OUR MISSION
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 & BOARD CHAIR
Dear Community,
As we bring our eighth school year to a close and welcome our students and families into this new school year, it is a time to both look back — reflecting on our greatest accomplishments and challenges from the past year — and to look forward, applying our learnings from the past to inform our work in the year ahead. In each of the three key pillars of our model, we have pushed our work deeper and had new insights that we are eager to share with you and will continue to guide our way forward.
Start Early: We began supporting students even earlier (as young as one year) and learned about the specific needs of families during this critical developmental stage.
Partner with Parents: We continued to focus on parent wellbeing, with particular emphasis on what it looks like to build deep and authentic connections among parents.
Integrate Services: We deepened partnerships with our health partners (Kaiser Permanente, Ravenswood Family Health Network and Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center) and together looked closely at how we can streamline referral processes to make it easier for students and families to access care.
Through all our efforts, we are deeply committed to building a model that delivers immediate value to our current students and families AND which has the potential for a lasting impact on our educational system. We are grateful for your partnership and support as we pursue this bold vision.
JAIME KIDD
CEO
JEAN-CLAUDE BRIZARD
Board Chair
Theory of Change
All families want their children to access opportunities and achieve their potential and all families rely on health and education systems to help them achieve this vision. At the same time, many families are facing economic hardship, instability, and other stressful and traumatic experiences. Because of systemic racism, communities of color are disproportionately affected by these challenges. Yet our country’s systems struggle to sufficiently address these inequities. Despite having similar goals, schools, social service agencies, early childhood programs, and health care systems — often lack the connection, capacity, or scope to support families' interrelated challenges.
We are creating a comprehensive approach that integrates services and builds family well-being throughout a child’s development, so children can lead healthy, happy, and productive lives.
We begin working with families with children as young as twelve months of age and take a two-generational approach to support children’s growth and development. Parents learn how to provide learning opportunities in the home environment and we provide robust universal services to identify and address needs early.
We believe that when parents are well, children can thrive. We collaborate with parents by sharing new knowledge and skills to engage in their child’s development, health, and education. Families set goals related to both parent and child growth, and we work with them to achieve their goals through coaching, information, and linkages to community resources.
Our unique model unites health, education, and family support, building a multi-disciplinary team and holistic system of care to address the whole child. We partner with health care and other community-based providers and use data and communication to ensure families receive the personalized support and services they need.
START EARLY
This year, we expanded access to Early Family Foundations in our existing communities, improved how we worked with families to promote children’s language and social-emotional development, and continued growing our learning partnerships.
Early Family Foundations
We expanded Early Family Foundations at our East Palo Alto and East Bay sites to increase the length of our whole-family focused programming from one year to two years and began supporting families with children as young as 12 months. Starting our partnership with families even earlier allows us to better support children and parents at a critical stage in their child’s development.
In East Palo Alto, our Bridge to Preschool program supports building positive relationships between parents and their children. Children explore the classroom environment with the comfort and familiarity of their caregiver, leading to autonomy and confidence, while parents build their capacity to extend learning beyond the classroom. This included parents reporting growth in their understanding of how to promote their child’s social-emotional skills. After participating in this experience alongside their child, a majority of parents noticed positive changes in themselves and their child.
86%
of parents noticed positive changes in their child
86%
of parents noticed positive changes in themselves
90%
of parents feel more connected to their child
76%
of parents report using more positive language and and naming positive behaviors
Supporting Early Language Development
During the Early Family Foundations program, families participate in our Connections series, an eight week, group-based program designed to help parents learn concrete strategies to promote their children’s language development and have the space to discuss and reflect on these strategies with other parents. We partner with LENA to provide families with recording devices to track the growth of their language use with their children, based on the strategies they have learned.
“I began to really enjoy and look forward to the weekly group meetings because it was an opportunity to reflect on my parenting and to share experiences with my peers.”
