100 Years and Still Soaring
Summit School educating Upper Ojai
students for 100 years
Summit Elementary School has educated generations of Upper Ojai children for more than 100 years. With the Topatopa Mountains as its backdrop, the public school between Ojai and Santa Paula is a special place where children are nurtured and learn from kind and masterful teachers.
A hiking trail to the national forest and the top of the iconic mountain range runs right along the school. The Topatopas is also home to the California condor -- the Summit School symbol. Summit is one of five elementary schools, serving kindergarten through sixth grades, in the highly respected Ojai Unified School District. The OUSD is a “District of Choice,” meaning it accepts students from outside its school-district boundaries. The student population in recent years has ranged from 60 to 90 students. Because of the school's small size, the big and small kids all interact as a family, setting positive examples and looking out for each other.
Summit School offers art, music, a school garden, after-school program and many educational and fun field trips. This year, students have studied the local watershed and planted trees at the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy; attended the Ojai Storytelling Festival; learned about sustainable agriculture at a local organic farm; collected pumpkins at Faulkner Farms Pumpkin Patch; and spent three days at the annual outdoor education program on Catalina Island.
In addition to its strong academic and extracurricular programs, the school is a community center for the Upper Ojai area, where neighbors gather for carnivals, potlucks, 4-H meetings and Search and Rescue operations. It is no wonder that the school gets many inquiries from families all over the county or that several students travel many miles from outside their home school districts to attend Summit.
For all these reasons and more, it is easy to see why Summit School is such a magnet. It has top teachers, a beautiful setting and nurturing learning environment. Summit students love coming to school every day to learn, dream and soar.
