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Opening A Private High School Downtown Is So Hot Right Now
By
Garth Johnston
Published Aug 15, 2011
Modified Aug 15, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Aug 15, 2011
Modified Aug 15, 2011
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For sometime now, families have been pouring into lower Manhattan left and right. Very wealthy families with very wealthy kids who need to be educated. And though the public schools downtown are quite good, there is already a limited supply of seats in the elementary school arena. By the time it comes to send Zelda and Holden off to to high school well, the choices are few and far between. But not for long. Though the last attempt to open a new high school downtown was a victim of the economy, two very different schools are now making a go of it. One has deep New York roots and the other is...ambitious.
First up is the 117-year-old Grace Church School. The planned $36,000-a-year Grace Church High School, set to open off Cooper Square in September 2012, is actually the school's second stab at educating the teen set (the old high school closed in 1947). The new division will have its own campus in an under-construction building a few blocks south from the main school and aims to shake up standard education tropes (the school day may end at 5:30 p.m., tenth-graders will have a rumpspringa-like month in which they won't go to class and instead will pursue an independent project) but it will also still be a part of Grace, a school with a history of solid academics. According to the New York Association of Independent Schools, the Grace High School is "the biggest expansion of an established city private school in at least a decade."
Meanwhile, the other new big downtown school is aiming to open with a bang—and lots of press. Over in Chelsea the $40,000-a-year for-profit Avenues World School is also planning to open in the Fall of 2012 before going then expanding worldwide. But where Grace is trying to continue and expand on its traditions Avenues is trying to create them out of a whole cloth. It is also appears to be seeking a less diverse student body than its peer (economically, at least). The Journal today perfectly sums up the approaches of the two schools: "While Avenues has hosted elegant catered events to recruit new parents, Grace Church has hosted only a handful of events for current students and their families, serving wine and soda."
With competition for New York's private schools famous fierce, and so many kids now living downtown, expect to hear a whole lot more about these two schools as their admissions processes start in the coming months.
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avenues school
grace church
grace church high school
manhattan
private schools
Garth Johnston
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