Watch Lydia’s testimonial video:
Along with the group sessions, our team meets with each family multiple times throughout Connections to review personalized data on how their home language environment is impacting their child’s language development. Families learn about areas of strength and growth, as well as tips and strategies for supporting their child. For families whose data initially showed lower levels of talk, we saw an increase in adult word count and conversational turns*, both of which are predictive for the success of a child’s continued language development. By starting early and closely partnering with families, we’re able to cooperatively build a foundation for children’s language skills.
*Adult Word Count refers to the number of words adults use in a recording period and Conversational Turns refers to the amount of back and forth conversational interactions between child and adult in a recording period.
NOTE: Data represents families who began programming below the 50th percentile during the 2023–24 school year
Learning Partnership With Wu Yee Children’s Services
We continued to partner with Wu Yee Children’s Services in San Francisco to offer Bridge to Preschool to their families. In the second year of our partnership, Wu Yee saw a 40% increase from last year in the number of families participating in Bridge to Preschool. Families at the Bayview Community Hub loved being able to experience the classroom setting with their children and build a support network with other parents, and our partnership thrived as we collaborated on refining what it means to bring part of The Primary School's model to a new community. We learned more about what families need, how to build a strong implementation team, and what the future of Bridge to Preschool might look like.
“This program created a beautiful, tight-knit community of families. We loved this aspect, as well as all of the tools and frameworks for parenting that we learned.”
– WU YEE PARENT
Watch the Video: Early Family Foundations
Through our Early Family Foundations program, we begin working with families when their child is as young as 12 months to support the growth and wellbeing of the whole family.
Supporting A Strong Start for Children with Disabilities
Nerissa Broughton, Senior Manager of 2-Gen Programming, participated in New America’s series of roundtable discussions on early intervention services for children with special needs. Read the blog post below for a summary of themes, challenges, and potential solutions inspired by these discussions.
Sharing Bridge to Preschool at American Public Health Association Annual Conference
In November, Nerissa Broughton presented a poster on the outcomes of our Bridge to Preschool program at the American Public Health Association annual conference in Atlanta.
PARTNER WITH PARENTS
Our Parent Wellness Coaching program is built on the understanding that a strong peer network positively impacts parent wellness, which in turn leads to benefits for child health, success, and well-being. In the past year, we strengthened connection and community among our families, facilitated access to community-based resources, and piloted our Parent Wellness Coaching program in another community.
Increased Sense of Connection and Community
Creating strong networks of support is a protective factor that promotes overall wellbeing, allowing parents to be more present for their children. The COVID-19 pandemic affected our communities in many ways, particularly our ability to build relationships and create connections. Our data is showing us that by making intentional efforts to center joy, celebrate growth, and create opportunities for genuine connection during each of our wellness coaching group sessions (“Parent Circles”), our sense of community is returning to pre-pandemic levels.
91%
of parents reported that they enjoy attending Parent Circles
90%
of parents reported that Parent Circles are “definitely” a good use of their time
83%
of parents increased their connectedness with other parents in their Parent Circle
Access To Community Resources
Our Parent Wellness Coaching program partners with parents to create safe and stable homes. We are not simply referring families to concrete resources, we actively make connections and offer support to navigate those resources while also helping parents build the skills they need to continue providing for their families. When families participate in Parent Wellness Coaching for two or more years, they are 22% more likely to report feeling confident in accessing concrete resources than parents who have participated for one year. As parents continue to engage in coaching, they strengthen their agency and ability to navigate systems independently and increase their household stability.
Parent Wellness Coaching With Felton Institute
We completed the first year of a learning partnership with Felton Institute in San Francisco, collaborating to offer a cohort of young families an opportunity to experience our Parent Wellness Coaching program. Building the pilot together with Felton’s staff gave us the opportunity to push ourselves on how we can adapt to new contexts, maintain flexibility in meeting families where they are, and provide space to have the conversations that parents find most relevant to them. It was inspiring to see how this partnership helped foster a new parent community, and we're excited to incorporate these learnings into our ongoing two-generational programming in East Palo Alto and East Bay.
