Apply Donate Sun Store brightwheel Calendar
2027–2031 Strategic Plan

Our Path Forward

For more than 50 years, Pacific Primary has placed children at the center of its work. This plan, developed through a year-long process with families, staff, alumni, school leadership, and the board, will guide the school through 2031: preserving what makes Pacific Primary distinctive while strengthening its educational approach, community, leadership, and long-term stability.

Families, teachers and children gathered in the Pacific Primary courtyard
Children holding up hand-painted kindness signs in their classroom
A message from our Executive Director

A plan shaped by this community, for its next chapter

I am proud to introduce our new Strategic Plan. Developed through a year-long process that engaged families, staff, and alumni to reflect on our strengths, opportunities, and aspirations, this plan will guide our work to 2031.

With shared priorities, we will ensure that Pacific Primary remains a place where children thrive through joyful learning and are empowered to contribute to a diverse community; where families feel connected and supported; where talented educators bring exceptional skill and care to their work; and where financial assistance is available to those who need it.

While honoring and building upon our rich history and first 50 years, this plan also responds thoughtfully to the evolving needs of our community and the opportunities ahead. It affirms our belief that quality early childhood education remains one of the most powerful forces in shaping a life of love and learning.

With care,

Portrait of Ilsa Miller

Ilsa Miller
Executive Director

Why this plan, why now

Honoring what endures. Building what comes next.

A teacher and children sitting in a circle with pumpkins

For more than 50 years, Pacific Primary has created a learning environment filled with curiosity, creativity, connection, play, and a love of learning. The care and expertise of its educators, the strength and diversity of its community, and its commitment to ensuring that each child feels respected, loved, secure, and open to learning have made the school what it is today.

Over the past decade, two strategic plans helped Pacific Primary care for what matters most while preparing for change. The pandemic, and later a transition to a new Executive Director, asked the school to focus first on the immediate needs of children, families, and staff. Some longer-term priorities were deliberately set aside so the community could be cared for.

Pacific Primary now enters its next chapter with established leadership, a strong foundation, and greater clarity about both its enduring strengths and the work ahead. The opportunity is to move from transition and stabilization toward deeper alignment and long-term sustainability: preserving what makes the school special while building the clarity, capacity, and structures its next chapter needs.

2027–2031 Strategic Plan
Child Centered
Pacific Primary sun
Excellence
A single continuous line drawing connecting five icons: a handshake, an open book, a shield with a check, a group of people, and a balance scale
Mission & Values
Pedagogy and Teaching
Leadership & Governance
Community & Space
Long Term Stability

Five priorities.
One child‑centered vision.

These goals are closely connected. Together, they support the kind of learning environment Pacific Primary wants to sustain—one where children and families thrive, educators are supported, differences are welcomed and valued, and the school can remain strong for years to come.

Goal 1

Mission & Values

Pacific Primary’s mission and values stay alive, rooted in our founders’ vision and evolving with our future, so the whole community can articulate and feel them, educators teach toward them, and every decision reflects them.

Pacific Primary’s mission and values have guided the school for more than 50 years and run through its culture, relationships, and traditions. The next chapter is about articulating them clearly enough that they stay visible not only in words but in teaching, communication, hiring, enrollment, leadership, and everyday decisions, preserving the school’s distinctive identity while keeping its founding commitments relevant.

What we’re working toward
  • A clear, shared understanding of Pacific Primary’s mission and values across the community
  • Decisions and communications that consistently reflect those values
  • A distinctive Pacific Primary identity that honors its history while continuing to evolve
Goal 2

Pedagogy & Teaching

We have a deeply understood and consistently practiced approach to teaching and learning that every educator can articulate, every classroom reflects, and every family can see and feel.

The strength of Pacific Primary’s learning environment comes from the knowledge, skill, creativity, and care of its educators. This priority is about more clearly articulating the school’s child-centered approach, supporting educators in continually deepening their practice, and building greater coherence across classrooms and both sites, while preserving the creativity and responsiveness to individual children that define good teaching here.

