Looking Back and looking forward

June 11, 2026

For all of us here at The Primary School, June has been a swirl of emotion. Last week, we watched with pride as our inaugural class of students graduated from 8th grade in front of the parents, teachers, and staff who grew alongside them for the past 10 years. This week, we capped off this chapter of our work with a final Community Circle event in East Palo Alto that brought families, staff, and partners together to commemorate what we have accomplished and dream about what might come next.

At this event, we premiered a short documentary about The Primary School journey, a Learning and Impact Report from Stanford’s Center on Early Childhood, and a set of Resource Toolkits developed in collaboration with Transcend — links to all of which can be found here on our website. Our vision is that these artifacts will not only serve as a testament to the work of the entire TPS community over the years, but as a reminder that a mission like ours is never truly finished.

When we announced that The Primary School would be closing its doors at the end of the 2025-26 school year, we expressed our hope that our learnings and our legacy might live on through the work of our partners in the field. As we say goodbye, we take solace in the fact that a group of our closest collaborators will continue to carry the torch for students and families in our community and beyond.

In East Palo Alto, we are grateful to Ravenswood City School District for their teamwork in ensuring a supportive transition for the TPS families who will join them next year, as well as their continued commitment to community partnership.

We are also honored that providers and advocates Children’s Health Council (CHC), Ravenswood Early Learning (REL), and Reaching and Inspiring Success Through Education (RISE) plan to use TPS learnings and frameworks to supplement their already incredible work with children and families in the community. The same is true for Ravenswood Family Health Network (RFHN), for whom we owe a special debt of gratitude for a decade-long partnership that shaped The Primary School experience for hundreds of families.

We extend that gratitude to Kaiser Permanente as well, who plans to build on our collaborative efforts in the East Bay to bring health care partnerships to even more families. We’re excited for them to work closely with Kidango to continue prioritizing an early start to reach children at the most impactful age possible.

Nationally, we are thrilled to have worked with both Transcend and First 10 to help make our programming accessible to schools, districts, and education providers across the country. Their work with innovative school and community design has been an inspiration for us over the years, and we are honored by the opportunity to have our model be shared with like-minded education champions in their networks.

Finally, we are incredibly grateful for the wonderful staff and leadership at Felton Institute, Kidspace, and Wu Yee Children’s Services, three pilot partners who are still running their own adaptations of The Primary School’s programming today. Their partnership over multiple iterations provided a beautiful opportunity not just to bring our learnings to new groups of families, but to improve our understanding of how to support our own community.

The Primary School, at all levels, has been a shining example of what can happen when families, students, staff, partners, and systems come together to build in community. Through the efforts of the organizations named here (and the countless others we have worked with over the years), we are confident that this communal legacy will live on.

It takes all of us to make a better future, and we’re excited to see what that future holds. From all of us at The Primary School, thank you.