If you want to see the promise and the blessing of education, how it impacts an individual student’s life in the most direct, significant and personal way, come to Great Neck’s Village School.
This past week I attended all three of Great Neck’s high school graduations – North, South and Village School – and the pride and success of our graduates is rightfully shared by the entire community.
Seventeen students graduated Village School last week. Several gave speeches, and while high school graduation speeches are generally filled with the realization and nostalgia of leaving the cocoon of childhood behind to embark on new roads, new challenges, new endeavors, the speeches of the Village School graduates spoke of a school that saved them, “like a knight in shining armor.”
They described – ever so eloquently and powerfully – a nurturing environment at a time when their internal world was in chaos.
Gaddiel Interiano said he came to Village School after having trouble in other schools.
“I was a kid ‘who wouldn’t make it.’ I struggled to find my purpose. The more I struggled academically, the more depressed I got, the more I continued to fail …. Why wasn’t I capable of doing anything to make myself and parents proud? I was a psychological trifecta.” he said. “Then I came to Village School, with its pass/fail, the relationship with teachers. The staff doesn’t label, categorize, pigeonhole students. they value an open mind, a willingness to learn, your best effort.”
For the first time, he said, “I felt good about myself. I loved Village School – I knew it was the place for me.”
He still struggled, though, and said he was “close to giving up.
“Then everything changed. I discovered film. …For the first time, I connected with an area. It brought me out of depression. For the first time, I saw possibilities for life, for career, for happiness,” Interiano continued. “I wasn’t asking for a second chance but a third chance and Village School gave it to me. I will never forget this place…This is where I found myself – my motivation. Village School is like a second family.”
Alisha Louzon-Heisler, who will be going on to Washington University in St. Louis, also credited Village School with providing the sort of educational environment that allowed her to come into her own, to fulfill her ability, by focusing on the students as individuals.
“When so many don’t take the time, when they expect a homogenous group of cookie cutter students (which we are not),” she said, “Village School is like a heroic knight in shining armor for each student. I was saved by Village School.”
She clearly felt comfortable enough, safe enough with her fellow graduates, their families, the teachers, administrators and school board members, to describe the internal torment she endured before coming to Village School and the clinical depression she had, “probably since fifth grade.”
“I don’t remember being sad,” she said, “I remember being numb. I was good at fooling people – I was popular, class president, they said I was a natural leader.”
With puberty, though, her depression worsened. She was fearful of the outside world. She didn’t go to school for seven months.
“Then I came to Village School and everything changed overnight. If it could be bottled, it would be the most potent medicine,” she said. So much so, that when I was rejected from Brown, much to my surprise, life went on. [Actually, Lauren was wait-listed to Brown, which is a significant achievement in itself.]
“Village School is the knight in shining armor that saved me,” she said.
At Village School, she said, “I have discovered my passion. All because of the activities here, …For the first time, I laughed with others. I had what had been missing – Village School accepted me with open arms.”
She made the distinction with other schools, where there is an expectation of students fitting in, blending in.
“‘People like me’,” she said, “is a ‘population’. At Village School, there is no such thing.” Instead, each student is a “niche” and the school is “a conglomerate of many species of students. Different but fit together. Now I know how dull life would be, surrounded by carbon copies.”
But most people in the community – including families who may benefit the most by the educational environment it offers – have either wrong impressions of the school or no conception at all.
“Village School is well kept secret,” Laura Miller of the Village School’s PTA and the mother of a graduate said. But she wants people to know “it is a warm, inviting place, embraces all students, a god-send.
“It offers an alternative way of learning, allows kids to learn in alternative way, gives them a sense of belonging.
“One size doesn’t fit all, and too often, education is off-the-rack. Here, education is custom fit.”
In fact, Village School reflects the best of what our community is all about – and has reflected the best of education for 43 years.
Village School offers “alternative education” at a time when school districts, under pressure of testing and tax caps, are being forced to strip away everything that isn’t absolutely mandated and in the process, force students to conform, as well.
And yet, when you go for your masters in education (as I have), they teach you the importance of “differentiated education” – that is, appreciating the different learning styles of children. But under pressure of the Accountability Movement, of the obsession with testing, and the time and budgetary constraints, that is impossible.
