THE PRIMARY SCHOOL
OUR HOPE
We are creating a new school model that brings together all of the adults in a child’s life, including parents, educators, and medical and mental health providers, starting from a very early age. Our aim is that children and families most impacted by systemic poverty and racism receive the support they deserve to be well, learn, and thrive.
A Letter From Our CEO
Dear friends,
This past year underscored the vast inequities and racism that pervade our public systems. The disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on people of color and the unrelenting violence against Black Americans have renewed our commitment to fight for more just and equitable outcomes for children and families in our communities and across the country.
In the face of converging crises, parents, teachers, parent coaches, health care workers, mental health specialists, early childhood educators, community partners, and so many others spoke up and showed up for our students. Not just to help them learn, but to help them feel safe in a world that does not always feel safe, especially right now. I have been regularly struck by how lucky I am to work alongside such a strong, tenacious team of parents and staff during this very uncertain time, and I am honored to be able to include some of their voices in our Annual Report.
We know that COVID-19 will continue to unearth new challenges and inequities in the months to come. However, we believe that the strong relationships we hold with students, families, and each other will guide us through these challenges together.
We will keep doing everything in our power to build a community where every child, parent, and staff member feels safe and valued, and where they can work, learn, live, and thrive without fear.
With gratitude,
Courtney Garcia
CEO, The Primary School
PROGRESS ON our Strategic Priorities
Our first four years were intentionally focused on building a strong flagship school in East Palo Alto and working with a small number of partners. This year, we identified three strategic priorities that would guide our next stage of growth.
Deepen Impact AND Learning in East Palo Alto
With the new challenges presented by COVID-19, we doubled down on our commitment to deliver excellence in East Palo Alto. We pivoted not just lesson plans but our whole-child, whole-family program to remote, including our work with parents and our youngest learners.
Extend Impact AND Learning Through Partners
We took our first big steps to extend impact and learning beyond East Palo Alto through our partnership with Kaiser Permanente in Hayward. We also worked with strategic partners in early childhood to test components of our model in different environments.
Build a High-Impact, Equity-Centered Organization
We renewed our commitment to equity across the organization through the public release of our Anti-Racism Commitments. We also grew our relationships with new funding partners who are helping to make this vision a reality.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 1
Deepen Impact and Learning in East Palo Alto
We prepared toddlers for success in preschool.
Early childhood development is a core piece of our program. This year, we continued to offer comprehensive, whole child support for toddlers. Preschool readiness groups, social emotional learning playgroups, language development sessions, and developmental delay screenings and referrals to support services are all key factors for setting children up for success in school.
“[Because of The Primary School], my daughter is talking way more, she’s putting three words together, she’s making sentences. If she doesn’t find the word for it, she keeps trying until she gets it.”
– ALEXIA, PARENT
95
children participated in birth to three programming
100%
of children were screened for developmental delays
94%
of parents followed up when referred to specialty services
70+
more nouns were being used on average by children at the end of our Bridge to Preschool program
Developing Early Language Skills with Bridge to Preschool
We hosted small groups of two and three year olds with identified language delays to help them develop important early language skills and prepare for success in preschool. Read this blog post for outcomes and to hear from one of the parents who participated.
Improving Coordination with Early Childhood Providers
We hosted a panel discussion with our partners at the Little Blue House, where we run our birth-to-three program, to explore how better coordinated services could help more children in East Palo Alto prepare for preschool and kindergarten.
We grew to second grade and launched remote learning.
In East Palo Alto, our school has been growing by one grade each year since we opened our doors in 2016. This year, we grew to offer preschool through second grade. Like all schools in the Bay Area, we shifted to remote learning in mid-March, launching a remote learning YouTube channel and moving lessons to SeeSaw, an online learning platform. Despite the challenges and bumps along the road, we saw an immediate high level of student engagement, particularly with our kindergarten through second grade students. This is in large part due to the strong relationships we hold with students and the perseverance of teachers, school administration staff, and parent coaches who made sure families had access to WiFi and devices, trained parents to use remote learning tools, shared enrichment activities, and found innovative ways to maintain a sense of community with students.
