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The UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development called for a complete "rethinking of education" to restructure the way teens learn about economic, social, and environmental problems. The change urged by the UN is in the hopes that when sustainable education is learned at a young age it will preserve life and mitigate poverty and universal financial troubles. The goal of New Roots is to help young people become key components of various movements to create thriving economies, save ecosystems, and work on social change. The school will integrate the best theories and practices of a sustainable education into the core curriculum for grades 9-12.
Tina Nilsen-Hodges, founder of New Roots as well as a teacher and curriculum developer for New York State, has had the idea for a sustainable high school for the last few years.
"Tina and I met and we talked and ironed out what our approaches would be," said Jason Hamilton, an associate professor of biology and environmental studies at Ithaca College. "And we wanted it to not be a private school."
Hamilton said the school plans to settle in at about 200 students total for four grades. The first year of the school's opening will start with tenth and eleventh grade with about 50 students. Those students would move up a grade every year after that allowing for an incoming class.
"If all you do is start with ninth graders then you have only one class in a school and it can feel pretty isolated," said Hamilton. "The idea was we can't just start an entire school all at once, but it would be better to start two classes at once."
As of last week, the New Roots Board of Trustees, comprised of educators and intellects dedicated to education and sustainability, submitted their official application to New York State to be approved as a charter school. Hamilton said it will take the state approximately three to four months for them to review the application for possible approval. New Roots applied as a not-for-profit charter school that's public, but is not associated with the Ithaca City School District. New Roots will be under the New York State School District system instead having to make their own board of education by interviewing their trustees and other educators to prove to the state that they're "competent" enough to run a school.
"One of the ideas is access to everybody," said Hamilton. "So we kind of set what our principles were. When we started pursuing how one makes a school based on sustainability education in Ithaca we came to the conclusion that the only realistic way was to try to apply for a state charter school."
As a state charter school, New Roots is a New York public school that is not a part of ICSD, however, if New Roots is granted charter status they're free to take students from Ithaca High School. Where the public school students go, state funded money follows. "Some of the money that would typically come from the state going to the ICSD to Ithaca High School would instead go to this new charter school," said Hamilton. "We talked to the ICSD about potentially working with them to do another alternative high school like the Alternative Community School (part of ICSD), but it just didn't seem like that was where they wanted to put their energies right now.
"That's why we decided to go to this alternative. Some would say we're a competing school against the school district. I know the whole idea of charter schools is fairly controversial. We're not an educational company. We're just local educators who decided to get together and do this."
Ideally, the school wants to nestle itself in the heart of downtown Ithaca making itself available to local businesses and organizations to help nurture their potential students' growth in the form of internships and employment. However, before any ink can dry on new lease papers, New Roots needs money that is not available until they're approved by the state. The Board of Trustees is hopeful that the state's blessing comes before their anticipated September 2009 opening.
"Our philosophical statement is we wanted to try a new way to educate our children around the principals of sustainability and there's no other way to do it than to make a charter school to meet the goals we have," said Hamilton.
For more information about the school visit www.newrootsschool.org.
-Danielle Henbest
