On Jan. 31, the Beverly Hills City Council Liaison / Beverly Hills Unified School District (BHUSD) Committee met to discuss progress and future plans for the city’s use of the Hawthorne Elementary School campus as both an Early Childhood Center (ECC) and District Office. The committee was comprised of liaisons Mayor Lester Friedman and Councilmember Mary Wells as well as BHUSD Board President Rachelle Marcus and BHUSD Board Vice President Judy Manouchehri.
A City Council Liaison/BHUSD Committee meeting on Jan. 26, 2024, with then-Mayor Julian Gold, Councilmember Lili Bosse and former BHUSD Board Members Noah Margo and Mary Wells discussed the future joint usage of the Hawthorne campus once El Rodeo Elementary School opened in the fall of 2024. Committee members discussed centralizing all preschool programs to create an ECC at the Hawthorne campus. They also discussed moving the District Offices from the Lasky Drive site to the Hawthorne campus.
Over the last year, the city has successfully obtained state licenses for each of the operating ECC classrooms at the Hawthorne campus and is now working with the State Department of Social Services to finalize the license for a new additional preschool classroom at Horace Mann Elementary School. The BHUSD has also moved the majority of operations that took place at the Lasky Drive office to the Hawthorne campus, including holding District School Board meetings on site.
A survey created by both the city of Beverly Hills and the BHUSD in February 2024 was distributed to community members about program offerings they would like to see at the center.
Director of Community Services, Stephanie Harris, presented updates on these proposed programs to the committee. “We’d like to introduce Before and After care. This program would allow parents to have the ability to drop their children off prior to the start or keep them there at the conclusion of preschool, providing assistance to parents that need to go to work as well as need assistance with pick-up and drop-off of their siblings at the elementary school locations. We’d also like the opportunity to offer Parent & Me classes,” Harris said. The earliest of these programs would begin during the summer/fall period of this year.
Harris also informed the committee that it would be beneficial to establish a welcome center staffed with city personnel, where families could learn about and register for the various programs being offered. The city is currently deciding on the best place to locate this welcome center on the school site.
Plans for a Transitional Two program are underway, whereby students and parents would attend programming in a classroom setting. “This would allow for teachers and parents to work together to acclimate students into a classroom setting and better prepare them for entry into our preschool program and then into the district’s Transitional Kindergarten and elementary schools,” Harris said.
The implementation of a half-day preschool program is also under consideration. If approved, staff would begin working with the Department of Social Services to license an additional preschool room and begin the hiring process for additional preschool staff. This program has a potential start date of winter/spring 2026.
The BHUSD offices and ECC classrooms will share the same Hawthorne campus site. As a result, the committee reviewed a revised district-proposed site plan to discuss how best to segregate and secure the spaces used for the ECC programs from the district office areas. Although it was originally planned to divide the campus into distinct district and ECC spaces, the layout of the campus has posed a few challenges in achieving this. The committee is currently working on creating a secure entrance for the ECC portion of the campus.
Friedman emphasized the importance of making the campus secure for preschool children to help achieve the ECC’s ultimate goals. “The goal is we want to create an environment at the preschool so people can enjoy our offerings and matriculate from the ECC to the school district,” he said.
Committee members reiterated that the ECC will serve as a strong introduction to life in the BHUSD. Wells noted, “Just by coming and going, you’ll be exposed to what the culture of being at BHUSD is, and it’ll make you want to stay. Most importantly, it is a place to create community for young families that starts at preschool.”
Manouchehri added, “I think it’s very important to come back to the vision for the ECC and to show the community that the ECC is not an afterthought or an offshoot of BHUSD. It’s the starting point to BHUSD. And so, as we develop the ECC and really tap into its potential, my hope would be that parents … know this is just the beginning of their BHUSD journey.”