“
It makes me feel a little more grateful about this world, I’m not able to go face to face but I at least get to talk to my friends on the computer, phone, or iPad. I’m just grateful that I even get to talk to my friends.”
– STUDENT
98%
of kindergarten through second grade students accessed and participated in the remote learning platform
97%
of preschoolers attended at least one live session with their classmates
2,600
views per week were generated on our YouTube remote learning channel
100+
posts were made by second graders in the first week on the platform
Parent Perspective: Being a Parent and aspiring Entrepreneur during covid-19
Alicia, one of our founding parents, shares how she balanced supporting her two children with remote learning and a regular job while also moving forward on her goal to open a new self-owned business.
Our COVID-19 Remote Learning Plan: Relationships First
Our Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer Meredith Liu shares her reflections on remote learning at the end of last year and how we plan to meet the learning challenges of COVID this year.
Measuring Preschool Language Development
In the fall, we used LENA Grow’s recorders and measurement tools in our preschool classrooms to get a deeper understanding of each student’s progress on language development. Read more on LENA’s blog.
We supported students’ mental, physical, and emotional health.
Cross-team support of the mental, physical, and emotional health of our students and parents is always core to what we do, but this year really brought that commitment to the forefront. Our integrated school nurse, Sandra Nova, who also works at Ravenswood Family Health Center (our core partner clinic in East Palo Alto), worked across teams to manage over 60 cases of students with complex needs this year. She connected the dots between pediatricians, teachers, and specialists, and provided extra support for students and their families to follow recommendations and navigate complex systems.
Our health team also focused on sleep, nutrition, and physical activity. For nutrition, we published a community cookbook, launched a weekly fresh fruit and veggie distribution, and strengthened relationships with local nutrition partners. For sleep, we developed a collection of audiobooks to promote sleep hygiene and emphasize the importance of modeling healthy practices at home as well as at school.
When COVID-19 hit, our team came up with several innovative ways to continue supporting health and wellbeing from a distance: Sandra helped answer questions about the pandemic and facilitated testing for concerned families at Ravenswood Family Health Center and other sites; Jordan Magold, our behavioral health manager, and Jenn Torres, our parent wellness coach, launched a podcast to discuss ways to manage stress during COVID-19; a number of staff and parents stepped up to host weekly Move with Me sessions on Zoom, leading Zumba, dance, and other fun exercise classes; and several staff members shared cooking, yoga, and exercise videos on our Remote Learning YouTube Channel.
“I have found throughout the years that the language used at the school and medical homes can be very different. Having someone that ‘speaks’ both languages can help to facilitate communication.”
– Sandra Nova, Integrated School Nurse
100%
of students completed their immunizations
97%
of all students completed an annual well child visit
92%
of students were enrolled in our Virtual Dental Home program
66
student cases were managed by our integrated school nurse
Partner Spotlight: Cooking at Home with Pilot Light
We partnered with Pilot Light to share easy, nutritious recipes so families could try them at home. In this video (watch above), Evalett, one of our students, and her sister demonstrate how to make a banana chocolate smoothie.
Case Study: Addressing Complex Needs with Integrated Team Support
When a student was showing some mental health concerns, his teacher, parents, and parent coach teamed up with our integrated school nurse and special education team to access mental health services and develop a personalized learning plan.
We partnered with parents to support their wellbeing.
Building deep, trusting relationships with and among parents is at the heart of our parent wellness coaching work. Because of those relationships, we continued to see very high attendance rates at our monthly Parent Circles and positive feedback about our coaching team, all of which contribute to greater parent resilience in the face of challenges.
Of course, this year presented a challenge that no one was prepared for. Our relationships with families and strong connections with community partners helped us move quickly to address student and family needs. Our team of parent wellness coaches called parents every week to check in and help families connect to concrete resources. And in the face of very real challenges, parents tapped into their own resilience and power to support themselves, their families, and each other.
“Being a parent wellness coach during COVID-19 has had its challenges and rewards. It has been great to connect with families and hear how it is they are doing during this uncertain time and provide information around community resources and supports.”
