RSS Feed
|
|||||
|
Mayor, Chancellor Announce Smaller Schools To Open Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein recently announced that 60 new, small and academically rigorous secondary schools will open this September. The new schools are part of the Depart-ment of Education’s (DOE) Children First new schools initiative to create 200 effective small schools over the next three to five years. The announce-ment was made at Park West High School in Manhattan. The new secondary schools are small high schools, 6th through 12th grade schools, and middle schools created with the support of private commitments and developed through partnerships between DOE and leading non-profit education and community or-ganizations, including New Visions for Public Schools, the Asia Society, the College Board, the Institute for Student Achievement, The City Uni-versity of New York, the Center for Youth Development and Youth Educa-tion, the International Partnerships Schools, Expeditionary Learning Out-ward Bound, Replications, and the Na-tional Council of La Raza. Mayor Bloomberg said, "These 60 new, small and academically rigorous secondary schools are a major step to-ward our goal of ensuring that every child in our city has the opportunity to attend a great school and get the education he or she deserves. The environments created by small schools are safe and supportive, and provide students individual attention. Students who attend small schools perform better academically and are more likely to graduate and to go to college. With the creation of these schools, we will pass the halfway point in our commitment to create 200 new, effective small schools by September 2007." "We are creating small effective secondary schools in neighborhoods that are in dire need of high quality schools," said Chancellor Joel Klein. "Experience shows that small, academically demand-ing high schools have great success in improving student achievement and graduation rates. The new schools we have developed with our outstanding partnership organizations will be strong learning communities with high expec-tations for student performance." Of the 60 schools, 41 will be high schools with grades 9-12, four will be middle schools with grades 6 through 8, and 15 will run from grades 6 to 12. Each of these schools will begin with an average enrollment of just over 100 students in either the 6th or 9th grades. The schools will expand year by year. At their largest, none of the high schools or middle schools will have a total student body of more than 500 students, and the schools that will run from grades 6-12 will have enrollments of no more than 525 students. The new schools will provide traditionally underserved communities with access to rich, rigorous curricula, including college-readiness programs and smaller, close-knit school communities that foster strong relationships between students and adults. Many of the new schools will be located in the city’s largest high school buildings, transforming them into campuses of effective secondary schools. The next New Small High School Fairs will be held on Saturday, March 20. Additional information can be found at www.nyc.gov. The deadline for students to submit new high school choice forms to their school guidance counselors is March 24. Most of the new small schools open-ing in September are designed to have a particular focus and will use curricula based on that specific theme such as health sciences, history, applied math and sciences, culinary arts, engineering, law and justice, media studies, fire science and safety, architecture and de-sign, international studies, the perform-ing arts and others. The diverse portfolio of new schools includes schools ranging from the International School, which is dedi-cated to educating recent immigrants who are English Language Learners, to the High School for Fire and Life Safety, a school focused on preparing students for post-secondary education and careers in emergency response that was developed in collaboration with the New York City Fire Depart-ment, to the Bronx Preparatory School, a school with a rigorous college pre-paratory curriculum that was developed in partnership with the College Board.
|
for larger version       |
||||
