Experience the
SLA Difference
At the School of Los Angeles, we abide one simple truth:
The best educational tool for any young person is the collaboration and camaraderie of peers from different backgrounds—peers who have stories and perspectives to share, the stuff of life that simply cannot be gleaned from a textbook—along with direct, genuine connection to real-world experiences through the most forward-thinking pedagogical approaches and academic disciplines.
A truly exceptional, transformative education requires a diverse environment grounded in hands-on learning. It gives students access to entire worlds and worldviews they might never otherwise encounter. It opens their hearts and minds to the concerns, struggles, and joys of others—knowledge that will forever shape their convictions and actions in life.
This is why SLA provides over half of its student body with need-based tuition assistance, and why we emphasize experiential learning, direct and sustained service work, and engagement in a wide array of the most important fields of study—including computer science, environmental studies, housing and homelessness, the history of racial capitalism, the carceral state, indigenous land stewardship, queer studies, Latinx studies, Black studies, project-based approaches to the visual and performing arts, and so much more.
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Every year the School of Los Angeles enrolls just as many students who know what it means to live in the most trying financial circumstances—students whose convictions are forged with a visceral understanding of economic disparity in our nation, and whose perspectives are therefore vital—as we do students who come from significant affluence. Our families reflect the vibrancy of our neighborhood and our city—small business owners, studio executives, wage workers, Latinx, Korean-American, Black, and white. In a seminar of fifteen—our average class size—it is often the case that no two students will approach the issue at hand from the same socioeconomic and cultural background.
Our students have always embraced the city of Los Angeles as their classroom. They have organized direct outreach to our unhoused neighbors in Hollywood. They have lived at the mission on Skid Row. They have conducted site-specific lab work to study the ecology of the L.A. River, and have interrogated the relationship between river revitalization efforts and the displacement of working-class communities. They have marched and participated in mass direct actions downtown in support of climate justice and other student-led social movements. They have studied the prison-industrial complex with formerly incarcerated activists and scholars. They have studied US immigration policy on both sides of the southern border, supporting the families of DREAMers and undocumented veterans. They have founded and sustained our Feminist Club and our Gender and Sexual Diversity Association. They perform plays and musicals at venues in Hollywood’s historic Theatre Row, just blocks from our campus. They engage in the vibrant cultural life of the city, exploring its many neighborhoods and participating in the intellectual and aesthetic lives of its people.
This is lofty rhetoric, we know. We are just one small school, growing every day, doing our best. The path ahead of us is long, but we walk it with determination, and we hope our story resonates with yours.