Question: What is the greatest strength of your school?

Answer: An independent school is driven by its mission. Marywood-Palm Valley School’s mission is centered around the four cornerstones: college-prep, character, communication skills and community. First, the reality in most of our schools is that less than a third of students graduating from high school are college eligible. At MWPV, 100% of our students are college eligible because our graduation requirements match the University of California A-G requirements. Respect is the key driver in our character building program, and in my opinion schools need to be an environment where respectful behavior is the norm. We have a clear scope and sequence at every grade level in the area of communication skills. Our students are comfortable speaking in front of their peers and adults because they have multiple opportunities to practice public speaking. Communication skills are the key ingredient to success in life. The last cornerstone is community, and the research indicates if families and schools work together the children will be more successful in school. We consider our school a family and provide numerous opportunities for our parents to be involved.

Question: Why was the consolidation of the two campuses so important to your school?

Answer: We believe having all of our families under one roof will only give us a stronger feeling of community, and that family feeling is so important to our student’s success. There are also advantages to having an age range of students together on one campus. For example, we hold full-school morning assemblies once a week, and when we are announcing college acceptances the younger students look back at the seniors and say, “I want to go to college.” Indoctrination of the best kind! Most of the time the students are in their respective divisions. We currently have three divisions: a Preschool Campus, a Lower School Campus and a Middle and Upper School Campus.

Question: What facility projects have you completed recently?

Answer: During summer 2008 we completed nine classrooms, which house the Kindergarten – 2nd grade students, and an administrative building. The Lower School Campus is now complete. We also renovated the Preschool Department and now have room to house over eighty 2 ½ - 4 years old students. A new softball and baseball complex has been installed on the west end of our campus. Since we now have over 500 students coming through our front gates everyday, we added an extra lane coming into school and an extra lane exiting the campus, plus a deceleration lane on DaVall Drive.

Question: Are there construction plans for the future?

Answer: A new Middle School is being planned along with an outdoor amphitheater, which will include music and art classrooms. Once we complete the Middle School building we will renovate the Upper School building and add a student center for our Upper school students.