Board Member
Founder, Chief Executive Officer/Superintendent, Granada Hills Charter School
Brian Bauer is the founder and Chief Executive Officer/Superintendent of Granada Hills Charter School, an independent TK-12 public school serving more than 6,000 students in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Mr. Bauer began his career at Granada Hills in 2000 as the high school's principal and led the school's successful conversion to an independent charter school in 2003. Granada Hills Charter is one of the largest charter schools in the nation, with a diverse student population of 60 nationalities and 40 languages identified by families. The school is an academic and athletic powerhouse, has an annual waitlist of more than 4,000 students, and offers myriad programs, including all grade levels of the International Baccalaureate program, 25 Advanced Placement courses, pathways in STEM, New Media, and Global Business and Finance, Career Technology Education strands, nationally recognized Special Education inclusion and Independent Study programs, Visual and Performing Arts, among many others.
Mr. Bauer began his teaching career in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 1991, teaching ESL, English, and Spanish at Bell and Manual Arts High Schools and then as an assistant principal at Locke and Franklin High Schools. Mr. Bauer served on the California State Board of Education's Advisory Commission on Charter Schools (ACCS) from 2008 to 2018 and as its chair since 2009. Before joining the CCSA Board of Directors in 2012, he was chair of CCSA's Member Council and currently serves as a founding member of CCSA's Los Angeles Advocacy Council. Since its founding in 2012, Mr. Bauer has been the chair of the CEO Council of the LAUSD Charter Operated Programs for Special Education.
He received his BA from Yale College, an MS from CSU Dominguez Hills and UCLA, and is completing his Ph.D. in Education Policy at UCLA. Between his teaching and school administration assignments, Mr. Bauer spent nearly three years in Colombia, South America, as a Fulbright Scholar, and during the 2007 summer, led an educational leadership project in Brazil as Fulbright Fellow. In 2008, Mr. Bauer was named California's Charter Leader of the Year. Mr. Bauer also is an Aspen Institute Pahara Fellow.
Mr. Bauer serves as a trustee on several education, community service, and family philanthropic boards, including Great Public Schools Now (GPSN) and Excellence in Education (ExEd). He presently resides in Los Angeles, and in his "free" time, he enjoys playing tennis, kite surfing, stand up paddle boarding, preparing and eating vegan food, and traveling the world.