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 MESSAGE From Our CEO
Dear friends,
In April, we welcomed every student who wanted to return back to in-person learning. What a joy it was to see so many more students back on campus — laughing, running, playing, and learning in classrooms and on the playground again.
The months leading up to that milestone were a testament to the strength of this team and the communities we work with. First and foremost, our parents brought their steadfast power to supporting their children’s learning at home, while many of them were also grappling with food, housing, and employment insecurity caused by the pandemic. Our parent coaching team walked alongside our parents to be there when parents needed them most, whether that meant accessing critical resources or validating the frustration, stress, grief, fear, anger and everything in between that came up last year.
Day after day, our incredible teachers made remote learning engaging, fun, and impactful; others courageously taught our preschoolers and a small group of high-need students in person before we fully re-opened in the spring; and a number of volunteers supported our students with 1:1 mentorship and enrichment activities. In response, our resilient students invested their own energy and enthusiasm into learning. It paid off in a way that exceeded what we thought was possible in this incredibly challenging context: by the end of last school year, the vast majority of our elementary school students saw a year or more of growth in literacy.
When it came time to return more fully in-person in East Palo Alto, our school team stepped up to welcome students back safely. Alongside comprehensive COVID safety measures, teachers held intentional space for students to rebuild relationships, reset, and heal from a challenging year.
Meanwhile, our team was hard at work piloting our Bridge to Preschool program in San Francisco and pivoting to delivering remote early childhood and parent wellness programming in Hayward. More on these exciting new programs below.
There is so much to be grateful for and so much to be excited about as I look ahead to the coming year. Preschool opening in Hayward. Expanding preschool readiness programming in San Francisco. Opening fourth (fourth!) grade in East Palo Alto. Thank you for being a partner in this work. This past year has shown us the power of a different approach — one that is more holistic, more child-centered, and more family-centered — in ways we never could have anticipated. We are grateful you believe in the potential of our students and our innovative school model as much as we do!
Onward,
Courtney Garcia, CEO, The Primary School
PROGRESS ON our Strategic Priorities
In 2020, we celebrated our fourth year of operation and set new milestones to inform our next stage of growth. These took shape around three strategic priorities: deepening our impact in East Palo Alto, extending our impact through partners and through our second program site in Hayward, and building a strong foundation of people and financial support to support these efforts. Despite the wrench COVID threw into our initial plans, we still took big steps within each of these priority areas.
Deepen Impact AND Learning in East Palo Alto
We delivered a remote birth to three program, school program, and parent wellness program. When we went back in-person, we leveraged our existing health integration practices to return safely.
Extend Impact AND Learning Through Partners
We launched our Bridge to Preschool program in San Francisco and at-home early childhood programming and health and wellness support with Kaiser Permanente in Hayward.
Build a High-Impact, Equity-Centered Organization
We identified ways that our organization can better live out our antiracism commitments, including launching our DEI Taskforce and publishing our first DEI plan.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 1
Deepen Impact & Learning in East Palo Alto
The vast majority of our students grew their reading skills during the pandemic.
When the pandemic hit, we knew that we couldn’t just stem learning loss this year; students needed to keep making learning gains if they were going to reach the critical third grade reading milestone. Our goal became ensuring that our elementary school students emerged from the pandemic as stronger readers.
Through the hard work of our school team, students, and parents, the vast majority of our students made one year or more of growth by the end of the school year. Reaching this milestone was also due to the innovation of our school leadership team: rather than seeing remote learning as an obstacle, they adapted our literacy program to use it to their advantage. Meeting over Zoom meant that there was more flexibility to offer individual and small group time, need-based support, and extra reading practice with volunteer mentors. All three strategies paid off.
79% of elementary school students saw a year or more of growth in their reading skills.
Learning to Read During COVID-19
Our staff’s innovative approaches ensured that our elementary school students made progress in learning to read during a pandemic.
Creating a Remote Enrichment Program
Enrichment programming was a critical component to helping students stay connected to the joy of learning this year.
We were one of the first schools to re-open in-person learning in our community.
