School portraits / A school with something to announce
Cate: the announcements have a runway
The campus store got a fashion show. A visiting student had a few thoughts about assembly.
Cate School is a boarding school in Carpinteria, California, and at its spring family weekend in 2024 the daily announcements came with a fashion show. Students had led their families into the amphitheater for assembly, and the news arrived alongside a snippet of the spring musical, The Wizard of Oz. The clothes were finds from the Blue Ewe, the campus store, a name that does rather a lot of the welcoming. I feel we should pause there. An announcement has managed to develop production values.
Tori Kim, reporting for the student paper, called it one of the more energetic assemblies of the year, which is a useful qualification. Nobody need picture an ordinary reminder about a room change arriving with a chorus line.
Assembly left an impression on a visitor two springs later, too. In March 2026, Cate held its revisit day, when prospective students spend a day on campus. An incoming student, Patrick Charvel, told the school paper that the all-school assembly was exciting and lively, which he contrasted with his own school, where, he said, you have to be "dead silent the whole time."
Head tour guide Wil Rivera, speaking to the same paper, said the day felt fairly authentic to him. He added that some things get left out, and that the food is better on revisit day. A guide who volunteers the footnote is a good sign, and no prospectus has quite the same rhythm. Enthusiasm sounds more convincing when it can leave a little room for lunch.