What we’re working toward
  • Joyful, responsive and developmentally appropriate learning for every child
  • Families who understand what makes Pacific Primary’s approach distinctive
  • Meaningful collaboration, coaching and professional growth for educators
  • Strong practice shared across classrooms and both school sites
Goal 3

Leadership & Governance

Pacific Primary is led by people who believe in and embody its mission: an executive director and management team equipped to lead across pedagogy, community, and operations, and a board with the structure, skills, and commitment to govern well.

Strong, mission-aligned leadership creates the conditions for children, educators, families, and the broader school community to thrive. As Pacific Primary moves beyond a period of leadership transition, this priority is about clear roles, sustainable leadership structures, thoughtful governance, and accountability for the experience of the whole community, so that school leadership and the board can steward Pacific Primary with care, consistency, and purpose over time.

What we’re working toward
  • Clear leadership roles and decision-making
  • Strong leadership across teaching, community, and operations
  • A strategic, sustainable and mission-aligned board
  • Structures that support continuity and long-term planning
Goal 4

Community & Space

We are one connected community: one school, two sites.

Pacific Primary is one school with two sites, the Yellow Sun School and the Orange Sun School, both on Grove Street. A connected community fosters belonging, supports collaboration, and builds the trust needed to make thoughtful decisions and navigate change. This priority is about strengthening connection across the two sites, deepening collaboration among staff, making the family experience more consistent, creating meaningful ways for families and staff to participate, and ensuring that spaces and systems support every member of the community.

What we’re working toward
  • Children, families and staff experience Pacific Primary as one school community
  • Cross-site collaboration and connection are meaningful and common
  • Families experience clear, consistent and supportive systems
  • Community feedback reflects trust and belonging
Goal 5

Long-Term Stability

We operate with financial clarity, resilience, and values alignment, backed by a proactive development strategy, a sustainable tuition assistance program, and readiness for whatever comes next.

Pacific Primary’s ability to fulfill its mission depends on a strong financial, operational, and facilities foundation. Clearer multi-year financial planning, sustainable tuition assistance and fundraising, and responsible preparation for long-term facilities needs, including planning for the future of the Yellow Sun School, will let the school make values-aligned decisions, remain accessible to a diverse community, invest in its educators and programs, and care for its spaces for generations to come.

What we’re working toward
  • Thoughtful multi-year financial planning
  • Clear, sustainable fundraising and development
  • A durable tuition-assistance program aligned with the school’s commitment to diversity and inclusion
  • Responsible planning for long-term facilities needs
  • Shared understanding of long-term priorities among school leadership and the board

Our commitments

Six commitments shape how Pacific Primary approaches all five goals. Rather than standing on their own, they guide how the work gets done and help keep each priority connected to the others and to the broader community.

  • Mission alignment & clarity
  • People, culture & well-being
  • Diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging
  • Data, feedback & continuous improvement
  • Partnerships & community connection
  • Honor our history & thoughtfully evolve
A five-year plan, built to evolve

A living plan

This plan sets a direction rather than a fixed script. Each goal moves through the five years in stages: reflecting, learning, and clarifying first; then building the systems and habits that carry the work; then deepening practice until it sustains itself.

Along the way, annual community surveys and feedback from staff and families will help the school understand what is working, and Pacific Primary will refine its approach as it learns. The school intends to share meaningful progress with its community throughout.

  1. Years 1–2Reflect, learn and clarifyArticulating the mission and the teaching approach, understanding current strengths, and gathering community input.
  2. Years 2–3Build and alignEmbedding the priorities in the everyday systems of the school and strengthening the structures that connect both sites.
  3. Years 4–5Deepen and sustainEvaluating what has taken root, refining based on community feedback, and sustaining the practices that work.

How we’ll know we’re making progress

Mission
Our values are clearly understood and consistently reflected in school life and decisions.
Teaching
Children experience joyful, responsive learning, and families can understand the educational approach behind it.
Leadership
Roles and structures support strong, sustainable, mission-aligned leadership and governance.
Community
Children, families and staff experience one connected community across both sites.
Stability
Long-term financial, fundraising, tuition-assistance and facilities planning support the school’s mission for years to come.

Building the next chapter, together.

This plan belongs to all of us. We are grateful for the community that makes Pacific Primary what it is, and we look forward to building its next chapter together.

Teachers playing guitar and singing at a harvest lunch with children