Gabriella Charter School
Gabriella Charter School offers students, families and the community of Echo Park a rigorous standards-based K-8 academic program with music, visual arts and daily one-hour dance instruction. With an 875 API, Gabriella Charter School is the highest performing public school in Echo Park. Gabriella Charter School attributes its success to their unwavering commitment and relentless expectations that all students can and will succeed.
In 1999, Liza Bercovici founded an after-school program in the inner-city of Los Angeles called Everybody Dance!, which was created in memoriam of her daughter, Gabriella Axelrad, who died at the age of 13 in a car accident. In 2005, due to community demand, Liza decided to open a K-5 public charter school with an integrated dance focus.
Gabriella Charter School opened it doors in the MacArthur Park community to continue the legacy of Gabriella Axelrad by coupling rigorous academics with daily dance instruction to promote a passion for learning and commitment to academic excellence in underserved student populations.
“Our mission is to serve disadvantaged students and to close the achievement gap,” said Bercovici. “Dancers hold themselves to very high expectations - we take that and apply it to academics as well. We have very high expectations for all our students.”
In 2008, LAUSD recognized Gabriella Charter School’s success and invited the school to expand to serve K-8 and relocate to Echo Park to share an elementary school campus with Logan Elementary School. Gabriella Charter School’s relocation to Echo Park is the first long-term charter co-location in LAUSD. Gabriella Charter School has continued to excel and serves a diverse population of students - 89 percent are from low-income families and over 50 percent are English-language learners.
The success of the co-location resulted in both public elementary schools - Logan Elementary School and Gabriella Charter School - making continuous academic progress. In particular, Logan Elementary School has increased by over 50 points since the co-location commenced proving that co-locations stimulate healthy and productive competition benefiting all students.