K-8 School to Open in Fall

Starting in September, there will be a lot of new kids on the 110th Street block.

After months of construction and community debate, Columbia's new K-8 school, called simply The School, will open this fall. Its accompanying faculty residence will open as well.

By providing faculty members with living space and a private school for their elementary-aged children, Columbia has created a bargaining tool for recruiting young professors to the University. It has also accomplished an unprecedented collaboration with its neighborhood, producing an institution that is the productive of months of work and compromise.

To be sure, many of the community's original problems with the 110th Street facility remain: the potential effect The School will have on other schools in the area, concerns as to The School's willingness to accept students of non-affiliated neighborhood residents, and the physical disturbance of the construction.

Some still feel that The School will lure the smartest students away from local public elementary schools, decreasing even further the already-low standardized test scores, or that it will negatively impact neighborhood private schools, drawing away students and consequently depriving the schools of funding.

"I'm worried about the life of my son's middle school, St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's," said Luvon Roberson, GSAS '85, in October 2002 at a community meeting. "I'm wondering if it can sustain the competition, especially because Columbia University families make up a significant portion of the school population."

The year also brought additional controversy caused by miscommunication and distrust.

Despite those long-running concerns with the opening of The School, things seemed to be running smoothly early last semester. But when Community Board 7 decided in Dec. 2002 to withdraw its approval of zoning variances for the school, a slew of controversy resulted. On Dec. 29, The New York Times reported that the board's unexpected action resulted from Columbia's reinterpretation of its "need blind" admissions policy for neighborhood students.

Board members believed that Columbia was shying away from its original promises: that 50 percent of the student body, selected at random, would be made up of neighborhood children and that financial aid would be made available to those who demonstrated need.

But Columbia cried miscommunication just a week later, saying that there had been confusion between the board and the administration in the last few months of 2002. Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin reaffirmed the commitments that Columbia had made at the project's inception, saying that Columbia's position had not changed. He convinced the board to re-approve the project.

Insisting that the 50-50 policy has always been in the school's best interest, Head of The School Gardner Dunnan said in January that "part of the purpose of the school is to create materials and methods for public schools." If The School only served children of faculty, the findings of its research would not be applicable in public schools.

The scientific purpose of The School that Dunnan alluded to has come up repeatedly in The School's curriculum development this year.

Dunnan said that the school will walk the line between experimental and traditional. Each grade will have three main concepts and grade-level themes; learning will be concept-oriented instead of subject-oriented. There will also be "essential questions" to be answered over the course of the year and "units of study" to break up larger themes into smaller segments.

The School will encourage individualized attention for each student. Children in kindergarten through fourth grade will have three or four classes, with 20 students per class.

The effectiveness of The School's curriculum will be measured by the success of its students, of course, and Dunnan plans to use the findings of the first year as a research tool.

One important facet of The School's academic growth is the Center for Integrated Learning and Teaching, headed by Marc A. Meyer, adjunct professor of the School of General Studies.
CILT will design and implement innovative curricula for The School and develop educational technologies and related teaching techniques. It will also coordinate outreach efforts to independent and public schools and act as a continuing education center, offering workshops, seminars, and professional development for The School's teachers.

An ad placed in The New York Times for teachers for The School drew over 500 inquiries. Student interest was even more overwhelming.

After receiving over 1,700 information requests from parents and students, The School will admit 200 children in kindergarten through fourth grade this fall. These 200 come from a pool of 1,512 students in two lotteries held earlier this fall.

To select applicants from local neighborhoods in school districts three and five, The School held two separate lotteries earlier this spring. Students who were not randomly selected through the first lottery were automatically entered into the second.

A new entering class will be added each year until 2007, when The School will be at full capacity, with 650 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Although officials at The School maintain that the admissions process is designed to be low-stress, some parents say that the financial aid program at the school, which ranges from no aid to nearly full tuition, is complicated and ultimately insufficient.

Tuition for one year at The School is around $22,000. Children of faculty receive a 50 percent discount on this amount. Parents who do not demonstrate that they are desperately in need of funding--but who would still like to provide their children with a better education than that offered by failing local public schools--are usually out of luck. In the end, they may be faced with multi-thousand-dollar tuition bills. Typically, they decide to resort to unsatisfactory public schools instead.

Some of the problems that have plagued The School since its construction was announced in January 2001 have been rectified this year. For instance, Columbia has continued to exceed its goals to hire ethnic minorities, women, and local businesses as subcontractors in the construction project. In most instances, the University seems to be keeping its promises to the community and at times even making better on those commitments.

For example, representatives informed the public at a community construction meeting in early October that the project was ahead of schedule and that it might even be completed earlier than anticipated. The project should be completed by the end of June.