Mission

MLA Partner Schools is a nonprofit organization working to improve schools and empower neighborhoods in some of the most disenfranchised communities in Los Angeles. MLA creates high performing urban schools that combine innovation, equity and access to offer a college-ready education to every child in the surrounding neighborhood. These schools become community focal points that support and strengthen their communities.

An MLA Partner School is a public school designed and managed in a collaboration between MLA, LAUSD and community stakeholders. The city's first Partner School, West Adams Prep, opened in September 2007 to serve 2500 students with a first-rate education, setting a new standard for public schools and anchoring a strategic revitalization of the surrounding neighborhood.

Vision

MLA believes that public schools should be neighborhood schools, designed to serve the needs of a unique community and accessible to the residents who live nearby.  For this reason, MLA focuses its work within the community its founders have served since 1995—the greater community of South Los Angeles. MLA’s vision for the coming years is to extend its work into neighborhood middle schools and elementary schools creating a network of schools within the same geographic area committed to making every neighborhood child college-ready. These schools will become community focal points to empower their surrounding community.

Corporate Info