In April, we were overjoyed to welcome every student who wanted to return to in-person learning back to campus. This was no small feat: along with months of thoughtful planning and hard work by our incredible team, we demonstrated from October to April via pilot classrooms that in-person learning could be done safely for all grade levels even during the surge of the pandemic. We recognize that we had the support of pre-existing health care partnerships and financial resources to make this possible for our students, something that many other schools across the country didn’t have access to. However, our students, families, and staff also had the added benefit of already being familiar with healthy behaviors and routines: proper hand washing, for example, was second nature to all of our students, who had been practicing at home and in the classroom since they were three years old.
100% of students washed their hands, and on average, 74% of students in each classroom washed their hands for more than 10 seconds.
Outside of school, our partners at Ravenswood Family Health Center did a phenomenal job supporting the unique health needs of families through the pandemic. Because of their partnership, the vast majority of our students were able to still have their annual well child visit and our staff, families, and students gained unique opportunities to ask health professionals questions about the virus to learn how to best stay safe.
80%+
of students came back to school in-person in the spring
100%
of teachers reported that they feel safe teaching in person
94%
of students had a well child visit; 85% had a preventative dental visit
99%
of students are up to date on their immunizations
Health and Education Can Work Better Together
Our Health Associate, Tami Alade, reflects on the strengths of health integration in schools and how it could address historic inequalities underscored by COVID.
Committing to Whole Family Health Pre-COVID
Our Medical Director, Dr. Ryan Padrez, shares how a pre-COVID commitment to whole family health helped establish a safe post-COVID in-person environment.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE
Healing after a Difficult Year
Our school leaders intentionally created space for students and teachers alike to reset, process, and heal when they returned to in-person learning.
We supported parent wellness through stress management strategies and access to critical resources, thanks to strong parent relationships with Wellness Coaches and other parents.
As parents rose to the challenges of the pandemic — navigating new food, housing, and employment needs and supporting their children’s learning from home, all while keeping their families safe and healthy — our Parent Wellness team was there, offering partnership and support along the way. Accessing critical resources was just one piece of the puzzle: throughout the summer and fall, coaches connected parents to everything from free and low-cost WiFi, to employment opportunities, to diapers. We were endlessly grateful for the steadfast support of so many community partners, who made it possible to meet such a wide set of needs.
The other larger and more intangible piece of the puzzle was fostering a support network around parents, so parents weren’t alone in meeting these unprecedented challenges. That meant regular one-on-one remote coaching sessions to discuss stress management strategies and develop self-driven action plans to deal with the high stress caused by the pandemic; virtual peer Parent Circle groups; and drive-through Community Nights at school. All of this contributed to parents reporting a higher sense of resilience and social support connection, two strong protective factors against adverse childhood experiences.
83% of parents reported a high level of resilience (compared to 77% in pre-COVID spring 2019); 73% of parents reported a high level of social support and connection (up from 69% in pre-COVID spring 2019).
634
referrals were made to access childcare, diapers, mortgage and rent assistance, and other community resources
87%
of parents completed a monthly coaching call on average
80%
of parents attended a monthly peer parent group
Supporting Parent Wellbeing During COVID
We helped parents keep and nourish the relationships, resilience, and social support networks to successfully navigate adversity during the pandemic.
Maintaining Whole Family Wellness Virtually
Our whole child, whole family approach took on a new challenge this year as we explored what it meant to support wellness virtually.
Our youngest learners made significant gains in their language skills.
Now in its fourth year, our Bridge to Preschool program has been a core part of our work with children under the age of three. One of the ways that Bridge to Preschool has been successful is by helping children with identified needs build their early language skills in the months leading up to preschool.
Of course, COVID prevented us from being able to practice with parents and their children in an in-person environment, so our team had to get creative. We partnered with LENA to give parents recording devices which measure the number of words children hear and the number of conversational turns children participate in. Along with the recorders, our team hosted virtual parent groups to provide strategies for extending everyday experiences like book reading, increasing the quality of verbal interactions, following their child’s interests, and giving children opportunities to engage and respond. In addition to the weekly parent groups, parents also had an opportunity to debrief each of their recordings with the facilitator. Parents could see evidence of their growth, share strategies they implemented, and reflect on their progress over time.
“Our reading experience before was dry, but now it is really rich. With the group, I’ve been able to manage time better, having 30 mins of uninterrupted time each day is something we just do everyday now. Actually putting the strategies to practice has been amazing!” – LUCERO, BRIDGE TO PRESCHOOL PARENT
Parents and children both made incredible progress: parents, particularly parents who had a low word count before the program, significantly increased their word count and conversational turn-taking opportunities, and children accelerated their expressive and receptive vocabulary skill growth.
