Spotlight On: Kara Locke, Executive Director, Riviera Preparatory School

Key points:

• • Riviera combines rigorous academics with personalized support in a small-school environment.
• • Hands-on learning helps students connect classroom lessons to real-world opportunities.
• • Athletics, wellness programs, and student activities support well-rounded development.

June 2026 — Invest: spoke with Kara Locke, executive director of Riviera Preparatory School, about pairing rigorous academics with personalized support and real-world learning in a close-knit school community. “We want students to feel stretched in a healthy way, with a clear bar in front of them and the support to reach it,” Locke said.

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How is Riviera Preparatory School’s mission of challenging, supporting, and inspiring students reflected in the day-to-day experience for middle- and high-school students?

Riviera has a tremendous legacy. We celebrated our 75 year anniversary this school year. Our mission has been consistent over this time. While our approach evolves, our identity does not. That foundation is the bedrock for what we do every day.

The first part of our mission is about challenging students, which is all about rigor and high expectations. In our classrooms, you will see critical thinking, analysis, debate, transferable skills, and writing exercised daily. We want our students to feel stretched in their learning every day with a clear bar above them and the support to reach it.

Students should always be on their tiptoes when they’re learning. The bar should be within reach, but they should have to stretch and struggle in a good way to get there. If they are flat-footed, we are not pushing enough. If the bar is so high that they cannot jump for it, the challenge is unrealistic. We work to calibrate that balance in every classroom.

The second part of our mission is about supporting students. Riviera’s model is academic rigor paired with personal, individual support. We are a small school across both our day school and prep school, serving students from age 3 through 12th grade. We have more than 1,100 students total, with 650 at the Prep campus. That scale allows us to really know students, their learning styles, what frustrates them, and what motivates them, and in many cases, we know them over years, not months. That makes it easier to match the right supports to the right student at the right time.

The third and final part of our mission is about inspiring students. School should spark joy and curiosity. We want students to have hands-on experiences that help them discover what they want to study and who they want to become. Yes, we care about grades, test scores, and college outcomes, but we also want students to feel inspired to do big things in their careers and make an impact on the world.

How does Riviera’s small-school environment benefit student learning, and what results are you seeing from that approach?

At Riviera Schools, our small-school environment is the engine behind everything we do. Our classes are never larger than 20 students, and our average is closer to 13. That size naturally builds strong relationships, but the real advantage is what we do with that closeness. When teachers truly know their students—how they think, where they struggle, what excites them—they can differentiate instruction in meaningful ways. We expect that of our faculty. Once you understand who each student is, you tailor strategies so that each one is challenged appropriately and supported effectively. No one disappears in the back row. No one is left without stretch or support.

That intentional approach is reflected in our outcomes. Our students consistently earn high passing rates on Advanced Placement exams, with many achieving top scores across disciplines. The Class of 2025 was awarded more than $16 million in scholarships, and its graduates earned acceptances to highly selective institutions, including Cornell University, while previous graduates have earned acceptances to institutions such as Dartmouth College, Boston College, and Carnegie Mellon University. Those results are not accidental; they are the product of a model designed around individual growth and high expectations.

This year, we strengthened that model even further by moving to the NWEA MAP Assessment. We administer it twice annually. Students take it at the beginning of the year as a diagnostic, which sets an individualized growth target. We reassess at the end of the year to measure growth and value added. Because the assessment is adaptive—it adjusts in real time as a student is performing—it gives us nuanced insight. Just as importantly, the feedback parents receive is personalized to their child. It’s another way we connect instruction directly to each student’s needs, ensuring progress is both measurable and meaningful.

Our size also gives students something equally important: agency. Students can advocate for experiences and opportunities through student government and through more informal channels. They can email school leaders and be heard—and they often do. Some of our newest initiatives and expanded programs have emerged because students spoke up and helped shape the Riviera experience. That kind of authentic student voice and leadership development is much harder to cultivate in a much larger institution.

Ultimately, our small-school environment allows us to combine rigor with responsiveness. We can set ambitious academic standards while remaining deeply attentive to the individual. The result is not only impressive college placements and scholarship totals, but confident, capable young people who know how to think critically, lead thoughtfully, and pursue opportunity with purpose.

Riviera emphasizes real-world experiences such as projects, internships, and guest speakers. How do those elements prepare students for college and future careers?

