the sciences, and the arts.

Our task, then, is to scale our operations, grow enrollment, and steward the long-term financial sustainability of our programming. We will continue to expand our campus resources, and this will require accelerating our advancement and fundraising efforts even beyond what we have already accomplished, nurturing our culture of giving, and expanding our circle of major benefactors. We are ready for this challenge, and our mission is more than worth it.

We will: 

• Diversify revenue sources and develop an endowment to ensure the School’s long-term commitment to its tuition assistance program.

• Leverage the involvement of all constituent groups in the communal life of the School to further develop a culture of philanthropy. 

• Partner with mission-aligned organizations, businesses, and foundations to advance the programming, profile, and fundraising capabilities of the School.

• Develop a robust grant research, writing, and reporting program.

• Procure and develop facilities that are aligned to our programming and support the teaching and learning needs of our students and faculty.