The average percentile for conversational turns increased to 64 by the end of the program (up from 45 before the program began), which means parents were creating more opportunities for children to participate in conversations.
73% of parents were consistently extending conversations during book reading by commenting about feelings, explaining why, and relating to their child’s experience (compared to 15% before the program began).
67% of children were meeting age-level vocabulary benchmarks after Bridge to Preschool (compared to 25% before the program began).
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 2
Extend Learning and Impact Through Partners
We offered remote programming for our first cohort of families in Hayward.
COVID-19 prevented us from opening preschool in Hayward last fall, so we quickly pivoted to offer virtual parent wellness coaching and a new at-home early childhood program for our first cohort of parents and students. At the beginning of the school year, we partnered with families to co-design a monthly activity kit that included high quality picture books in English and Spanish to support regular reading routines at home. In addition, each monthly kit included a variety of other hands-on literacy activities and was supplemented with a monthly teacher Zoom call.
“From my personal experience, raising kids can be a daunting task without the right support system, and The Primary School’s parent wellness coaches have been one of my strongest advocates. They keep reminding me that we, the parents, matter, and we must take care of ourselves before being able to provide good care for our children.” – QUYNH, PARENT
Alongside the early childhood program, we hosted our signature Foundations parent wellness group sessions in a virtual format. Parents gathered in groups of 10 on Zoom for 90 minutes every week to build community and discuss topics like stress management, routine building, and strategies for partnering with your child’s doctor. Foundations is book-ended with an individualized parent goal setting session, where each parent sits down with their coach to form a personal goal around one aspect of wellness. After Foundations, parents began connecting with their parent wellness coach for monthly coaching calls to check in on their goal, discuss barriers, and identify solutions.
CO-DESIGNING AT-HOME PROGRAMS WITH PARENTS
We co-designed an at-home early childhood program in close partnership with parents to meet their unique needs this year.
86%
of parents on average reported feeling less stressed after attending a Foundations parent wellness group
80%+
of parents reported doing most or all of the activities each month, and most did the activities more than once
50%+
of parents reported reading more books with their child since they began receiving the home learning materials
We deepened our partnership with Kaiser Permanente to support families through the pandemic.
Kaiser Permanente, our health partner for our new school program site in Hayward, jumped into action to support our Hayward families’ unique health needs this year, from conducting outreach to families with hesitancy about getting the COVID vaccine, to working with our team on the developmental screening process, to inviting families to participate in their health education programs.
During the course of the year, one integral piece of work was building out communication pathways between the school and medical home. Even without an in-person school, we built ways to support our students’ health needs through regular case management meetings between Kaiser’s local Sleepy Hollow clinic pediatrics team and our staff. We were able to support families in resolving a variety of situations, such as managing asthma, addressing developmental delays, and ensuring that every child has a strong connection to their medical home.
We also continued our health program design work in advance of our August 2021 in-person school opening. Working together with a diverse team across Kaiser Permanente including pediatrics, mental health, social work, health education, and more, we set priorities on how to integrate across programs and began the implementation planning needed to launch key initiatives. Some early projects will include building school and clinic communication protocols and multi-disciplinary team meeting structures to enhance care coordination, designating KP staff to appropriate roles to extend medical home supports in a replicable approach at the school site, health access initiatives such as vision screening and follow-up or vaccine clinics, an on-site telehealth hub for families to use when needed to reduce burden of accessing health care for families, and resources to foster healthy behaviors in the school. We are excited to see how our health programming evolves with our partnership with Kaiser Permanente when our in-person preschool site opens in September.
We launched our Bridge to Preschool program in San Francisco.
Over the summer, we launched a pilot of our Bridge to Preschool program in San Francisco, focusing on developing social-emotional learning skills, and welcomed our first cohort of children and families to participate. This wouldn’t have been possible without our partners: the Children’s Council of San Francisco, Wu Yee Children’s Services, and San Francisco Unified School District’s Early Education Department.
