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Video courtesy of Starr King parent Seth Grant

Located in the midst of the Potrero Hill Open Space (http://starrkingopenspace NULL.org/skosintheview NULL.html) in San Francisco, Starr King Elementary School serves students from the immediate Potrero Hill neighborhood as well as San Francisco at large. Honoring the spirit of our school’s namesake, Thomas Starr King, our diverse student body of 360 students comes from all kinds of families. The staff and parents are proud that our school serves the community as a gathering place, a learning place, and a place where every child is both respected and challenged to reach his or her potential.

Our school offers four distinct programs to serve our students. These include a Mandarin Immersion Program, a General Education Program, a Spanish Bilingual Program for grades three through five, and a Special Day Class program, for kindergarten through fifth grade, that specializes in educating and supporting children with autism.

Mission

Our students will succeed in a constantly changing world. To do this, we prepare students to excel academically and navigate our diverse society with comfort and compassion.

At Starr King Elementary School, students, staff and families learn to thrive among differences in perspective, class, race, gender, and learning strengths without prejudice or bias.

Our school merges the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) with the four Cs — critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation — so that students can enter the century ahead in a position to make choices and guide their own lives.

Rev. Thomas Starr King

When Thomas Starr King first walked to the pulpit of the San Francisco Unitarian Church in 1860, the eyes of the congregation turned to this small, frail man. Many asked, “Could this youthful person with his beardless, boyish face be the celebrated preacher from Boston?”

King laughed. “Though I weigh only 120 pounds,” he said, “when I’m mad, I weigh a ton.”

That fiery passion would be King’s stock in trade during his years in California, from 1860 to 1864. Abraham Lincoln said he believed the Rev. Thomas Starr King was the person most responsible for keeping California in the Union during the early days of the Civil War.

King’s reputation as a noted orator had led the San Francisco congregation to ask him to come west, with little hope he would agree. During his 11 years as minister of Boston’s Hollis Street Unitarian Church, King increased the congregation to five times its original size and pulled the church out of bankruptcy. Ralph Waldo Emerson, noted essayist and poet, said after hearing one of King’s sermons, “That is preaching!” Churches in Chicago and Brooklyn sought King as their minister, but this popular Boston pastor rejected them. San Francisco, he decided, offered the greatest challenge.

– Starr King School for the Ministry (http://www NULL.sksm NULL.edu/about/thomas_starr_king NULL.php)