Episcopal schools offer communities integrated education so that people can determine their own lives empowered with knowledge and confident in their understanding of it. We seek to foster an environment where mind, body, and spirit are awakened to what the world has to offer.

Our Origins

Episcopal schools in the United States were often founded as an alternative to the local absence or perceived shortcomings of public education. These schools sought and continue to provide strong academic focus with broad accessibility. When we were founded in 1975, the public school system in Oakland was divided between the haves and the have-nots. Some 55 years ago, the people of St. Paul's Church saw the need to find a way to integrate schools; the public school system wasn't making it happen. 

Their first attempt started with a partnership. In 1965, we opened our doors as the St. Paul’s Carden School and operated as such for five years before Mae Carden left our location to continue the search for the campus of what is now Redwood Day School. 

St. Paul’s Episcopal School started in 1975 with a renewed emphasis on economic, cultural, financial, and spiritual integration. These commitments led our founders to seek students from across society’s socioeconomic and racial divides in order for children to have a learning experience that was more than books and blackboards. Their premise: to be trained in critical thinking requires education that takes place in conversation with people who represent multiple perspectives.

Our Ethos

At St. Paul’s we do not educate children in the Christian or Episcopal faith, rather we help them understand the world beyond themselves, while supporting them to be confidently grounded in their cultural, racial, and family identities. We want children to know and respect the experiences of others in the world, without diminishing their own traditions. We use the term ‘human literacy’ to express our deepest desire – to develop in students a mindset of openness to a world that is ever expanding in its connectivity and interweaving of human experiences.

Our job as an Episcopal School is not to instill faith but to instill in students strong character, to grant them depth of perspective, and to expose them to as many things as we possibly can, so that, as they develop and make decisions, they make educated choices based on their knowledge and values. We want them to be leaders. To be leaders, they need both information and the skills to evaluate that information critically. They need to discriminate between what they are told and what they know to be true. They need to interrogate their own assumptions and be curious about the perspectives of others. At the crux of all that lies the moral leadership that St. Paul’s graduates carry out into the world.