Dear San Marino Unified School Families,
Welcome to the 2026–2027 school year!
There is something truly special about the beginning of a new school year. Our campuses once again come alive with the energy of students reconnecting with friends, meeting new teachers, discovering new opportunities, and imagining what the year ahead might hold. Whether your child is walking through our doors for the very first time or beginning their final year in San Marino Unified, we are honored to be part of their journey.
This year, our work is grounded in a simple but powerful belief: Every Student’s Journey Matters.
Every student who enters our schools brings unique strengths, experiences, hopes, interests, and challenges. Our responsibility as educators is not simply to teach the student in front of us, but to truly see them, to understand who they are, to recognize the gifts they possess, to support what they need, and to help them discover who they can become.
This commitment is strengthened by the work of Dr. Ara Arzumanian and his See the Gift framework, which challenges us to look beyond labels, assumptions, and traditional measures of success and recognize the strengths and potential within every child. When students know that the adults around them see their gifts, believe in their abilities, and value their individual journeys, we create the conditions for belonging, confidence, growth, and achievement.
That same student-centered commitment is reflected in the Board of Education’s LEAD goals for this school year. LEAD provides a shared framework for the Board’s priorities and for our collective responsibility to move San Marino Unified forward. It reminds us that excellence is not a destination; it is an ongoing commitment to Learning, Engagement, Achievement, and Development across our schools. Through these goals, we remain focused on strong academic outcomes while also ensuring that students have meaningful opportunities in academics, the arts, athletics, and activities and experience schools where they are seen, heard, supported, and empowered.
Our preparation for this school year has also centered on the people who make our schools extraordinary. Before welcoming students back to campus, all SMUSD employees participated in safety and strengths-based practices training. Safety must always be foundational to learning, and our employees share responsibility for creating environments in which students are physically and emotionally secure. At the same time, strengths-based practices help us intentionally recognize what is strong in our students and in one another and build from those strengths.
Together, these efforts reflect an important promise: See the Student. Support the Journey.
We know, however, that educating the whole child is not work that schools can or should do alone. San Marino Unified is fortunate to have an extraordinary community of families who contribute their time, talents, expertise, and resources to our schools. To every parent, guardian, and family member who volunteers in a classroom, supports an event, serves through a parent organization, assists with athletics or the arts, accompanies a field trip, donates to the San Marino Schools Foundation and PTA, helps with an activity, or simply asks, “How can I help?”— thank you.
Your involvement makes a difference.
Our family volunteers expand opportunities for students, strengthen connections across our community, and help create the rich educational experiences that distinguish San Marino Unified. More importantly, your partnership reinforces for our students that education is about more than academic achievement alone. Together, we are supporting the whole child; their intellectual development, creativity, physical and emotional well-being, character, relationships, sense of belonging, and confidence to pursue what comes next.
San Marino Unified has long held high expectations for excellence, and those expectations remain strong. Yet, excellence is most meaningful when every student can see a place for themselves within it. Our goal is not for every student's journey to look the same. Our goal is to ensure that every student's journey is valued, supported, challenged, and celebrated.
As Superintendent, I am deeply grateful for our teachers, classified professionals, administrators, Board of Education, families, volunteers, and community partners who make that commitment possible each day. Most of all, I am excited for our students and for all that they will discover, accomplish, and become in the year ahead.
As we begin 2026–2027, I invite each of us to look for the gift in every student, celebrate the strengths they bring, listen carefully to their voices, and remember that the moments we create today become part of their journey tomorrow.
Every Student’s Journey Matters. Let’s make this year an extraordinary part of theirs.
Welcome back, SMUSD! Please enjoy a snippet of the first day of school and all the smiles I saw in this video.
Warmly,
Linda de la Torre, Ed.D.
Superintendent
San Marino Unified School District