2023–24
Annual Report
About Summit Public School
Our mission is to collectively prepare a diverse community of young people with the skills, knowledge, and habits to attain economic empowerment and success in a chosen concrete next step toward a fulfilled life.
Summit Public Schools is a network of 12 public charter schools across Washington and California serving grades 6-12. We work toward our shared vision in two key ways: by preparing a diverse student population for success in a four-year college and to be thoughtful, contributing members of society by operating excellent Summit schools; and by developing solutions that will support our peers nationwide as they work to provide this same opportunity to their communities. This work is done through Marshall Street, which is a division of Summit Public Schools that focuses on broader impact.
Realizing our mission and vision requires our Summit schools to work on two levels simultaneously. We must relentlessly focus on offering a student-centered approach to learning and development for each individual Summit student, and with equal commitment, we must invest in our people and continuously improve our organization so that every student and adult has the ability to develop and lead a fulfilled life.
Letter from Our CEO
Dear Summit Community,
Reflecting upon my first year as Summit’s CEO, I find myself thinking of many of the values that come from my home state, Hawai’i. One value, in particular, is the north star for all of our shared work: ‘imi ola—which means to seek your best life. Our aligned school model is designed to support scholars on their journeys to do just that. This year, we have focused on honing our implementation as well as advancing innovations of our program to meet our evolved mission: to collectively prepare a diverse community of young people with the skills, knowledge, and habits to attain economic empowerment and success in a chosen concrete next step toward a fulfilled life.
At Summit, young people embark on a journey of purposeful exploration, beginning with the identification of their passions and a deep understanding of how these passions intersect with their values and communities. As they progress through our mentoring and Expeditions programs, they delve into various career clusters and collaboratively develop their Concrete Next Step—a personalized plan for life after graduation. It is inspiring to see our young people taking the lead in shaping their post-secondary futures, empowered by the experiences they've had with us.
The work is not complete. We are energized by the role our schools and network are playing in the ongoing conversation about what future-ready schools could look like.
Thank you for your steadfast support and dedication. I look forward to continuing this critical work alongside each of you.
With heartfelt gratitude,
Cady Ching
CEO, Summit Public Schools
Postsecondary Pathways
Concrete Next Step
At Summit Public Schools, we believe that each student's path to fulfillment is shaped by their unique aspirations and strengths. To support this journey, we ensure that every graduate has a Concrete Next Step, a personalized 3-5 year plan that includes options for further education, with at least one acceptance to a four-year college.
We are seeing an increase in the diversity of chosen concrete next steps after high school. Specifically, we see an increase in young people choosing two-year colleges and apprenticeship or certificate programs. All Summit students still apply to a four-year college; however, our goal is that all of our students have the right of first refusal when it comes to a four-year college. For some graduates, two-year college and certificate programs offer more affordable options that lead to fulfilling and meaningful careers.
In addition to noting the trends in the data for students' chosen concrete next steps, we are also excited to see students’ confidence that their concrete next steps will lead to a fulfilled life and economic empowerment.
We look forward to seeing how our robust Expeditions program continues to equip graduates with the knowledge of their passions and purpose to influence their postsecondary path.
Learn about how we guide our students on their path from Summit Sierra and Summit Prep:
Summit Sierra, Seattle, WA
Summit Prep, Redwood City, CA
Oster Scholarship Winners
The Oster Scholarship is a selective scholarship awarded to Summit Public Schools seniors who demonstrate their Concrete Next Step and embody Summit's core values.
Each year, many Summit seniors apply for the Oster Scholarship, and ten seniors receive it. Students can receive scholarships to help with the cost of a four-year university, two-year community colleges, or vocational programs. This would not be possible without the generous support of Bob and Marion Oster. To learn more about the Oster Scholarship, please visit our website: osterscholarship.org
We would like to honor this year’s winners. We’re excited to follow their paths as they live out their Concrete Next Steps.
Mentoring into the Future
With an evolved mission, Summit took a step back to ensure that all of the components of its aligned school model were designed to end up at the same destination: A concrete next step for all Summit graduates.
To ensure that mission became a reality, Summit’s leaders took a step back to collectively plan the package that all Summit graduates would receive upon graduation. First and foremost, all Summit graduates will have identified a concrete next step aligned with their vision for their future.
Summit graduates will also have acquired a range of tools and experiences to help them navigate life after Summit, such as:
Diploma and a transcript with the credits needed to access multiple options post high school graduation
Experiences such as internships, independent study, college courses, career certifications
A built-out resume to support transitions
Relationships and connections to the Summit community
Deep understanding of themselves and their future goals
This clarity in the destination for our graduates empowered Summit to reexamine the core programs that support our model including mentoring, expeditions, and the concrete next steps programming. Each program was developed on different timelines and somewhat independently from one another. Therefore, Summit needed to remodel these programs to work together to ensure all graduates are on a path to a fulfilled life. The vision was that the programs would guide young people through cycles that would ultimately support their development of a thoughtful concrete next step.
