Principal's Message

 Welcome to the 2024 - 2025 school year!

“Harding creates an environment where students are empowered to engineer solutions, express themselves creatively, and become agents of change.” HUPS Mission

“Students at Harding take action to change the world.” HUPS Vision

As we look forward to the 24/25 school year, our focus will be that of alignment and cohesion.  We are a cohesive team and hope that you become an active part of our enthusiastic community!  I can   say with confidence that our school culture is something that you feel right away.  It is a caring place with student agency, collaboration and creativity at it's core.  This culture is created not only by our students, staff and parents but also by our extended partners; UCSB, First 5 of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Library, Santa Barbara Food Bank, SB County Office of Education and the SB Neighborhood Clinics Health Linkages to name a few. Our continued work  is to provide our community with a hub for the westside; a place where our all can come to learn, play and have their needs met.  Below are some things to expect in 2024-2025 that support our westside community:

• The Mountain playground will be open during summer from 9:00 until 6:30 and during the school year from 2:00 until 6:30 Monday - Friday  - we ask that you please leave your dogs at home :)

• Planning and funding to create a full service Community Resource Center on Gillespie - funding recommended by Congressman Salud Carbajal 

• The Santa Barbara Library’s “Library on the Go” van will be on the Mountain playground every Wednesday from 12:30 - 2:30 and then from 3:30 - 5:00.  

• The Santa Barbara Food Bank will be at Harding on the fourth Tuesday of each month from 4:00 - 6:00 in the auditorium.

We are proud of the outstanding growth that occurred last year.  We had 28 Harding Millionaire Readers in grades 2 - 6 which represents the most students to achieve this annual accomplishment to date!  We have recently launched new academic curriculum that is well aligned with our International Baccalaureate pedagogy.  Teachers will be working with our instructional coach to merge the SBUSD Wit and Wisdom curriculum with the standards and practices of the Primary Years IB Program.  We will continue to provide student centered learning; challenging students to work together, to solve problems and to create products to enhance our learning environments.

Our theme this year is ALIGNMENT, COHESION AND TEAMWORK !  We encourage our staff, students and parents to believe in our collective potential by challenging ourselves and our children to never give up, to embrace the productive struggle needed to learn and to be a reliable participant by coming to school every day, ready and on time.

Thank you for being a part of the Harding Learning Community!  It is going to be another GREAT year!

Warm regards,

Veronica Binkley, Principal