“Through the Foundations program, one of the greatest achievements I saw in the parents that I work with was that they were able to start thinking about their own wellbeing and goals for their future. So much of their focus is on parenting their children, so Foundations was a great opportunity for them to plan for their own futures, identify their motivations, and begin to advocate for themselves.” – ANDRES CEPEDA, MA, Child Development & Parenting Specialist at Felton Institute
Watch the video: Parent Wellness Coaching
At the heart of our Parent Wellness Coaching program is the belief that when a parent is well, a child can thrive. In our video about the program, hear from parents, coaches, and program design staff on why parent wellbeing is foundational to child learning and development.
How Trauma-Informed Models Support Learning For All
Tryevion Foster, Senior Manager of Design & Dissemination, spoke with our partners at Transcend Education about how our Parent Wellness Coaching program facilitates community building among parents, supporting trauma processing and growth at a transformational pace.
Sharing Our Approach To Collaboration at SXSW EDU
Sharing with and learning from other innovators is a key part of working towards the goal of transformational impact for children and families. Carson Cook, Senior Manager of Partnerships & Dissemination, participated in a Roundtable Session at SXSW EDU on how to effectively scale whole-child support services along with Philip Fisher of Stanford Graduate School of Education and Dawn Kurtz of Los Angeles Education Partnership.
INTEGRATE SERVICES
We strive to bring together all the important adults in a child’s life—parents, educators, and healthcare providers—to promote academic and health outcomes. We expanded our health partnerships and refined communication and collaboration within our health program to improve our health integration.
Deepening Our Health Partnerships
Our partnerships with community-based healthcare providers make it possible for us to integrate education, health, and mental wellbeing. This year, we offered more robust services to students and families and strengthened our learning and evaluation process.
Kaiser Permanente
In expanding our Early Family Foundations programming at The Primary School - East Bay, we collaborated with our partners at Kaiser Permanente’s Early Developmental Screening Program (EDSP) to create a streamlined approach to developmental screenings and follow-up. Parents complete developmental screenings with our staff in a community-centered setting, using a strength-focused and relationship-based approach. This fosters a supportive environment that encourages open communication, leading to higher participation rates and allowing parents to develop a more comprehensive understanding of their child’s growth. Through our partnership with Kaiser Permanente, we’ve developed a tiered approach to sharing results, allowing pediatrician’s to avoid repetitive screenings if no concerns are identified and making direct referrals to EDSP when concerns are identified. This approach accelerates follow-up care, ensuring timely evaluation and interventions for children.
“Healthy children tend to perform better academically. Identifying health and developmental issues early can lead to timely interventions that promote physical, emotional, and social development. Our hope as we continue to grow our partnership is that we nurture children’s immediate well-being and also lay the foundation for healthier futures.”
– LAURA GRUNBAUM, MD - East Bay Medical Director
Ravenswood Family Health Network
With our East Palo Alto healthcare partner, Ravenswood Family Health Network, we have continued to focus on building a health-education integration model that fosters better communication and can be sustained over time. Our team is especially proud that, over this past year, we enhanced our capacity for streamlined data-sharing by building a dashboard that tracks student health data as well as attendance and academic data. Shared at pediatric department team meetings, this joint project has highlighted how our collaboration promotes whole-child outcomes.
Dental Services for Early Family Foundations
Starting preventative health behaviors early sets children up for healthy habits throughout their lives. This year we expanded dental services to the one- and two-year-old children in Early Family Foundations — the youngest members of The Primary School. In East Palo Alto, Ravenswood Family Health Network enabled families to opt-in to dental services, while in the East Bay, our partners at Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center expanded their offerings to provide dental services to Early Family Foundations children in addition to the existing services for preschool and pre-K students.
86%
of 2 year olds in Early Family Foundations at East Palo Alto enrolled in dental services
85%
of East Palo Alto school-aged children enrolled in dental services
85%
of East Bay students received preventive dental services in the last 12 months
100%
of East Bay students who needed follow-up dental services received them
watch the video: Our health program in action
Learn about the design and implementation of our health program, understand why it is a critical component of our model, and hear voices of our staff and parents who collaborate through this innovative framework every day.
