The Grauer School

The Grauer School is an independent college preparatory school in Encinitas, CA. We serve Northern San Diego and all surrounding areas, including the communities of Carlsbad, La Costa, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Carmel Valley, and Rancho Santa Fe. The Grauer School offers a strategically balanced curriculum of rigorous academics, enriching arts and team-building athletic participation. We provide our students with unparalleled leadership opportunities in a trusting, supportive and socially inclusive environment.

Decades of academic research demonstrates schools with fewer than 200 students significantly increase student success rates. One of the main reasons students thrive in such an intimate environment is because they are better able to connect with each other and their teachers. In fact, our dedication to the small schools movement has earned us a global reputation for educational leadership. We welcome educators from across the globe to come study the best practices in education in our state-of-the-art institution of learning and growth. There are many private schools in San Diego, but we are proud to be the only one of our kind worldwide!

Pedagogically, we are asking our teachers not only to teach State curricula and skills, but to prioritize values and qualities we believe that our students, and our nation and world, will need later in the century: courage, compassion, and resourcefulness. These values and qualities will set them apart in the future as they assume the leadership roles they are bound for: a passion for the process of discovery; a natural sense of communicating collaboratively in class, across cultures, and in online groups; an ability to organize and present complex portfolios and exhibits; and a sense of the connectedness of their daily work with its impact on the larger world. These are “millennial skills,” and our “200 strong” (teachers and students), high performance, independent school organization is better positioned to convey them than any other model we can find.

To this end, we have developed the Small Schools Coalition (SSC), a growing membership organization responsible for leading the way in research and communications as our region and nation learns about the power and effectiveness the small school model has in promoting student development, safety, and scholarship. Developing this larger network is enabling The Grauer School to stay in forefront of what’s best about secondary education for students, families, and teachers.

Also with an eye to the future, we continue to build and broaden the leadership capacity of our faculty as a whole and, in particular, among our teams, centers and departmental heads. With energetic and far-sighted leadership coming from our student ASB, our leadership team, our programming team, our department chairs, our Board of Trustees and its standing committees, our Parent Association, the Green Grauer Association, as well as the most solid, experienced, passionate staff and faculty we’ve ever had, our students and families are in very good hands.

The school is positioned well. As our reputation for extraordinary quality and results penetrates deeper into the region and demand for what we and no others can do, our enrollment is capped. Hence, we are in great demand. The school now has full enrollment and long waiting lists, attracts passionate and compassionate faculty members, and holds a powerful mission and vision to support us as we approach the future, united in a single, simple credo: Our students mean the world to us.

We redefine what a private school looks and feels like. As one of San Diego’s best college prep schools, The Grauer School’s purpose is unique but simple – to teach and encourage students to become resourceful, intellectually curious and intrinsically motivated, perseverant, self-advocating, and accountable in a compassionate, college preparatory environment.

Our learning model fosters nurturing relationships between teachers and students. With a best-in-the-area student to teacher ratio of 7:1, teachers know each student’s personality, learning style, strengths, weaknesses and academic objectives.

Students get the support and connection they need, and their input is crucial in setting and achieving academic goals that allow them to distinguish themselves in a way that commands the attention of college admissions officers. Lifetime bonds form.

In a world that often seems to put “standards” before personal development, and to put institutional needs above human needs, Grauer keeps the focus on the individual student. Our students achieve and are valued because they are developing personal passions. After a highly personal search process done with Grauer's college counseling team, all of our students move on to colleges of choice. However, Grauer does not want its students to achieve so as to get high GPAs, high scores, or high college ranks. Grauer students seek larger purposes, and they are consistently encouraged to find what the world needs of them.

Every voice matters. We commit to developing the finest, most engaged, humanitarian independent school in the world. The Grauer School research team works year-round with parents, students, faculty and alumni to measure, affirm, refine, and advance all that’s best about our program.