New School for Celebrated Principal Shimon Waronker

New American Academy Principal Shimon Waronker plans to open a trilingual elementary school in Brooklyn this September and the news has the whole city talking. Some of the discussions are about Waronker’s past achievements in New York schools, while other talks focus on the model of school that is planned on.

In an article carried by the New York Post, education reporter Yoav Gonan, the story about Waronker’s new school emerges.

Waronker, a Spanish-speaking Hasidic Jew who earned his stripes turning around one of the city’s most violent middle schools in The Bronx, will open a trilingual elementary school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in September. The kids will all graduate fluent in Spanish and French, in addition to English.
The innovative public school will put 60 kids in a classroom with four teachers, who will stay with those same students from kindergarten all the way through fifth grade

Waronker, who hopes to open as many as 50 replications of the school by 2012 if the model takes off, believes the unusual set-up will help build deep relationships among teachers and students and will allow instructors to target their lessons to kids’ specific learning styles.

Many NYC residents are familiar with Rabbi Waronker’s work and his success in taking a failing school in a tough neighborhood, Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, and turning it around. Waronker, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism, is a former intelligence officer in the United State Army. The school he took over, Junior High School 22, was listed as one of the 12 most violent in New York, with active gangs, attacks, drug use and alcohol on campus.

The future of Waronker’s new school and its very progressive methods of group teaching to an essentially large student body with multiple teachers in open classrooms.

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Moving Your Child Finding out that you need to relocate to New York because of work related issues can be stressful, but what happens if that stress is compounded by the fact that your child, happily attending a great private school in your current area, must now find a spot in a NYC private school?

Changing private schools is never easy, but there are some steps that you can take to prepare your child and your family for the process.

For starters, begin with the knowledge that there is no time to waste. Private schools everywhere have tight competition for open spots, and NYC private schools have some of the most rigorous admission guidelines in the country.

Research:

Use some of our great tips to research the right private school for your child, including research on school philosophies, histories and key academic concentrations. Here is a great post on finding the right New York private school for your child.

Interview:

As soon as you know that your relocation is going to happen, set up interviews with the schools that you believe match your child and your family. An interview will give you a much better understanding of the school than a website or brochure. Since open spots in New York private schools are often hard to come by, you may have to accept being on the waiting lists. While the rate isn’t high, there are attrition factors that come into play during the school year, even some due to students moving to new areas, just like you are doing.

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