Experiential learning is deeper learning. When architecture students visit a construction site, they see what they have been learning in the classroom in real time. When our HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) students attend the HOSA conference, they experience the expectations and energy of a professional community. Those moments help students connect coursework to real life and start asking whether a pathway is a fit for them.

We also bring in business leaders from across Miami-Dade County for a guest speaker series connected to our business program. They represent a wide range of industries and backgrounds. We ask them to talk about their business successes, but also to talk about their failures and their journey. Students learn resilience and perseverance, and they see what it looks like to navigate setbacks with perspective. People call these soft skills, but I think they are critical life skills, and they can be some of the hardest skills for young people to develop.

Being a smaller school helps us deliver experiential learning more consistently. It is easier to organize trips, projects, and partnerships, but the bigger point is that students find it more engaging. It makes learning feel relevant, and it strengthens their connection to the school because they see their interests being taken seriously.

Riviera offers extensive extracurricular and athletic opportunities. How do those programs contribute to student growth outside the classroom and build community?

Students do best when they are happy and healthy, and for teenagers, that often means having activities that matter to them. We hold a high academic bar, but we do not want achievement at the expense of well-being. We want athletics and extracurriculars to fuel academic confidence, and we want academics to fuel pride and purpose in the broader school experience.

Riviera has long offered a robust athletics program for our size, and we have expanded it in recent years. We launched competitive athletics at our day school campus, which means younger students now have interscholastic opportunities before they reach the prep. That has strengthened continuity across our age 3 through 12th-grade community.

A moment that captures that community is Senior Night for varsity basketball. Our 12th graders were honored, and our first through fourth graders from the day school basketball team came in their jerseys and cheered them on. That kind of cross-age celebration creates belonging for younger students and recognition for older students.

We also respond to student interest. Our middle school girls approached us and asked to bring back girls’ basketball, and we made it happen. They completed their second season recently, had a strong year, and we are positioned to elevate that program further next year. We are also launching a beach volleyball team, and flag football as an emerging sport nationally. Riviera is rooted in history, but we are energized by innovation, and we work to balance tradition with new opportunities for students.

Our boys varsity basketball team has captured three state championships, a testament not only to elite talent, but to a culture of preparation and unity, and now stands poised in pursuit of a historic fourth title. Our girls varsity volleyball team has likewise distinguished itself with district championships, exemplifying tenacity, cohesion, and competitive poise. Equally celebrated, our award-winning dance team continues to set a standard of artistry, precision, and school pride that resonates well beyond competition floors.

Riviera student-athletes are also redefining benchmarks in track and field, breaking school and meet records with remarkable consistency, while our programs in soccer, swimming, tennis, baseball, cross country, and golf reflect the same tradition of excellence and sportsmanship. The impact of this culture extends well beyond our campus, as numerous Riviera student-athletes have earned full athletic scholarships to leading institutions, including Cornell, affirming that our pursuit of excellence prepares students not only to compete, but to thrive at the highest levels.

Across every arena, Riviera demonstrates what a premier independent school should embody: ambition anchored in integrity, achievement grounded in teamwork, and a steadfast belief that athletics and the arts are essential extensions of a truly exceptional education.

What initiatives has Riviera implemented to support students’ social and emotional development?

This is an area I care deeply about. It is our responsibility to help students learn, but also to help them stay healthy, physically and emotionally. Over the past two years, Riviera hired two licensed mental health counselors, one on each campus. They respond to student needs in the moment, but much of their work is proactive. They create spaces for mindfulness and healthy breaks, especially during midterms and finals. They might invite students into the courtyard for a mindful moment, set up a place to color or sketch, or provide small, encouraging touchpoints like motivational stickers. These moments remind students that mental health matters and that taking a reset is part of learning well.

We also support parents through quarterly Bulldogs Thrive sessions, where experts speak on topics relevant to student wellness. Recent sessions have addressed supporting children who show signs of anxiety, and we have also brought in experts on mindfulness, technology use, and eating disorders. The goal is to give families practical resources and a shared vocabulary for supporting students.

Finally, we introduced Thrive Time this year. Once a week for 30 minutes, students meet in small groups of about 10 with an adult. It functions like an advisory, but with a structured weekly topic focused on a life skill, such as resolving conflict, advocating for something you care about, or building healthy habits. Lessons are tailored by grade level. We treat it as a protected space in the week because we believe these skills are central to student success, and central to our mission of challenging, supporting, and inspiring students.

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