About Us
Our Model
We believe that learning should be an active experience that involves a community of educators, students and families. To fully engage in learning, students need to feel safe, know what is expected of them, be excited about the content, direct their own learning, and be able to bring their whole unique and multicultural self to the learning experience.
Our dedicated teachers and staff tirelessly create a culture of caring that supports all students in achieving their potential, while continually assessing each student's progress through observation, interaction, and testing, and then designing lessons in response to student needs. Our educational program is guided by four key approaches:
Dual Language Immersion
The dual language immersion model integrates the best of bilingual education for all students: Native Spanish speakers develop literacy in their first language before acquiring their second, resulting in higher proficiency in both. Non-Spanish speakers are immersed in learning Spanish beginning in Kindergarten, when their brains are most suited to learn a second language. Teachers adjust instruction for children at different levels of language fluency and literacy, and all students emerge from 5th grade fully bilingual and bi-literate in Spanish and English. Research has consistently shown that students who develop two languages early on exhibit elevated levels of academic and cognitive functioning, including enhanced problem solving, reasoning, and communication.
We use a “90/10” immersion model, meaning that in Kindergarten 90% of the day is taught in Spanish by a highly qualified, credentialed teacher, fluent in both Spanish and English. The children may speak or respond in either language, but the teacher will speak only Spanish 90% of the day. The teacher guides students to correct vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence structure by modeling and by creating authentic opportunities for students to use the target language. Spanish instruction decreases and English instruction increases by 10% percent each year, until the program is 50-50 by 4th grade.Make it stand out.
Constructivism
Our students are invited to explore their interests and use what they already know to build new knowledge and make sense of the world around them. Within a standard-based program, they can choose specific topics or projects and formulate the questions that drive their learning experiences. Our teachers design learning opportunities that are challenging and interesting, while guiding students to be active learners who ask questions and seek understanding.
Current research shows that this type of active inquiry approach to teaching and learning develops deep and long‐lasting conceptual understanding in students. Students graduate from CLIC able to think critically and independently, pursue their interests, ask hard questions and seek new understanding. Most importantly, our approach preserves and celebrates the natural curiosity of children, and keeps learning fun and engaging, while challenging students to tackle challenging content and problems.
Caring Communities
We believe and have seen that when students feel safe, known, and loved, they are much more likely to engage in school and perform well academically. In collaboration with our students and parents, we developed 10 shared community agreements. These agreements remind us all to treat one another with respect, and to be inclusive of all community members, regardless of our similarities or differences. We reinforce our values and agreements through our daily actions, by constantly reminding students how to be allies and supports to one another, through a restorative approach to discipline (we don’t yell at, berate, or publicly embarrass students), and with frequent community-building events throughout the year like all-school assemblies, and other ongoing.
Diversity and Multiculturalism
As an intentionally integrated and diverse school CLIC purposefully develops a community whose members embrace difference and seek to learn from one another. Students study specific aspects of multiculturalism to help develop their own identities and learn how to work, play, and learn across lines of difference. Our goal is to interrupt patterns of segregation in public schools, and to ensure that CLIC students:
Are validated and affirmed by the school culture, curriculum, and community.
Develop a strong foundation of self-identity and leverage that awareness to self-advocate and practice empathy toward others.
Experience meaningful bridges between home and school, and develop a positive connection that enriches their experience in both environments.
Vision.
We believe that public schools can be fun, academically challenging, socially enriching, and embrace the diverse lived experiences of everyone in the community. CLIC prepares students with the social-emotional skills, cultural competence, and academic achievement to navigate the challenges, opportunities, and relationships they will encounter beyond our walls. We hold all students to high expectations, while providing them with a supportive community and immersive project-based learning experience that spark their curiosity and deeper thinking about meaningful real-world problems.
Mission.
CLIC graduates are self-aware, reflective individuals who can draw on social-emotional competencies, cultural competency, and critical thinking ability to thrive personally, and positively impact their communities. In order to fulfill our mission, we:
Provide a constructivist, project-based learning environment in which teachers guide students through active learning processes to develop conceptual understanding and critical thinking.
Establish a culture that puts relationships and social-emotional support first so that every student is known and gets the support they need to succeed.
Prioritize the development of cultural competency at all levels of the organization, investing in anti-bias training for staff, and multicultural curriculum for students.
Give faculty time, resources, autonomy and a collaborative atmosphere to continually develop their skills and create, evaluate and refine curricula, and reflect on the learning of their students.
Communicate regularly with students’ families, creating multiple opportunities for family involvement in the life of the school, to ensure a diverse and inclusive learning community.
Values.
Educational Excellence: Instruction reflects high expectations, inspires curiosity, builds critical skills and promotes deeper thinking to drive achievement and close opportunity gaps.
Diversity: We build intentionally diverse, welcoming, and equitable learning communities where students and staff develop self-awareness and cultural competence to build a better world.