– Lupe Muñoz, Parent Wellness Coach
95%
of parents attended a monthly parent circle on average before shelter-in-place
92%
of parents reported that they are likely or very likely to talk to their coach for support on their own wellbeing
80%
of our families connected with parent wellness coaches on average during shelter in place
850
referrals were made to community resources from March to June
Parent Perspective: Learning Self-Care from Our Parent Coaches
Lovely, proud parent of an incoming pre-kindergartener, shares what she loves about being a mom and what she’s learned about self-care after working with her parent coach.
How Schools Can Support Parent Wellbeing During COVID-19
Our Director of Parent Program, Valentina Helo-Villegas, and Co-Founder, Meredith Liu, wrote this article on EdSurge about how schools can support parent wellbeing alongside child wellbeing during COVID-19.
Parent Perspective: Setting Manageable Goals During COVID-19
Karla shares how she and her family have been meeting the challenges of COVID-19, and how her parent coach helped support her during this turbulent time.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 2
Extend Impact and Learning Through Partners
We started programming in Hayward.
In early 2020, we were proud to start programming in Hayward in partnership with Kaiser Permanente, parents, and the Hayward community. This program site has the dual benefit of delivering high-quality services to children and their families and testing our approach with a new health care delivery model that is one of the country’s few examples of a fully integrated managed system of health care.
Because of COVID-19, the program began with remote parent wellness coaching and support. In the fall, we will continue to support families remotely with parent wellness programming and early childhood educational resources. We plan to open in-person preschool in fall 2021.
✔ 45 parents & students enrolled
✔ 20 vital service referrals provided
✔ 89% of students completed developmental screenings
✔ 50% of families participated in fall program design
“I’m excited that The Primary School is putting together a program for parents and children to keep them learning and to hopefully keep our mental health and overall physical health as best as we can through this shelter-in-place period.”
We collaborated with Wu Yee Children’s Services to strengthen SEL supports and family engagement.
In our second year of partnership with Wu Yee Children’s Services, San Francisco’s largest Head Start provider, we expanded our multi-tiered mental health pilot to a second Wu Yee program site. Aditi, the SEL coach at Kirkwood, is a clinician with a background in dance movement therapy. Says one teacher of her support, “The socio-emotional support [in my classroom] has really improved this year with Aditi taking time to come into the classroom. It’s much clearer to me what I should do to support a child.”
We also supported the Wu Yee team as they redesigned their Family Advocate role, sharing our practices and principles in parent wellness coaching through focus groups, observations, and staff shadowing. Several Family Advocates have reported how they have shifted their approach to working with parents; instead of doing tasks on parents’ behalf, Family Advocates are now encouraging parents to take responsibility for their goals and learn through the process, which in turn leads to greater ability to access resources on their own in the future. Building upon this learning, we will host our first-ever Family Advocate Institute in the fall to strengthen their new approach to partnering with and building relationships with parents.
“Before families would say, ‘I want to find new housing’ and I would do everything to fill out applications for them. Now I say, ‘Okay come sit with me, I’m going to show you all the websites that I know of, where to find housing, [and] how to apply.’”
We partnered with Sesame Workshop to expand our unique curriculum.
We are partnering with Sesame Workshop to develop an early childhood curriculum that builds language and early literacy skills by embedding critical social emotional learning competencies (SEL). During the 2019-2020 school year, we continued to use each of the two levels of the Curriculum at our school in East Palo Alto and piloted it at four new school sites: three at the Public Prep Network and one at FirstStepNYC. This version of the Curriculum reflected findings from our ongoing formative and participatory research. When COVID-19 hit, the Sesame Workshop team converted the curriculum into downloadable PDFs along with enhanced SEL and family supports for remote learning. Each school program then incorporated the materials into their overall remote learning plan and schedule.
✔ 100% of teachers agreed the curriculum engaged children very well or extremely well in books and reading
✔ 94% of teachers agree the curriculum enhanced their confidence in their ability to teach SEL
“I’m seeing a deepening and enriching of the teachers’ beliefs for what children can do, and increased advocacy from teachers for what they believe children should have access to. I believe this is because of the Sesame units.”
