PRINCIPLED ACADEMY INC
2929 Avalon Ave, Berkeley, CA 94705 www.principledacademy.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: To create a safe, nurturing learning environment with the partnership of parents and teachers to help students from preschool thru 8th grade achieve academic and moral excellence in community with others.

The Principled Academy TPA was founded with five children in a garage. It has grown to encompass an extraordinarily diverse group of 135 students from preschool through 8th grade. Students learn from an early age to get along with and to value others from different races, ethnicities, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds. TPA does not just prepare students for an inter-connected world, it enables them to directly experience world peace on a manageable level every day. Our special foci are character education, social and emotional learning, and academic excellence. Our small class sizes and qualified and experienced teaching staff enable each student to be individually understood and to flourish. The TPA early childhood preschool and kindergarten classes (CA license XXX-XX-XXXX) is in the initial phase of the multi-year accreditation process with the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a premier accrediting body for early childhood programs. We accept up to 34 preschoolers in two classrooms with four teachers and an aide, and up to 18 kindergarten students with a teacher and an associate teacher. This is significantly more beneficial to our preschoolers than the legal ratio of one teacher for 12 preschool students. By having more qualified, caring adults in the classrooms, each child can experience more individual attention, with adults helping the child tease out the implications of what she is observing, thereby extending the child's exciting discovery of new knowledge. The opportunity to hear complex sentences regularly helps develop his or her pre-reading skills. Discipline challenges are also minimized as alert staff members can redirect students before behavior incidents occur. Parents receive bi-weekly e-newsletters about the lessons being covered so they can engage in stimulating conversations with their children. All of our students, preschool through 8th grade, have a dedicated class period each day for character education and social or emotional learning. Each month is dedicated to a specific virtue and related community service. The school day in each class begins with a teacher reading stories or biographies of people who exemplify each virtue, or older students sharing an original skit, puppet show, or video designed to help younger students understand principled behavior. Each month the school as a whole participates in a community service learning project, which helps students to experience first-hand the power they have, even as young people, to contribute to the common good. Examples include visiting senior centers with hand-made cards for the seniors, performing for, and reading to, seniors; caroling at community venues; raising money for UNICEF through a very popular TPA celebration called Trunk or Treat; conducting a Bike-A-Thon on behalf of research organizations like the American Heart Association and the National MS (Multiple Sclerosis) Society; doing a canned food drive for the Alameda County Food Bank and volunteering at the Food Bank (for older students), and so on. Learning the value of, and practicing, habits of good character like our Core Values-Respect, Integrity, Honesty, Caring, and Leadership-positively impacts our students' academic performance. With small classes, approximately 10-15 students per grade, and qualified and experienced teachers, TPA students have support which helps them to develop their academic potential to the fullest. About half of our 8th grade graduates attend private schools, mainly Catholic high schools like Bishop O'Dowd, St. Joseph Notre Dame, and Moreau, and half attend local public schools. Even though TPA is small (135 students), our 8th graders have attained key leadership positions, e.g., class president, student body president, in both public and private high schools. In their 7th and 8th grade years, our students have a weekly class in Oratory, where they learn to speak effectively to a small group. This helps them to express their ideas clearly in high school and college. Principled Academy alumni have matriculated at prestigious universities including UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, UC San Diego, the Air Force Academy, Harvey Mudd College, the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, Smith College, Santa Clara University, St. Mary's College, various Cal State University campuses, and others. Since the school's founding in 1988, some of our older alumni have completed or are currently pursuing graduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, San Francisco State University, Cal State University East Bay, and other fine institutions. We are proud of their accomplishments. TPA sponsors both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts on our campus. Several of our former students have returned to our campus during their high school years to complete a project which benefits The Principled Academy as an integral part of earning the highly prestigious Eagle Scout award. We are touched by their sincere desire to assist their alma mater and greatly impressed with their enthusiastic and professional efforts. The Principled Academy is certified to accept foreign students through the Student Exchange Visitor Program of the United States government.

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