Because of the pandemic, we couldn’t host the program fully in person; instead, we held weekly parent discussion sessions virtually and offered optional, outdoor parent-child play sessions. During these discussions, parents learned about topics such as the Brain State Model, the importance of structure and routine, how to follow your child’s lead, and strategies to increase cooperation and embrace and label emotions. We also modeled what a preschool classroom routine might look like, including the exploration of different activity stations and participating in community circles and big body movements. Families responded with incredibly positive feedback, and we look forward to piloting the next iteration of the San Francisco program with our partners this coming year.
“COVID really messed up our routines, but every day is getting better as we focus on building more routines. I really see how important repetition is. I just really love this group!”
Bridge to Preschool Parent
We worked with Sesame Workshop to expand social emotional learning resources and offer a hybrid version of our curriculum.
Over the past several years, we’ve been partnering with Sesame Workshop to create an innovative early childhood curriculum that integrates and enhances early language and literacy development through social emotional learning. While learning about their community and healthy habits, children also model and learn skills such as empathy, kindness, and self-management. So far, the curriculum is being used at nine school sites, including schools within the Menlo Park Unified School District, Public Prep Network, FirstStepNYC, and our flagship school in East Palo Alto.
This year, because of the pandemic, we designed a virtual version of the curriculum with Sesame Workshop and continued learning from and collaborating with our core partner schools. We also identified a group of academic advisors to review the curriculum and provide feedback so we can continue to iterate and improve.
STRATEGIC PRIORITY 3
Build a High-Impact, Equity-Centered Organization
We took steps to begin instilling stronger DEI practices across our organization.
Last summer, we aligned around four Anti-Racism Commitments and identified concrete actions to more deeply instill anti-racism and anti-discriminatory practices across our programs, team culture, and advocacy work. One of the core parts of that work was establishing an internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Taskforce, which was formed in Fall 2020, and releasing a multi-year DEI Plan.
Our DEI Plan was developed after external consultants conducted an in-depth equity audit of our organization. The consultants then shared a report that identified strengths, gaps and proposed next steps. From there, the DEI Taskforce identified 1-2 priorities within each of our anti-racism pillars and then partnered with our leadership team to create a plan to address them over the next three years.
Two parents were elected to our East Palo Alto Board of Directors.
Last Spring, we added two parent representative seats to our East Palo Alto Board of Directors to better ensure that parent voice is helping guide the strategic direction of our East Palo Alto site. Seven parents courageously stepped up as candidates in an election open to parents; each of them shared their powerful reasons for why they wanted to join the Board in the video below.
65% of families voted in the election, and the majority elected two parents to serve on the Board: Natalie Avelar and Rosalinda Fesili. We are honored to have Natalie’s and Rosalinda’s leadership on our Board to represent parent voice.
We made progress on our public funding benchmarks.
When we started designing our programs, we looked closely at what was possible under public school constraints, mapped public funding streams, and incorporated those factors into our model. We have designed a model that at scale would rely primarily on public funds, though at this particular moment, we are engaged in a balancing act. We intentionally launched our flagship school in East Palo Alto as a private school to have more freedom to design new programs and invest more heavily in areas that are too often casualties of the underfunded public education system; however, this meant sacrificing the ability to tap into many of the funding sources available to public schools.
In order to access this funding and learn what is possible in a model more embedded in public systems, we are committed to opening any additional sites as public schools. This process has already begun: in Fall 2021, our second site in Hayward is opening its doors to preschoolers under a California State Preschool Program contract, and we plan to grow that site into a public elementary school.
THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS
We are grateful to the community of 35 individuals and foundations who have helped plant the seeds from the very beginning and those who have joined us recently as we gear up for a big chapter ahead.
LOOKING AHEAD
The upcoming 2021-2022 school year will round out the third and final year in our Strategic Plan. We will continue to focus on delivering excellent programs in our core communities of East Palo Alto and Hayward, working with partners to extend our learning and impact, and building a solid, equity-centered organization.
JOIN US
VOLUNTEER
Volunteer with us to support our students in East Palo Alto.
ADVISE
Share your expertise or connect with potential partners.
HELP US GROW
Support our students and families by investing in our direct service programs or funding R&D.
2020-2021 PARTNERS
NATIONAL PARTNERS
Frontiers of Innovation/Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University,
LENA Foundation
REGIONAL PARTNERS
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
