Lawton Alternative School - San Francisco, CA

Lawton Alternative School is located in the Outer Sunset District of San Francisco. As a kindergarten to eighth grade school, it is a city-wide school with half the students coming from the local zip code and half attending from across the city. Our school has a strong academic track record as well as a rich program of visual arts, music, computer science, gardening, chorus, and dance. In addition, we want our students to have a strong sense of themselves and develop their social-emotional learning.

Thirty-five percent of our elementary students in grades 3-5 are English Learners. Sixty percent of EL students met or exceeded standards on the 2022 SBAC test in ELA and 58% of EL students met or exceeded standards in Math. In addition to academic success, our middle school girls' volleyball team have won eight city championships in the last fourteen years.

Students in eighth grade have developed a strong sense of family with their classmates of nine years. As a K to 8 school, middle school students watch out and support elementary students while elementary students look up to our middle school students as role models. We have leveraged this to support mentorship programs such as our middle school Black Student Union reaching out to our elementary Black students. Also, middle school teacher assistants regularly work with and tutor elementary students.This both supports the elementary students academically and emotionally and gives confidence and a sense of responsibility to our middle school students.