We knew that this was the cycle we wanted to create among other supports to ensure the entire model was working together to deliver on our mission. The work that was in front of the Summit team was ensuring the right tools, systems, and trainings were in place to create this cycle at each of our schools.
Summit’s Schools team, led by Chief Academic Officer Caitlyn Herman, began by examining the mentoring program at Summit. Since Summit opened its first school in 2003, mentoring has been an essential part of our school model; we know that having at least one trusted adult on campus is critical for a young person’s success. In the 2023–2024 school year, the Summit Schools team conducted an extensive review of its resources and examined external best practices to inform the redesign process. Through this internal and external audit, the Schools team established four key pillars of mentoring: Personalized Learning Plan, One-to-One Check-Ins, Resources for Referral, and Community Time & Concrete Next Steps.
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Meeting that happens with mentor, caregiver(s), and young person every Fall and Spring.
Structured discussion of short and long term goals.
Builds towards a young person’s Concrete Next Step
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Protocols for various types of check-ins: connecting, progress monitoring, reset, and reflection
Training for mentors to execute each type of check-in
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Resources for mentors to support caregivers and young people
Templates for different types of challenging communication
Resources for when to encourage young people to seek outside support
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Scope & sequence for community time
Focus on helping you grow as an individual, a group, and the world
College and career preparation and planning
One of the primary outcomes of this effort is the development of a grade-level-specific curriculum package, now available for all Summit schools on Canvas. This curriculum is directly tied to Concrete Next Steps (CNS), ensuring that mentoring activities are aligned with students' long-term goals and progress. The redesigned program is built on a theory of action that emphasizes relationship-building, goal support, creating space for self and community work, and providing differentiated support. It recognizes that a mentor's primary role is to support students on their journey toward their Concrete Next Steps, with the consistency of the mentor-student relationship tying all elements together.
The updated mentoring program consists of several key components. The enhanced Personal Learning Plan (PLP) process, which has been refined over the years, takes place in the fall and spring. It serves to activate students' long-term planning and strengthens the partnership between home and school. The program also features revised one-on-one check-ins, including connecting check-ins, progress monitoring, and reset check-ins, providing more targeted support for students.
Community time has been restructured with a scoped sequence focusing on individual, group, and global growth. This includes circle work, testing preparation, and CNS prep for older students. For 11th and 12th graders, there's a refreshed CNS curriculum involving students, families, and teachers, culminating in an oral defense for 12th graders in the spring. The oral defense is the final component of a student’s concrete next step and serves as their plan for life beyond high school.
To support mentors in their crucial role, Summit has developed resources to help them engage families and caregivers in the mentoring process. These resources include templates for various types of communication, guidance on building self-directed habits, and information on when to encourage students to seek professional help.
This consistent base curriculum is an exciting step towards optimizing and aligning the essential work that Summit schools take on through mentoring. Because a mentor’s role has so many facets, this framework has been instrumental in onboarding new teachers as well as clarifying and focusing mentor work for Summit’s returning teachers. This curriculum ensures that a mentor’s time is balanced between the many pulls on their time: checking in about academics, checking in about future planning, referring out when a mentee is struggling, and creating a cohesive and safe mentor group. As a result of this curriculum and training, Summit believes that mentors will have the tools to consistently and effectively guide each of their mentees toward their best-fit next step as well as build meaningful relationships that will support them through and beyond their time at Summit.
Expanding Expeditions
Expeditions is where students spend six to seven weeks immersed in a course, project, or internship of their choosing.
We encourage young people to choose their Expeditions experiences by considering what they might be passionate about or want to explore. Once chosen, students are fully immersed in their Expedition and use these experiences to inform what they want to do (or don’t want to do!) after high school. We are proud to see our young people achieve both academic success in the classroom and applied learning in the real world.
One of the most exciting aspects of Expeditions is the option for young people to get out into their communities and learn directly from those in the field. Across our 12 schools, we have hundreds of community partners for Summit students to choose for their Expeditions. These experiences are extremely rewarding for our young people and directly support our mission of helping all our students find a concrete next step; when we talked to seniors about what factors influenced their decision, Expeditions was ranked in the top 3 for a third of students surveyed, above mentoring, academic preparedness, and friends.
While Expeditions is popular and impactful, it has historically been so operationally intensive that we’ve struggled to share it as a packable, scalable innovation to other educational institutions. There is tremendous work involved in matching each student with a best-fit experience, structuring independent study contracts, managing vendors, and even tracking attendance, all in a safe and compliant way. This year, leveraging our new learning management system and a number of custom-built tools and automations, we’ve made significant operational improvements, allowing us to expand our offerings even further while eliminating up to 90% of the manual work.
Embedding AI
At Summit Public Schools, we are committed to preparing young people for a fulfilled life after high school.
We believe deeply in equipping them with not only habits of success, but also with the ability to wield modern tools and technology that will serve them in the future. This year, we piloted several AI tools at two of our schools, including ChatGPT and educational applications like MagicSchool AI and Diffit, with a focus on enhancing student learning across the network.
