Westside Neighborhood School (WNS), an independent preschool-8th grade school located in Los Angeles’ Playa Vista neighborhood, is expanding. The school purchased a 132,000-square-foot building that sits on more than five acres of land just 600 feet from the school’s current campus, which comprises three buildings.
The new acquisition, located at 5340 Alla Road, will be transformative for the school with double the programmatic spaces of its current facilities. The new building includes:
- Additional classrooms for the elementary school, enabling smaller class sizes by providing three classes for each grade in kindergarten-5th grade.
- Relocation of the developmental kindergarten (DK) classrooms to the Alla Road building, creating a dedicated DK/K educational center and opening up additional space in the Early Childhood Center for preschool students.
- Larger DK-8th grade classrooms. Current classrooms average 400-600 square feet. Classrooms in the new building will range from 700-1,000 square feet.
- Programmatic expansion including the addition of a dance center, photography and digital arts, filmmaking, robotics, instrumental music and community meeting rooms.
- The 5.13 acres of land will yield twice the outdoor space the school currently has, and will include lunch tables and playgrounds, as well as additional parking.
“We have worked for over 10 years to position WNS to take advantage of a unique opportunity if and when it might occur to own our school property, and this opportunity exceeds all of our expectations,” says Brad Zacuto, WNS’s Head of School. “This is a transformational moment for WNS that will help secure the financial sustainability and capacity for essential programmatic growth of the school for generations of preschool-8th grade students to come.”
WNS has partnered with architectural firm Smith-Clementi on the site’s renovation with an anticipated opening date of fall 2026.
