About the School

WHO WE ARE

The Smith School is an alternative private high school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, offering small classes, individualized instruction, and extensive support services to students grades 7-12. We have over a decade’s worth of experience bringing academic success to students who have found that school is too often a place of frustration, anxiety, and underachievement.

As an institution of alternative education, we work to match the diversity and individuality of each student with our creative and innovative teaching strategies, so that proficiency in learning and the self-esteem it brings become the norm. Our faculty members are dedicated and experienced educators, whose commitment to the success and growth of every student helps make Smith a unique and vibrant place.

Founded in 1990 by our Director, Karen Smith, The Smith School offers a flexible program of academic study in a small, informal day-school setting. We hope all parents who feel that their children’s education is not progressing as it should will consider the option of alternative education in general, and The Smith School in particular.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

  • We believe in the power of good teachers to awaken the latent potential of all our students to succeed academically, to grow emotionally, and to overcome with success the various challenges each day brings.
  • We believe in the essential value of alternative education, and in our consequent responsibility to adapt, to respond, to innovate, and to be flexible, in addressing the needs of our students and their families.
  • We believe in a school environment that is, and that students know to be, safe, structured, fair, and exclusively dedicated to education.
  • We believe in the absolute incompatibility of our values with prejudice, bias, or discrimination of any kind, and in the school’s responsibility to act accordingly at all times.
  • We believe that the critical moment of education takes place in the classroom, between the students and their teachers; and that therefore, the school should bring all of its resources and support to make the classroom moment succeed.
  • We believe that principled and informed selectivity in student admissions creates a uniquely diverse and tolerant student body.

WHAT WE OFFER

  • On-site individual counseling and support sessions with our licensed School Therapist
  • On-site speech and language therapy with our licensed Speech Pathologist
  • Regularly scheduled peer group counseling sessions with our licensed Guidance Counselor
  • On-site academic assessment and tracking provided by our licensed Education Specialist.

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT

  • Small classes, with an average size of 5, and a maximum of 8, students per class
  • Individualized courses of study based on our assessment process
  • Years of experience in assisting underachieving students and their families
  • Faculty members who are dedicated and caring, as well as knowledgeable and experienced
  • A philosophy founded on tolerance, compassion, and adaptivity
  • An informal and nonjudgmental environment based on respect for differences and diversity.