Sesame Partnership Timeline
Team-Based Care in Early Childhood Mental Health in San Francisco
We’ve been working with Wu Yee Children’s Services to create a team-based support system for mental health. We spoke with Wu Yee’s new Social Emotional Learning Coach about her work.
Elmo Visits The Primary School
We had a very special guest visit our school and meet with our students to learn more about our collaboration with Sesame Workshop and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 3
Build a High-Impact, Equity-Centered Organization
We formed our anti-racism commitments.
Our full team recommited to building a high-impact, equity-centered organization as well an anti-racist one. We know that it will require action - not just words - that make these commitments real.
To start, our leaders engaged in an all-day retreat focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion; we submitted a public comment to speak out against the Trump administration’s proposal to significantly limit protections for asylum seekers; and we acted on the recommendation from some of our colleagues to cover DACA renewal fees for our employees.
Black Lives Matter. Our Students’ Lives Matter.
After the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbury, our teachers produced this video of solidarity to state that our students’ lives matter. Period.
Renewing Our Anti-Racist Commitments
The continued violence against Black Americans and people of color led us to commit to specific, actionable steps to become an anti-racist organization.
Celebrating Black Heritage and Community
For Black History Month, we asked staff and parents to share how they see our school values of Excellence, Courage, Community, Growth, and Soul reflected in Black heritage and community.
We grew our relationships with new funding partners.
We are combining private and public funding to build a model that can one day be replicated in public systems. We are fortunate to have the ongoing lead investment of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. As we make critical investments to build our program and partnerships, we have been growing our relationships with new funding partners. We are very grateful to the individuals and foundations who have joined us in this work. These funding partners share our belief that investing early in holistic supports can have a major impact with children, families, and communities. Together, we are building a model that has real and tangible impact in our local communities, while testing components of that model with other partners to pave the way for impact on a larger scale.
Achieving Broader Impact
As we grow the base of support for this work, we will continue leveraging significant public funding, pursuing new public funding streams, and advocating for more public funding for high-quality early childhood programs, parents supports, and more. Already, we are starting to access public funding through our preschool and nutrition programs in East Palo Alto. We will continue to leverage other public resources by partnering with existing systems and seeking out opportunities to align and integrate (not duplicate) services.
THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS
We are thankful to new individuals and foundations who have invested in our work during this first year of our strategic plan alongside the anchoring commitment from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
LOOKING AHEAD
This year, we will stay focused on our three strategic priorities, leaning on our deep relationships with families, our trauma-informed and whole child philosophy, and our resilient, innovative staff and communities to navigate an unpredictable COVID-19 environment. Below, you’ll find our plans for the 2020-2021 school year.
Deepen Learning and Impact in East Palo Alto
Plan for both remote and onsite program models and ensure a safe, healthy campus once we are able to return to full, onsite learning
Continue to drive growth in academic, social-emotional, and health outcomes
Support parent wellbeing and lift up parent voice and power
Extend Learning and Impact with Partners
Focus on virtual preschool readiness tools and engage in iterative design sprints to respond to family needs
Advance our partnership with Kaiser Permanente and our Parent Advisors to move toward our 2021 preschool launch
Actively share remote learning resources and learnings with other schools and early childhood programs
Continue working with core partners to pilot our Bridge to Preschool, parent program, and Sesame Workshop curriculum in new learning environments
Build a High-Impact, Equity-Centered Organization
Recruit and support a diverse, innovative, and excellent team to drive meaningful impact
Act on anti-racism commitments while developing a written, multi-year DEI plan
Raise significant new philanthropy beyond CZI’s ongoing investment to fund our growth
JOIN US
VOLUNTEER
Volunteer with us to support our students in East Palo Alto.
Advise
Share your expertise or connect us with potential partners.
Help Us Grow
Support our students and families by investing in our direct service programs or funding R&D.
OUR PARTNERS
NATIONAL PARTNERS
Frontiers of Innovation/Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University,
LENA Foundation
REGIONAL PARTNERS
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
WHOLE CHILD COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Codman Academy, Momentous Institute, Monument Academy, Oyler School, Rales Center and KIPP, Harmony, Wediko School