JODI GRASS Jodi Grass celebrates her 14th year with Oak Grove School this Fall. She started as the Director of Development in 2005 and became Head of School in 2017. The current position brings together her deep interest in the philosophy of the school, passion for youth and parent development and diverse professional experience working with nonprofits and educational organizations in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Ojai Quarterly: How does your background inform your role as the Head of Oak Grove School? Jodi Grass: On a personal level, what most informs my position as Head of School is my deep affection for people, both children and adults. Admittedly, I am a huge parenting geek. I have an insatiable desire to learn everything available on the physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and intellectual development of children. It also supports the lens through which I view and engage with students and is the resource I draw on for cultivating a vibrant and highly engaging school.
environmental regulations and international agreements like the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. How does Oak Grove’s environmental curriculum help students understand how our choices affect the globe, and how can they be active agents in solving the climate crisis? JG: Our relationship to nature is a founding principle. This is why most of our campus is not landscaped. We have explicit parts of our campus that we use for education like our Lost Meadow where trees fall and lots of animals live there so that we can study ecosystems. Then, of course, we teach students about energy use, consumerism, what we do with our waste, and the environmental impacts of landfills, plastics, and single-use items. We don’t have trash cans in our lunch area to impart the wilderness concept ‘Pack in, pack out.’ There’s an awareness from the parents about what comes back home. At school we ask our families to pack in, pack out. We compost everyday through our vegetarian hot lunch program, for which we focus on sourcing locally.
OQ: What do you see as education’s role in helping students thrive in a rapidly changing world? JG: As the world moves away from specialization and industrialized skills, there is a growing demand for the ability to synthesize information. Current employers and world leaders are looking for people who can solve complex problems with an ability to negotiate on a global level, often through conflicting cultural, social and political ideologies. Oak Grove is not just concerned with developing future employees. We are concerned with our future world citizens. J. Krishnamurti, (the founder of Oak Grove), said, “A school, through its students, should bring a blessing to the world.” I cannot think of anything more important than that. OQ: You have 26 years of experience in development and youth education with nonprof its and private schools, including the Morgan Foundation, Girls Inc. and Planned Parenthood. Drawing on this strong background, how do you approach the stereotype that private schools are f inancially inaccessible to most students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, and how does Oak Grove contend with this perception? JG: A really important clarifying point is that independent schools don’t receive money from federal, state and local governments. Although our teachers are highly educated and fully credentialed, as they are elsewhere, private school teachers are often paid less than public school teachers, and that’s definitely the case at Oak Grove School. We don’t have a comprehensive retirement package like the public schools do. Oak Grove’s income is limited to tuition and donations. There’s no other source, so we have to be more conservative in our annual expenses. About 40 percent of our families receive some amount of financial aid. Currently, about 14 percent of Oak Grove families would qualify for free or reduced lunch if they were at a public school, so we do a pretty good job having some financial diversity in our school. OQ: Today’s youth are inheriting a planet in crisis, along with many tools to safeguard the health of our planet — such as national 42
OQ / FALL 2019