Even Village School is not immune from the obsession with testing that has taken hold throughout education. Even though it offers a “credit” system (pass-fail) instead of grades, the students still have to pass five Regents in order to graduate with a Regents Diploma plus a battery of district-wide exams that are used (I think) to measure teachers’ progress (that’s the Accountability Movement).
Here, like all public schools, teachers must spend considerable time “preparing” students for tests – as much as the subject matter and test-taking, as it is dealing with the anxiety that tests provoke (realizing that anxiety and depression are key reasons for the students to be here).
But here’s where most in the community would be surprised: the Village School students pass the Regents at about the same rate as the other Great Neck high school students.
And virtually all Village School students graduate high school (compared to 64% for New York State), and 90 percent go on to college, about the same proportion as North and South high schools.
Village School, indeed, is one of the most academically oriented “alternative schools” in the state and I would guess in the country.
“Whereas most alternative schools are a ‘holding tank’ for students who don’t do well in regular school, normally for behavioral problems, we are one of the most academic alternative schools in New York. We’re all about college prep,” Steve Goldberg, the principal for the past 13 years (and a teacher here for 5 years before that) told me.
“We’ve always had to give Regents – now we have to give other exams as well – but we can mitigate anxieties because we’re so small, we can offer hand-holding, we can flip schedules around.”
In answer to those who argue that class size doesn’t matter (a popular notion among conservatives like The Heritage Foundation), Goldberg says, “perhaps for some, but there are some kids where it matters so severely they cannot attend large classes with their phobias and issues…. For my population, class size really does matter – they feel far more invested, franchised in what’s going on. That’s what they needed.”
Significantly, the drop-out rate at Village School is nonexistent – unlike many schools where “hard to handle” or low performing students are encouraged to drop out, so that the school and the district’s results look better. A student who leaves Village School will likely go to a different program – perhaps the district’s other extraordinary alternative program, the SEAL Academy which also graduates students who say they would otherwise have dropped out – but will still finish high school.
“They don’t have dropping out as an option,” Goldberg says.
It is remarkable in this day and age, with public schools under such extraordinary budgetary constraints, between cuts in state aid and the property tax cap while at the same time facing mandated expenditures, that Village School exists at all. It is a credit to the unwavering support and understanding of our School Board and administrators, each of whom has taken to heart the district’s mission to enable each and every student fulfill their potential, and our administrators. It would be so, so much easier not to bother.
This district has recognized that education is an investment and investing in students – from pre-school on up – pays dividends. Investing in success is cheaper than paying out for remediation. And society should realize that the earnings power (and taxes paid) of a college graduate vastly exceed a high school dropout’s. In fact, a high school drop out is three times as likely to go to prison, and it is much more expensive to house a prisoner than teach a child.
I would venture that few in the community realize, let alone appreciate what Village School is and why we should be so proud to offer it, and many harbor misconceptions.
I spoke with Principal Goldberg about what Village School is, and what it is not.
Village School is a place for young people who have emotional issues and need a smaller, more nurturing environment. Teachers focus on the “whole” student, not just the student’s academic life.
“I look at this place as a place where teachers get to know their students, all of them, very intimately, so they can help them with the day to day as well as the academics, whatever gets in the way of learning. We have only 50 kids in the school, so we know when someone is upset and we can address.
“We are on a first-name basis school – all the teachers on first-name basis, in order to establish relationships.
“Often it just takes an empathetic group of people to make a difference in their lives.”
North and South high schools also are relatively small – the graduating classes are 250-300 – which is a marvel in itself considering the pressure to gain cost efficiencies if we would have one gigantic high school. But Village makes a close relationship with the student a fundamental focus. Classes average just eight kids.
“Also we don’t have grades. We do not want to create a GPA in order to rank kids. We are not pitting one against another….
“Students earn whole, partial or no credit based on performance – but there is no pushing through. If you didn’t do what you need to do to meet the standard, you don’t get credit…..You don’t get a D and get pushed through.”
Students still need 22 credits to graduate high school, and there are some who take five years and others who complete high school in three years.
“We are a general education high school, not special ed, not a therapeutic environment. Our only special ed services are resource room and a school psychologist and all of us serve as guidance counselor, each taking seven students – and North guidance counselor helps with the college process.”