Community: The school is intentionally inclusive: we put relationships first and develop social-emotional competencies while engaging all stakeholders in creating a unified, safe, and supportive community within and beyond the school.
We put relationships first, before everything.
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Lindsay Sturman and Dvora Inwood – founders of Larchmont Charter School and Valley Charter School – recognized for a need to expand opportunities for a diverse-by-design, progressive, socially-emotionally supportive school in the Mid-City to South LA corridor.
JUN 2010
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Lindsay met Rebecca George, a founding teacher from Larchmont, who with Lisa Woods, a parent leader at Westwood Charter, mobilized an army of talented and enthusiastic parents to become founding families of The City School.
JAN 2011
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A small diverse group of West Adams moms was beginning to envision a different way of doing school in their community.
FEB 2012
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Led by Jennifer Johnson and Mia Marano, the founders of CLIC partner with The City School founders and board to open an elementary school within the City Charter Schools organization.
JUN 2012
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TCS hires it’s founding principal, Sheri Werner, a veteran school leader and national expert on bully prevention and social-emotional learning.
JUL 2012
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TCS launches in its temporary site on Robertson Ave. in Mid-City
AUG 2012
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CLIC hires it’s founding Principal, Raúl Alarcón, a veteran bilingual educator with over 30 years of experience in education. He has worked for over 25 years at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies prior to founding CLIC.
APRIL 2013
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CLIC launches on the campus of Virginia Road Elementary School in West Adams with 6 founding bilingual teachers.
AUG 2013
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Valerie Braimah joins the staff of City Charter Schools as its first full-time Executive Director.
OCT 2013
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CLIC moves to it’s brand-new permanent home at 4001 Venice Blvd in the heart of West Adams
AUG 2016
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CLIC Renewed for a five-year term
NOV 2017
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TCS moves to its current home in the Baldwin Village community in South LA
AUG 2018
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CLIC joins the New Los Angeles charter management organization amidst the closure of City Charter Schools
JUL 2023
Our story
In July 2023, City Language Immersion Charter merged into the New Los Angeles Charter Schools charter management organization. The Board of Directors of City Charter Schools selected New Los Angeles Charter Schools to serve as the steward for continuing to improve CLIC’s evolving educational program based on New LA’s standing in the educational community.
Prior to closing in June 2023, City Charter Schools was a small network of two Charter Schools: City Language Immersion Charter, a dual-language elementary school offering grades TK-5; and The City School offering grades 6-8. Both TCS and CLIC were founded by Los Angeles parents in search of a new and innovative school model that could serve children from diverse backgrounds from across the City of LA.
The City School’s Founding
During the summer of 2010, Lindsay Sturman and Dvora Inwood – founders of Larchmont Charter School and Valley Charter School – recognized for a need to expand opportunities for a diverse-by-design, progressive, socially-emotionally supportive school in the Mid-CIty to South LA corridor.
Lindsay - who felt her years at Milton Academy truly transformed her through intensive writing seminars and an intelligent, creative faculty – and Dvora – who loved her small public high school in New Jersey that empowered students to create extra-curricular endeavors – were especially driven by the lack of a public school option that offered the small, rigorous, project-based learning communities from their own high school experiences.
They melded their visions to design a diverse, community-initiated middle school that emphasized critical thinking, complex writing, and elective-rich programming. Dvora formed the 501c3 and Lindsay began building an active and enthusiastic board of directors with the legal, real estate, educational, and strategic expertise to launch a vibrant middle school for the community. In January, 2011, Lindsay met Rebecca George, a founding teacher from Larchmont, who had been rallying her fellow preschool parents around the idea of creating a new progressive middle school. Excited by City’s educational vision, Rebecca built an army of organized and talented parents to become founding families of The City School. Among those founding parents, Lisa Woods rapidly emerged as a powerful voice and effective organizer. These four innovative, talented, and dedicated women were able to galvanize the community to launch The City School in August 2012. One of the best decisions they made was to hire Sheri Werner as the Founding Principal of City. She took the vision expressed in the charter petition, and brought to life the school of everyone’s dreams. Thanks to Sheri’s 20+ years of experience and ability to execute quickly on the school vision, by its second year The City School had a wait-list of over 400 parents who wanted this safe and supportive, elective-rich, and innovative school experience for their children.
CLIC’s Founding
Even as The City School was ramping up for its first year, a small diverse group of West Adams moms was beginning to envision a different way of doing school in their community. Jennifer Johnson and Mia Marano engaged four other founding parents - Deanna Goodwin, Jenna Flexner, Maisha Closson, and Jennifer Kurek - to create a progressive new bilingual elementary school that would truly reflect the diversity of the West Adams community. Early in their process, they went to an informational session about The City School. They were inspired by that school’s mission and vision, and decided to partner with The City School founders and board to open an elementary school within the City Charter family. And thus was born City Charter Schools. Raul Alarcon was brought on as a founding principal, bringing over 20 years of experience with the UCLA Lab School, a similarly progressive dual-immersion program on the other side of Los Angeles.