by NYC Private Schools on May 10, 2009
Author Emily Listfield recently wrote an article entitled, At Chic Upper East Side Schools, The Rich Are Still Really Different From You and Me.
The article is a great example of the kind of environment that can be found in a NYC Private School. There are the elite wealthy, those for whom “recession” is a mysterious and slightly silly word, there are the middle class families who are struggling and juggling, and there are the full scholarship families working, often in the background, through it all.
As a downtown writer and single mother, I knew when I decided to take my daughter out of public school and send her to this most chi-chi of academies that I would be straddling two worlds. And yes, part of me worried that she would feel left out because she doesn’t consider Teen Vogue a mail order catalog or have Pete Wentz cut his honeymoon short to play at her birthday party. But in the end, I opted for the small class size and phenomenal education, even if it meant kissing my savings good-bye. A product of private schools myself, I felt guilty about not giving her the same opportunities regardless of the enormous strain, insecurities and compromises the tuition would exact.
This a common scenario in NYC, where parents who grew up in private schools have made a conscious choice to sacrifice many personal comforts in order to give their children the same possible educational advantage that they had themselves. The article also shows, in a slice of life fashion, how different kids in the same school are, and how diverse their backgrounds.
by NYC Private Schools on March 24, 2009
NYC private schools such as the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School focus keenly on their diverse student body and history of academic excellence.
Columbia Prep is an beautiful and much updated elite NYC private school located in New York, NY and is a member of the NAIS and the State Independent School Organization. It is a nonsectarian, co-educational day school serving children in Pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
The Facts:
Columbia Prep has a student body of over 1000 and one of the lowest student teacher ratios in New York at about 7:1. It has an average of 7 hours of classroom time a day and the current school calendar calls for a 170 day school year vs. the 180 in public schools.
Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School states that it is:
committed to a rigorous and comprehensive college preparatory curriculum with a serious emphasis on art, music and drama. The academic program is structured and balanced within the liberal arts and sciences in order to develop a student’s intellectual potential to its fullest for college and beyond. The program includes English, language arts, foreign language instruction, mathematics, the sciences, current and historical social studies, physical education, technology, and the fine arts. At the same time, the school recognizes its fundamental responsibility to develop good character, standards of conduct and a sense of social responsibility within the school community. The development of good citizenship in our students is regarded as a crucial and integral part of their education.
The Columbia Prep Private School has taken it’s responsibility to keep its facilities upgraded.
Also critical to our success as a school is our physical plant. In the last decade we have opened two new buildings with the finest facilities to be found anywhere, from a state-of-the-art theater to computer and science labs, five art studios, including filmmaking and photography, our third library, and a host of other academic areas that give us an enviable amount of academic space for all of our children and programs PK through 12.
The Columbia Prep NYC Private School is a fine example of schools in New York.