Our Founder's Story
Founder and CEO, Aundrey Page
As a former high performing public and charter high school principal, assistant principal, department chair, and mathematics teacher, I am consumed by my drive to support people in actualizing their full potential and create the outcomes they imagine. I have a passion for educational leadership, organizational equity, and supporting leaders to create clear, equitable organizational systems and structures aimed at developing healing-centered, anti racist learning environments. I do all of this while attempting to cook new recipes and watching Stephen Curry take the world by storm.
California Dreamin’
I was born and raised in the Bay Area, California. Born to a white mother and black father, I experienced my share of trials and tribulations at an early age. A month after my seventh birthday, I witnessed the death of my mother and separation from my sister as I began to live with my father full time. Gratefully, the universe had a plan and my paternal grandmother came to take care of me, serving as a model for what finding your life purpose and pursuing equity for all looked like.
After high school, I enrolled in Loyola Marymount University where I received my B.A. in Psychology with an additional major in Business, emphasis on Marketing. In 2011, I was named the International Scholar of the Year in Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated out of hundreds of thousands of members in over seven hundred chapters worldwide.
At Loyola, I also had the opportunity to study abroad and see first hand the impact of inequitable educational systems in countries like Ghana and Nicaragua. During these trips, I became close with a young man, whom I also worked on research with. Brandon Farmer tragically passed a month after his graduation and his pursuit of a degree in educational law catalyzed me to dedicate my life to the work we talked about on those study abroad trips. He is the reason I became a teacher and pursued the fight for educational equity.
Sometimes I feel like Atlanta adopted me
Upon graduation, I accepted a position teaching high school math in College Park, Georgia, right outside the city of Atlanta. Whether it was teaching AP Calculus, Algebra 1, and Geometry, or coaching girls’ basketball (we were city champs!) I was constantly inspired by my students’ resilience despite operating in a system not designed for them to be successful. Each day, we started our class with a call and response that reminded us that today is the day we can make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others. It was this daily reminder that helped affirm my life’s purpose of creating spaces that cherished students everyday and sought to fight against educational inequity.
My students went on to double district math scores on state exams and enroll in AP and Honors math courses triple the number from the years before which led to my ascension to math department chair in my second year. I was also named a finalist for the regional teacher of the year award, selected to train new teachers during the summer and eventually led two entire summer school teacher training programs for over forty new teachers. My most memorable accomplishment was restarting our AP Calculus AB program after a five-plus year hiatus after I was told that “black and brown students couldn’t do Calculus because they had too many deficits.”
After the death of one of my students due to gun violence, I knew I needed to find a way to increase my impact and create a positive school culture that empowered all students to thrive.
I’m going, going, back, back to Cali, Cali
After staying in Georgia for a third year, I decided I wanted to work for a top performing high school creating equitable outcomes for students in inequitable environments and thanks to Google, I found one right in my hometown of San Jose, California. I absolutely loved the four years I spent at the high school in the same area I grew up in and serving as a math teacher, department chair, and assistant principal.
During my time as the assistant principal and AP Statistics teacher, we were ranked the #1 school in the Bay Area according to US News & World Report and had the highest ACT scores in our network of over twenty high schools nationwide. Lastly, my AP Statistics students achieved a remarkable 82% passage rate on the AP exam which was, at the time, the highest passage rate in organizational history.
A Healing Centered School
After 4 years in San Jose, California, I was asked to transition to become the principal of a charter high school located in the historic Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Through over one hundred empathy interviews with staff, students, families, and community members, I sowed the seeds for our school to become one of the first high schools to focus on a healing-centered approach where we created the mission that “San Francisco College Prep cultivates facilitators of healing who work together to dismantle systems of oppression through the discovery of self and the development of empathy for others.”
As principal, my school was ranked the #2 high school and #1 non-selective option in the city of San Francisco and the #7 high school in the San Francisco Bay Area by US News & World Report. Furthermore, we increased enrollment by over 12%, decreased attrition by 15% and created a surplus in our budget, despite inheriting a deficit. We increased Advanced Placement participation rate by over 25% and the number of students passing exams by over 15% (from 42% to 57%) in one year. Finally, we created a model for integrated mental health through a multi-tiered system of support, an innovative choice day where students attended courses of their interest one day in the school week, and increased transparency and involvement by all stakeholders in our discretionary budget.
In 2021, we were awarded a six year accreditation certification by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). I also completed the Relay Graduate School of Education Instructional Leadership Program during my time as a principal.