Co-Presenting At America’s Physician Groups’ Spring Conference
After three years of implementing our integrated early childhood education model in the East Bay, Natasha Hall-Sevilla, East Bay Executive Director, and Kapil Dhingra, MD, MBA, Physician-in-Chief of The Permanente Medical Group, co-presented on how our co-designed model positively impacts whole-family wellbeing and how it can be replicated in other communities.
WALK TO SCHOOL DAYS
Our East Palo Alto participated in two Walk To School Day events. We always enjoy this annual event where we can bring our community together and promote healthy habits!
SCHOOL PROGRAMS
All elements of our Theory of Change come together to promote high quality learning experiences for students in our early childhood education (ECE) and elementary and middle school programs. This year, we established reading intervention structures for elementary and middle school students and strengthened our ECE programs.
Reading Growth In East Palo Alto
As part of our multi-year COVID recovery plan, we invested in accelerating the literacy growth of our elementary students. We first focused on laying a strong literacy foundation, partnering with EL Education to provide our elementary teachers with professional development in our literacy curriculum, promoting access to high-quality content-based literacy instruction for all students. For students who needed extra support, we increased our team’s capacity to provide targeted small-group instruction in foundational skills. This resulted in exciting growth: we reduced the number of students who were far below grade level by a third.
“I joined The Primary School as a Reading Specialist and I'm so proud of the literacy support systems we put into place.”
Watch Evangelyn’s testimonial video
15
percentage point reduction in 2nd–6th grade students far below grade level
34
percentage point increase in 1st grade students who were at or above grade level in literacy
47%
of 3rd–6th grade students met their reading growth targets
Aligning Assessment and Instruction in Early Childhood Education
Our early childhood education (ECE) teams at both sites worked together to improve their use of developmental assessment by designating moments throughout the year to observe student skills, plan developmentally appropriate activities, and regularly monitor student growth. Our East Bay program expanded to offer full-day, year-round programming, supported by public funding provided by the California State Preschool Program (CSPP). We are proud to share that our East Bay ECE program received the highest possible rating of 30 points when evaluated by Alameda County Quality Counts! The rating system considers multiple factors when evaluating ECE programs such as staff qualifications, providing access to health and developmental screenings, and the quality of teacher and student interactions.
AAPI Student Club Explores San Francisco’s Chinatown
This year, our first culturally-based club was created for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students. One of their highlights was a fun-filled field trip to tour San Francisco’s Chinatown where they ate at a dim sum restaurant, visited the fortune cookie factory, and explored other local shops.
Cultivating Lifelong Readers: A Journey To Adopt The Science Of Reading At The Primary School
Our approach to literacy has evolved to align with the Science of Reading. In this blog, we hear from educators at The Primary School who share more on the shift to a science-based curriculum and how it has impacted students.
Deepening Our Partnership With EL Education
This summer, our lead educators traveled to an EL Education conference to continue developing their capacity to support teachers in implementing the EL Education literacy curriculum.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging
Creating a culture where staff, students, and families can show up as their authentic selves is a top priority for us at The Primary School. This past year continued to improve our hiring and promotion practices, provided educators access to higher education, welcomed a parent board representative from the East Bay, collaborated with families to celebrate the diversity within our community.
Our Commitment to Developing Teachers
We are committed to hiring and promoting school-based staff members from the communities we serve, yet we recognize that these staff members may not have equitable access to higher education opportunities. We established partnerships with higher education organizations, Rivet School and EDAdvance College, to help educators earn Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, teaching credentials, or early childhood education units. The more our educators have access to career advancement and professional development resources, the more our students benefit.
81%
retention rate across the organization
94%
of our promotions were BIPOC staff members
88%
of our staff identifies as BIPOC
47%
of our staff are from the communities we serve
Welcoming a New Parent Board Member
Elevating parent voice at the board level is a critical component of our approach to sharing decision making power with our community. While we have included parent representatives from our East Palo Alto site in previous years, this year, we welcomed our first East Bay parent representative, Brooke Koka. Brooke has seamlessly stepped into her role, providing her input on critical organizational decisions. We made improvements to our parent board representative onboarding process, ensuring incoming parent board representatives had the information and support to voice their authentic views. Brooke’s partnership along with our improved structures has started a powerful next chapter for our board!
