Headmaster's Blog

One of the obligations of school heads at CAIS (California Association of Independent Schools) schools is to serve on or chair a visiting accreditation team during its visit to a fellow CAIS school that is up for reaccreditation.  This visiting team, made up five to nine teachers and administrators from independent schools across the state, spends a total of three and a half days on the school's campus.  During the visit the team examines all aspects of the school's operations, from programs to facilities to finances and more.  At the conclusion of the visit the team submits a comprehensive report which contains both commendations and recommendations for the school to consider.  This report is also submitted to CAIS, along with a recommendation from the visiting team on the future terms of the school's accreditation. 

This past week I was part of a visiting team at The Nueva School in Hillsborough, CA.  Nueva is a dynamic JK-Grade 8 school whose curriculum shares many similarities with St. Mary's in that they too stress creativity, innovation, collaboration and integration of curriculum.  Although Nueva is not an IB school, they have a strong global focus and place significant emphasis on ensuring that everything their students learn has a practical application in the world.  Interestingly, they are well into the plans to expand to a JK-Grade 12 school, and will be welcoming a 9th Grade class in the fall of 2013.  Like us, Nueva's families clearly believe strongly in their school.   

St. Mary's will undergo our next accreditation during the 2012-2013 school year.  We are currently drafting a comprehensive self-study that will be submitted to CAIS by December 1st of this year, with the visiting team arriving to campus early in 2013.  We look forward to this process and we expect a similarly positive outcome to the one we experienced during our IB accreditation visits last fall.