An accreditation team from the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) visited the Middle and Upper School from March 2-4 to evaluate the school as part of its re-accreditation process. The team consists of 10 volunteer educators, staff members and administrators from independent schools in California. The accreditation follows the school’s submission of a self-study report that evaluated itself in 16 different categories. President Rick Commons said the objective of the accreditation team is to verify and confirm the report the school already wrote.

“It’s a guided feedback system and it will result ultimately in a report that will come in the summer that will re-accredit Harvard Westlake with recommendations which we essentially have written ourselves in the self-study,” Commons said. “We have pointed out things that we’re concerned about and they may say, ‘we actually think that what you have as secondary should be primary,’ but they’re probably not going to come up with things we haven’t already pointed out.”

Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the accreditation process is more procedural than consequential for the school.

“For a school like us, not to say that we shouldn’t be always thinking about how to get better, but there’s not a real fear that we won’t get accredited,” Slattery said. “Most of it is formulaic. It’s like, ‘we just need to make sure that you are actually doing the things that you said that you’re doing.’ It’s a little bit of a hoop to jump through.”

Chief Financial Officer David Weil ’93 said the main benefit of the accreditation process comes from the reflection that occurs when creating the self-study report.

“The accreditation process is meant to be something that encourages a tremendous amount of self-reflection,” Weil said. “What I’m hoping to get out of it is the value of the process itself. It’s being introspective, thinking about the future of the school and where we are today and how those line up. In some sense, before the visit even takes place, we have already gained the benefit of the process. The results are the icing on the cake.”