Village School is so successful for students who need this personal attention that one-third of the students come from out of district – places like East Meadow, Baldwin, Manhasset, Port Washington, and Half Hollow Hills – and their district pays a hefty tuition to have their youngsters come, which covers much of the district’s expense for operating the school.
So that dispels the first myth about Village School: that the students are not academically oriented.
Myth #2: That Village School kids have drug problems.
Village School does not accept students who have drug problems or who are coming out of rehab (which is not the same as students who are on prescription medication).
“The Village School had this reputation as being a place where students on drugs go. Nothing could be further from the truth: Nobody is on drugs at Village School. What they do on their own time is their parent’s responsibility, what they do here is mine. We have a ‘one-strike’ rule: one-strike and the student is expelled. We are the only school in the district that has such a harsh policy – in the other schools, students would get suspended.
“This is not a rehab, this is not a place for kids with drug problems.”
Myth #3: Village School students do not go on to college.
Ninety percent of Village School graduates go on to 4 and 2 year colleges. “Village School graduates go to college and to the same schools as the other high schools.” (The school’s website lists colleges where graduates have gone, such as Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, NYU, Tufts.)
Village offers a senior seminar, a course for seniors applying to college, where they practice writing essays and applications, get tutoring for the SATs. We do anything we believe is in the interest of getting into college and surviving college – so if research is missing, we add research to all the classes, such as citations.”
These days, there has been a lot of discussion nationally about how poorly prepared students are when they enter college – many require remediation for basic skills like writing and research.
But Goldberg says that village School graduates are equally successful as the rest of the district’s graduates at college. “In my investigation of North and South, our kids do the same – some transfer and for some college doesn’t work out, but for the majority it does, and they do well. They come back with incredible GPAs.”
But what happens when they leave Village School where there are typically just eight kids in a class, to go to college where they will not have the same personal attention?
“We get them at a critical time in their lives…they have felt like a failure and Village School gives them a sense of success, self-confidence.
“By the time they go to college, they have been built up to believe they are ‘can do’ kids. When we got them, they weren’t so sure of themselves, and needed the nurturing.”
What about career success? What do Village School students go on to do in their careers?
“Village School is not a step down, it is a step to the side – just a different way to do school,” Goldberg says. “Our students go into same jobs – doctors, lawyers, teachers – no difference, except the way that the educational institution operates.”
Village School also has an internship program which students take advantage of in the second semester of senior year.
Elan Hall, who many may remember won the “Top Chef” reality show contest, went to Italy for cooking school during his senior year at Village School, and when he returned, he was accepted to Culinary School.
Nikki Blonsky, who has achieved success as a movie actress, did an internship with Janine Robinson at JF Kennedy School in the music program because she was considering becoming a music teacher.
“All the elementary schools take our kids who are interested in becoming teacher.”
Who should think about Village School? “A parent whose child is not functioning up to the capacity the parent knows the child has – for one reason or another – possibly an emotional reason. I believe there is an entire population of students in Great Neck who would benefit, but because of misinformation and rumors, won’t come near.”
“These kids all get along with one another, feel close with the staff -it is a place where real education occurs,” Goldberg tells me. “The students are inspired by what they are learning, they talk about it. I feel blessed to be working in this place…”
That’s because what Village School is doing is what public education used to be about – before it became a target for politicians and for-profit education industry, and demeaning teachers became sport.
State Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel is not one of them, though. She just wrote an op-ed that frankly breaks with Governor Cuomo who is enthralled with testing and e-learning and tax caps for schools.
“Today’s children are overwhelmed by the pressures of abundant tests,” Schimel wrote. “Parents are alarmed by their children’s fear, and teachers are overwhelmed by the reality that test scores of anxious children can be the thumbs up or thumbs down to their careers…
“I see a worrisome reality, the love of learning and developing our children’s greatest abilities through education is at risk. Children must be encouraged to soar in a nurturing and stimulating educational environment. Public schools have been given a monumental task- to fix all that ails our society’s youth. They cannot do it alone. If a child comes to school hungry, or if bullets fly when they play outside, tell me how is she or he going to soar?
“Public education needs a transfusion of love and support. It’s not just the money that our public schools want –it’s the respect. Real educators know that it is not testing and curriculum that allows a child to soar- it is an atmosphere of encouragement and hope,” Schimel wrote.
She should have been at the Village School graduation, to see that ideal of education, that spirit kindled.
