Why
Los Angeles?
One of three pilot regions — alongside Atlanta and Chicago — for the Alchemy Pot Initiative.
Abundance.
And disconnection.
California produces nearly half of the nation's fruits and vegetables. LA sells abundance to the whole world. And most students here have never grown a single thing.
1 in 4 LA County households experienced food insecurity in 2024 — roughly 832,000 people — at more than double the national average. Among low-income households, the rate is 41%. 56% of LA County parents with young children reported food insecurity that same year.
Across the Garden School Foundation's school garden sites, 75% of students live in food insecure households. The soil is there. The sun is there. The growing season never ends. What's missing is the practice — and the connection between tending the earth and tending themselves.
Students transform campus food waste into living soil using the in-ground Soil Maker. In LA's year-round growing climate, what they build can become a garden in weeks.
The Alchemy Pot practice gives students a structured way to process what feels heavy — mirroring the slow, transformative process of composting.
A student who watches food scraps become living soil doesn't just have a garden. They have proof — in their hands, in the ground — that they can transform what they were given. That belief is what travels with them.
Chronic pressure.
Nowhere to put it down.
The weight LA students carry is real — and it's different from what students face in other cities. It's not primarily acute trauma. It's chronic pressure, sustained and invisible.
The highest cost of living in the country. Chronic housing instability. Immigration anxiety. Families stretched to their limit. Students who come to school already exhausted, already carrying things they've never been given a structured way to process.
LAUSD has been expanding mental health services for years — school-based clinics now in their 30th year of operation. Demand keeps outpacing supply. The Alchemy Pot Initiative doesn't replace that infrastructure. It gives it a daily, accessible practice that every student can use.
Los Angeles is not
starting from zero.
LAUSD has a dedicated SEL program embedded in its 2022–2026 Strategic Plan, described as foundational and multidimensional. School-based mental health clinics and wellness centers have been operating in partnership with LA County Department of Mental Health for 30 years. And Los Angeles has one of the most active urban farming and composting ecosystems in the country — LA Compost diverted 4.2 million pounds of organics from landfill in 2024 alone. Organizations like Crop Swap LA, Garden School Foundation, and Freedom Farms are already working in and around LAUSD schools. The practice of growing soil is already here. What's missing is the framework that connects it to what happens inside the classroom.
LA's urban farming ecosystem is one of the most developed in the country. School gardens, composting programs, and community farms are already operating near LAUSD campuses.
LAUSD's SEL program is embedded in the district's five-year strategic plan. The emotional vocabulary, the classroom time, and the staff capacity are already in place.
A year-round growing season means students can watch something grow from soil to harvest within a single school semester. No other pilot city offers that.
Helping students transform
their worlds.
Inside and out. In the most abundant place on earth. Students who learn to turn dirt into soil — with their hands and with their emotional practice — carry that capacity everywhere. In Los Angeles, the growing never stops.
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