We believe that responsibly integrating GenAI into our schools is necessary for fulfilling our mission of collectively preparing a diverse community of young people with the skills, knowledge, and habits to attain economic empowerment and success in a chosen concrete next step toward a fulfilled life. This information is a starting point, and we expect to evolve as the technology advances and as we learn what tools and approaches best align with our school model and have a positive impact on student outcomes.
What is generative artificial intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems that perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Generative AI is a type of AI that can generate new content, such as text, images, videos, music, etc. by learning patterns from existing data.
Principles for Generative AI Use at Summit Public Schools
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Everyone must understand the proper use of AI tools and advocate for ethical AI practices in our schools and beyond.
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The use of AI amplifies student thinking and improves teaching methods with the goal of supporting mastery of content, cognitive skills, and Habits of Success.
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Everyone will learn how GenAI works, the opportunities, risks, and limitations and how to use it ethically.
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Human connection stays at the forefront of our use of GenAI.
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Leaders, teachers, students, parents, and community members collaborate to responsibly integrate AI into our school's values and teaching methods.
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Empower students with AI for success in evolving work and society, leading to a fulfilled life.
Student Guidance
The key is to use AI as a tool to enhance your learning and creative process, not as a shortcut or substitute for your own thinking, work, and growth. Always think critically, stay academically honest, and keep your teachers in the loop. With these guidelines, AI will be a powerful aid in your education when used thoughtfully and responsibly.
Conclusion
Look into the Future
As we look ahead, Summit Public Schools remains committed to ensuring that every student graduates with a purpose-driven next step. Our research-based, aligned school model — encompassing core instruction, mentoring, Expeditions, Concrete Next Steps, and Personalized Learning Plans — works in harmony to bring our vision for our young people to life. We will continue to refine and enhance this cohesive model with the latest research and best practices, driving us to be a proof point for what education could and should be. We recognize that this is not a journey we undertake alone, and we are grateful for the expansive partnerships we’ve cultivated along the way. We remain open to new collaborations with organizations that share our values and commitment to educational excellence.
At the heart of our future work is a set of guiding principles that inform and energize our efforts. First, we believe that to achieve our ambitious goals for students, the adults closest to them — our teachers and school leaders — must be able to focus primarily on student outcomes rather than being overwhelmed by the myriad of administrative tasks that can consume an educator’s schedule. By leveraging our strong information systems and aligned processes, we are automating many aspects of the school day, freeing up valuable time for educators to dedicate to student learning. This ongoing focus on optimizing teacher and leader time reflects our belief that school systems should be designed to ensure that adults in school buildings can concentrate their energy on creating exceptional educational experiences.
With this hard-won time, we are also refocusing on leadership development, partnering with organizations, including our own Marshall Leadership Initiative. We understand that investing thoughtfully in the growth of all our employees is essential for driving our schools forward. Our commitment to leadership extends beyond individual roles; it supports our broader focus on collective leadership. At Summit, collective leadership means shared responsibility, decision-making, accountability, and genuine participation from everyone. It’s about creating a shared vision and working together to achieve it, recognizing that leadership is not confined to a single person but is a capacity and responsibility shared by all.
To ensure the success of our collective leadership approach, we emphasize trust, shared power, transparent communication, accountability, and continuous learning. We believe that sustainable change requires the unique contributions, skills, perspectives, and efforts of many individuals. By fully engaging and drawing on the maximum potential of our team, we cultivate an environment where creativity flourishes and where we can collectively drive forward the future of Summit and public education.
Together, with our dedicated staff, students, families, and partners, we are excited to continue this journey, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in education and creating lasting impact for generations to come.
If you’d like to learn more about Summit, please visit summitps.org or email info@summitps.org.
Acknowledging Our Supporters
This work would not have been possible without the generous support of our partners and funders. We’re grateful for your ongoing support in ensuring that we create transformative experiences for young people.
Donors
Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock
Bertha and John Garabedian Charitable Foundation
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Black Educators Initiative
California Commission on Teacher Credentialing
Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation
Charter School Growth Fund
Girard Education Foundation
Leon Lowenstein Foundation
Organizing that Works
Parker Foundation
Robert and Marion Oster
Siegel Family Endowment
Silicon Schools Fund
Washington State Charter School Association
Academic Partners
AI for Education
AI for Equity
Blue Engine
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Center for High School Success
Charter School Growth Fund
IGNITE Network
Instruction Partners
Leading Educators
Transcend
XQ
Board Members
We want to acknowledge and appreciate our board members for the guidance that offer to our organization. Thank you for the time and support you have given us throughout this year.
California
Diego Arambula
Lizzie Choi
Michele Hansen
Steven Humphreys
Robert J. Oster
Andy Thompson
Jimmy Zuniga
Washington
Leslie Liao
Mafara Hobson
Malia Burns
Sherry Woodward
Stefan Sobiek
Thushari Goonertne