Welcome Letter
Dear prospective parents,
This letter is directed at current parents, as well as prospective new candidates for our Middle and Upper Schools. It outlines the unique and distinctive aspects of the Columbia Secondary School education. I encourage all parents to compare and look at the educational and co-educational opportunities provided by CSS versus our peer schools: the specialized schools (e.g. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science), the elite selective public schools (e.g. Beacon, Frederick Douglass Academy), and the selective schools with early college programs (e.g. Bard Early College). I am convinced that CSS offers an educational experience and opportunities that no other school in the city currently provides. The combination of small size and personalized attention; the added value of our ethnic and socioeconomic diversity; the unique features of our curriculum like J-term, electives, creative arts, philosophy and engineering; the depth and breadth of our enrichment program and advanced placement course offerings, and finally the early college opportunities of Columbia University’s vast undergraduate offerings, represent a package no other school in the city currently offers.
What makes the CSS education a unique experience in public schooling?
1) Proven Leadership – The personal and intellectual traits of school leaders has been shown to be a strong correlate of highly successful schools. Our leadership has demonstrated our capacity to build an excellent school. The leadership at CSS has unique academic backgrounds rarely found in public schools – scientific, academic, with experience in outdoor education, multicultural; and with a bold vision of the future. Under this leadership CSS has won 4 Black Board Awards (including Principal, 2 math teachers, and New School awards). The Principal got the highest possible annual rating (31/31) and the school got the 3rd highest Progress Report of any selective middle school in the city.
2) The benefits of being a small – Many studies have shown school size is a determinant of quality education. CSS’s projected upper school size (384 students in grades 9-12th) is the smallest of any screened or specialized peer school in Manhattan. This will offer our students a more personalized educational experience, similar to that of elite private schools. At 96 students per grade, CSS provides a human scale to the learning experience. Students at CSS will get to know their Principal and their teachers. Our advisory programs will link 16 students to one faculty. Letters of recommendation for college will be written by their teachers and principal, not by some college counselor who barely knows them. We will be able to continue our CAP, Electives, Fitness and J-term enrichment programs with a low 1:18 student ratio – a ratio only private schools with $30,000 tuition offer.
3) The strength of our diversity – “the civil rights movement vision enacted”. No screened or specialized school has been anywhere as successful in securing the levels of diversity that CSS has achieved. Industry and university leaders, and national studies of workplace and university preparedness, have bemoaned that students have not been trained to live, work and learn in a diverse world. Tolerance and appreciation of differences are not things that can be learned as abstractions – they need to be lived. At CSS we force this issue in our core program, in our electives, in our workshops, and most importantly in the kinds of living and learning experiences that are central to the CSS experience (e.g. J-term).
4) An ideal physical plant and location – 2 gyms, an indoor pool, ideally located next to Morningside park as our backyard, walking distance to Central park and Riverside park, easy train access to all of city’s cultural resources (1, A,B,C,D, lines are just 2-4 blocks away). You really cannot beat this old building. We will invest to equip it with the 3 labs that we will need for the high school.
5) Enviable instructional technology infrastructure in the classrooms – our current investment to achieve 2:1 student to computer ratio; smartboards , digital images, and projectors in every classroom will continue. Our engineering lab is the envy of any middle school in the city, and only a handful of high schools have anything like it. We already have college quality field and lab equipment in every science lab classroom, schoolwide high speed WIFI access, digital scopes, etc.
6) A personalized advisory mentoring program – with a 16:1 ratio faculty to student ratio (vs. college counselors or deans with caseloads in the hundreds), will provide our students with a unique personal transition to college, life skills, and personal decision making mentoring.
7) Classroom nests – unlike most specialized schools, teachers at CSS have ownership over their classrooms. This may seem like a small issue but in fact it is determinative to constructing an effective classroom culture – the key to academic effectiveness. CSS classrooms are distinctive environments.
8) Special opportunities that our growth confers – a new school offers students opportunities, particularly for freshman, that established schools do not: the opportunity to start your own clubs, control over the co-curricular activities and programs, an open space for creativity and initiative.
9) The uniqueness and quality of our Academic Programs/Experiences – a true Liberal Arts and Science curriculum. No specialized or selective school in the city has an academic program as rich as CSS. Even without Columbia’s vast undergraduate offerings, CSS Middle and Upper school curriculum stands out in being exceptional in its diversity and breadth – Philosophy and Engineering as core courses, more AP courses than schools 5 times its size, richer electives and creative arts programs, the unique J-term experience. Columbia undergraduate courses are simply the icing on the cake.
a) The richest electives program– more than 20 different electives modeled along the lines of college upper division specialty courses conferring a unique in-depth intellectual experience
b) A diverse creative arts program – a unique creative arts experience blocked in a 3 hour period so that student can actually experience and do art.
c) Engineering – the only school in the nation that offers a required 7 year engineering program for all its students.
d) Philosophy – critical thinking, argument and inquiry skills. The intellectual skills colleges and business are clamoring for, and we are the only school in the nation with a 7 year philosophy program. A program that ponders life’s big questions and that teaches kids how to think deeply and with purpose, find meaning and develop their moral compass.
e) June-term – other schools have travel programs that impact small segments of their population.At CSS, our J-term combines a unique interdisciplinary themed or city based courses, with national and international field programs. These courses are true living and learning communities – all our students participate in them – every year - and no one else is doing this in the nation.
f) Community service programs- CSS is committed to weaving into its curriculum, with increasing level of individual responsibility and autonomy, our student’s involvement in improving the world they live in. At the Upper school students will spend one June semester doing a full-time internship with an organization of their choice. Prior to that student will take a community service course, and log community service hours in our school, and in their neighborhoods.
g) A college orientation road trip – Modeled after what a few elite private school do, CSS juniors will go on a weeklong road trip to a diversity of colleges and universities across the Northeast. Our juniors will experience college first hand – allowing them to make better decisions about college
10) Early college experience at an Ivy League institution – Columbia University. CSS is the only public school in the city in which students can realistically take courses at an institution of this stature. Early college programs at Bard or Bronx Science are offered by school teachers. At CSS they will be real college courses, taken on campus, for academic credit, free of cost.
11) Benefits of our partnership with Columbia University: a unique opportunity for our students to take courses and do research internships at Columbia and to be part of the university’s vast academic and cultural experience. Our faculty also benefit from this access to university facilities and educational resources. No school in the city is associated with an institution like Columbia.
12) Advantages of a CSS education for college admissions – The CSS academic experience likely to be distinguish our graduates from others - advantages for selective college admissions and for marketplace; a strategic plan for college placement; the benefits of being the new kids on the block, and of reduced intraschool competition for limited slots in elite colleges.
A word about reputation and legacy issues. I went to a school very much like CSS, but which was over 100 years old and from which have graduated the elite public servants (1 Governor, 5 Supreme Court justices), presidents of universities, and the leading doctors, lawyers and scientists of my country. I fully understand that legacy issues confer to graduates an aura of expectation, of deliverability and of social and professional connections that are important aspect of a high school education. However, CSS already carries a unique aura around it – as the only public school in the city associated with a Ivy league college, as a school with programs that are of national prominence (philosophy, engineering, J-term), and very importantly as the only screened school in the city with a minority majority population. The combination of these unique features will make our graduates exceptionally well qualified and distinctive for purposes of college admissions.
Because of these reasons I am confident that CSS will offer your children one of the best secondary school educations of any school in the city, and the nation.
