New Elementary School Prepares for Opening Day

Light blue and lime green walls, sugar cubes, and sleek lines are the stuff of chic cafés. And the café in The School at Columbia University fits the profile perfectly. No hot lunch here; the new facility will provide a place where parents, teachers, and students can breakfast together on a daily basis.

Columbia's new elementary school on 110th Street is brightly colored and modern, and it incorporates a "sugar cube" classroom model where students' classrooms feed into a communal learning space.

Although the countertops, floors, and desks on 110th Street sparkle, conflicts of opinion between neighborhood parents and The School's leaders may have dulled the shine already. In the past, some parents of local publicly- and privately-educated children have expressed concern regarding The School's potential effect on other schools in the area.

By the numbers, at least, such concerns seem legitimate. For example, tuition at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's, a local parochial school, is $17,000 per year--significantly lower than at The School--for a kindergarten student. By grade four, full tuition is $19,000. But financial grants at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's do not exceed half of tuition costs, whereas The School is more generous with its money in most cases. Tuition at The School for one year is $5,000 higher than at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's. However, children of Columbia faculty automatically receive a 50 percent discount, and 94 percent of community families are receiving financial aid in some form, said Gardner Dunnan, Columbia's assistant provost for special projects and principal of The School. Only six families are paying full tuition.

A number of parents at Ascencion School on 108th Street are worried that The School will lure families away and put their school in danger of closing.

"Catholic schools everywhere are struggling for money. Breaks on tuition are only offered in most desperate of cases. Everyone else pays, and every penny counts at Ascension," said Blancita Martinez, an Ascension parent. If The School offers parents of Ascension children a free ride, Martinez added, they might be likely to switch schools--depriving the parochial school of much needed funds.

But Dunnan said that any effect on local private schools will be "negligible." The principal of St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's declined to comment.

Despite such concerns, 200 kindergarten through fourth grade students will begin classes at The School on Sept. 19. One hundred of these students are children of Columbia faculty, while the other half are local students from New York public school districts three and five. To qualify for one of the 100 available community spaces, 1,700 community residents were involved in two lotteries last year. Once lottery winners were drawn at random, community families were invited to take part in The School's admissions process. Dunnan says that the lottery was a success in part because admission required no more than a "gentle screening."

"It had no standardized tests. The kids came in, they played some games, we observed them doing some things, we talked to the parents, we got school records; for most candidates, that was it," he said.

Dunnan emphasized that roughly 95 percent of the community applicants who were selected through the lottery got in. That is, of 105 students selected at random to begin The School's admissions evaluation, 100 were ultimately accepted and enrolled.

"Overall, I think that people see [the lottery system] as even-handed and fair, and it brings in a diversity of students," he said.

Tamash Mecabi, the parent of a child in a district five public school, disagrees. She said that the lottery process should have accepted 100 percent of those selected.

"If it's a lottery, what sort of admissions analysis should there be? A first grader doesn't have to be qualified to learn how to read; he's entitled to that," Mecabi said.

Dunnan and The School staff have already decided that there will be only one lottery next year, and they will require that parents release their home address before they participate in the admissions process. Dunnan said that, in some cases this year, parents of children who do not live within school districts three or five registered their children using a grandparent's or friend's local address.

Dunnan stressed that half the students enrolled at The School are community members and half are Columbia children for a specific purpose.

"Given that [The School is] supported by the University and has a lot of advantages, if we only educate our own children, we will have failed to fulfill the potential of this project," he said.

The School is designed as a laboratory: one goal is to offer new ideas and methods to public schools in order to improve the general quality of pre-high school education. For example, the "sugar cube" classroom model will feature three classes for every grade level in adjoining classrooms separated by portable walls. When teachers want to break into small groups they may close the walls, or keep them open to expose the children to all three teachers and to each other. Dunnan said that The School's other main purposes include "recruitment and retention, and developing community within the Columbia faculty, which is a huge, fragmented group."

Although Dunnan would not reveal specifics regarding the background and qualifications of The School's faculty, he did say that six have doctorates, the majority have master's degrees, over half speak Spanish fluently, and, on average, teachers have over ten years of experience.

The School will gradually increase in size until the number of students is capped at 650 in 2007.

"That's all we have space for in this facility," Dunnan said. "And eventually, that will become a problem."