Months after parents and staff at the Mills College Children’s School learned the school would be closing its doors next June, a partnership with a Rockridge school is providing a lifeline.
School leaders announced last week that Aurora School, a private north Oakland school serving 76 students in kindergarten to eighth grade, would be welcoming students and educators from the Children’s School beginning next year.
“The more and more that we were in discussions, the more we found in common and more potential we saw in taking the best of each of our communities,” said Lynsey Kamine, the head of school at Aurora School. “We also want to offer a route for the legacy of Mills’ early childhood program and lab program to carry on.”
Aurora is expecting around 20 students to enroll from the Children’s School, Kamine said.
Mills College Children’s School was established in 1926 to provide hands-on, inquiry-based learning in the early childhood years, as well as ample outdoor recreation in the extensive grounds of the Mills College campus. As a lab school, it also served as a training and research laboratory for Mills undergrads and graduate students studying education.
In 2021, Mills College announced it would no longer be granting degrees or admitting students and would instead become a research institute, after years of falling enrollment and financial issues were exacerbated by the pandemic. Months later, the school announced it would be merging with Northeastern University, a Boston-based university with 12 other satellite campuses, including ones in San Jose, Seattle, Miami, and London.
Parents and staff began worrying about the future of the Children’s School under Northeastern’s leadership when, parents told The Oaklandside, enrollment was put on hold earlier this year. In June 2025, the announcement came that they were all fearing: the school would be closed at the end of this school year.
“I always wanted to fight to the bitter end to save the college or save the Children’s School,” said Natalee Kēhaulani Bauer, a Mills College alumna and the parent of one Children’s School graduate and one current student. “This is a loss for the college and the community that can’t be easily rebuilt.”
Bauer said she’d been planning for her younger daughter, a fourth grader, to attend Hillcrest, a K-8 public school in Oakland Unified School District, where her son is in seventh grade. The merger with the Aurora School opens up another option. Her family’s decision will likely depend on what financial aid the merged school can offer, Bauer told The Oaklandside.
The Children’s School teaches children as young as 2 and has a highly regarded early childhood education program. Students as well as educators from the Children’s School — including the assistant head of school — will transition to Aurora School, according to a press release from Aurora. In the first phase of the Aurora School expansion, the merged school will establish a transitional kindergarten class for 4-year-olds before they enter kindergarten. Over three years, Aurora expects to expand to a full preschool program, based on the one closing at Mills.
School leaders also hope to adopt the lab school structure, allowing colleges and universities to conduct research and offer professional development to aspiring educators, the announcement said.
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