“As the East Bay Parent Board Representative, I can uplift the experiences of parents, sharing the different ways our children have grown and how our home lives have been impacted by the programs.”
Watch Brooke’s testimonial video
Collaboration With Families To Celebrate Diversity
Celebrating diversity in our communities has always been a cornerstone of our identity. We recognize, though, that celebrations are not enough and that discussions surrounding identity, health, and social-emotional growth need to be embedded in our daily learning with students. With that understanding, we launched a collaborative effort between parents, educators, and school leaders to create a curriculum that will address developmentally appropriate social-emotional and DEI topics with students across grade levels throughout the school year. We began this partnership with families during Pride Month in June, where parents received letters, were able to ask questions about lesson plans, and previewed read-aloud books. Providing transparency and opportunities for feedback allowed families to have conversations at home, discussing how these topics related to their family values. We are looking forward to piloting this curriculum in the 2024–25 school year!
“I think that everyone should learn more about other cultures because you learn about other people and you become friends, knowing that they are also just sweet people.”
Watch Telesia’s testimonial video
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
We are grateful to our Board of Directors for guiding the growth and strategic direction of The Primary School.
Jean-Claude Brizard
Board Chair
Cristina Huezo
Isabelle Bibbler Parker
Board Treasurer
Brooke Koka
East Bay Parent Rep.
Steven Dow
Board Secretary
Dr. Lucy Phuong
Moses Herrera
East Palo Alto Parent Rep.
Priscilla Chan
Co-Founder, Emeritus Board Chair (Ex Oficio)
We are looking forward to welcoming Rubi Garcia as the next East Palo Alto Parent Representative! Rubi was elected by fellow East Palo Alto parents and she will begin her two year term this fall.
GET INVOLVED
VOLUNTEER
Volunteer to support our students in East Palo Alto and the East Bay.
Partner
Share your expertise or connect with us as potential partners.
Give
Contribute now to help us continue our mission.
Thank you!
We are so incredibly grateful for the group of donors—both old and new—who continue to believe and invest in our model and vision. Your support means so much to our students, families, and community!
Alexandra Carmago
Anne Wojcicki
Anonymous (6)
April and Andrew Bosworth
Brian Chesky
Brooke Stafford-Brizard and Jean-Claude Brizard
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Charter School Growth Fund
Cristina Huezo and Nick Grudin
Daphne Lo
Desai Family
Diana Herrera
Elizabeth Hernandez
Elliot Schrage and Juliet Whitcomb
Erica and Jeff Lawson
Futures Without Violence*
Health Resources and Services Administration
Ime Archibong
Jennifer Von der Ahe
Jessica Cho
Jessica Cohn
Jessica and Sam Lessin
Joe McCannon
John and Marcia Goldman Foundation
Jordan Fox
Julie Zhuo and Mike Sego
Kaiser Permanente
Karen and Bret Taylor
Kater Cuervo
Lauren Dutton
Linda Schroeder
Luis Garcia
Matt and Pia Cohler
Maurice Werdeger
Meg Campbell
Mindy and Jesse Rogers
Monica Mosseri
Naomi Gleit
NewSchools Venture Fund
Peter Briger
Poppy Baker Keifenheim
Quality Counts Alameda County**
Robyn Reiss
Ron and Gayle Conway
Room To Breathe
Sarah and Aaron Burgess
Sheri Sobrato Brisson
Sheryl Sandberg
Silicon Schools Fund
Stanley Langendorf Foundation
Studio Bondy Architecture
Stupski Foundation
Sylvia Hughes
Tali Rappaport and Nick Josefowitz
The Fernandez Family Foundation
Visra Vichit-Vadakan
Yael Pasternak Valek
*with funding provided by Genentech, Blue Shield of CA Foundation, and First 5 Sonoma County
**with funding from the California Department of Education, in partnership with First 5 Alameda County and Alameda County Office of Education
