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Council in Schools

For more than 25 years, The Ojai Foundation's award-winning Council in Schools Initiative has been providing school communities with training and support in the practice and integration of council into the life of school.


Major grants from the Herb Alpert Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Furlotti Family Foundation and the Boeing Corporation help to sustain and support our Council in Schools Initiative.

*Boeing Corporation, Crystal Visions Award 2010
*Named a Promising Practice by the Clinton Administration's Initiative on Race
*Senator Barbara Boxer (CA) calls Council in Schools "an innovative program that helps students explore personal values, increase understanding and appreciation of other cultures, and improve academic performance and communication with teachers and parents."
*Palms Middle School Council Program given Human Relations Education Award from the City of Los Angeles' Human Relations Commission
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TOF's Council in Schools Program includes numerous projects at various national and international cities and towns. In Southern California, we serve more than 6000 students with weekly councils in more than 60 public and independent schools. These students come from highly diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Our programs also serve the adult members of the school communities (teachers, counselors, administrators, parents, and community members) with opportunities to be trained to lead student councils and/or continue the practice of council.

The majority (nearly 40) of the Los Angeles public school programs are supported through the Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Council Practioners Center (CPC), while independent schools and some of the other public school programs are internally funded and administered directly through the Ojai Foundation.

The core mission for Council in Schools is to provide a practice that addresses relationship (connection) and relevance (meaning) in education. These two "R's" have been increasingly neglected in public education, and in the culture at large, for some time. Council provides students and all participants a sense of "coming home."

Council does not teach values explicitly, but exposes students to a process through which values are formed. By learning how to listen "from the heart" to the stories and expressions of others, students and adult participants develop true empathy. They learn to "re-spect" or re-see each other. There are many programs that offer various forms of "social-emotional" education, but few that address this fundamental need in a way that comes from within each individual.

In this time of national and global turmoil and transition, the call for practices that strengthen relationships and mutual understanding is great. Increasingly, educators at all levels (not to mention potential employers) are sounding the alarm that young people are losing their ability to connect and communicate with others - particularly others who are from different cultural backgrounds. They are graduating from high schools and universities technically savvy and "emotionally illiterate." This problem exists in all cultural and socio-economic groups, and is what the practice of council is designed to address.