Citizens of the World Charter Schools Los Angeles (CWCLA), West Valley Campus, is a high performing elementary school in Los Angeles, California adding new classrooms to increase the capacity of students they can serve. The schools’ mission is to provide a socioeconomically, culturally, and racially diverse community of students in the heart of each of their neighborhoods, with an intellectually challenging, experiential learning environment that develops each individual student’s confidence, potential, and individual responsibility as citizens of the world. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) provided a $4.10 million construction loan to CWCLA to support tenant improvements at its West Valley location. LISC has previously worked with the school to finance the acquisition of CWCLA Silver Lake’s Middle School building (2022) and construction (2023) with loans to Pacific Charter School Development (PCSD).
CWCLA currently serves 361 students in grades K -5. CWCLA fosters creativity and academic excellence through a hands-on, project-based learning environment. Their three foundational pillars include strong academics aligned with common core standards, social emotional development (SED) and creating a safe space to celebrate diversity.
The school outperformed peers at the district level by a wide margin in English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. Hispanic or Latino students scored 67% proficient in ELA and 47% proficient in math and 67% of third graders met or exceeded the state testing standards in Math and English Language Arts (ELA). At the time of closing, 26% of CWCLA’s student population is socioeconomically disadvantaged, 31% of students identified as Hispanic or Latino, and 38% as White.
Citizens of the World Charter Schools Los Angeles’ improved school facility will add six new classrooms that will allow the school to increase their total capacity to 651 students. The new facility will include a spacious art room, thoughtful library space, spaces for student services, administrative offices, and a renovated gym. This deal allows us to support a stable-yet-growing, diverse-by-design charter school in Los Angeles. This deal also allows us to partner again with PCSD, Capital Impact Partners, and ExED, who are longtime LISC collaborators and nonprofit developers of charter school facilities.