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===Class Presidents===
===Class Presidents===
In addition to the Governing Council which enacts school wide policy, each grade 9-12 elects their own Class Presidents. The Student Body President, Class Presidents, and school administration are responsible for execution of the Governing Council's laws. The Presidents of the Senior Class, Junior Class, Sophomore Class, and Freshman Class are Justin Katiraei/Katie Cacouris, James Ruben/Pierre-Alexandre Eid, Alex Posner/Grant Rosen, and Jackie Goodman/Danny Brereton, respectively.
In addition to the Governing Council which enacts school wide policy, each grade 9-12 elects their own Class Presidents. The Student Body President, Class Presidents, and school administration are responsible for execution of the Governing Council's laws. The Presidents of the Senior Class, Junior Class, Sophomore Class, and Freshman Class are Justin Katiraei/Katie Cacouris, James Ruben/Pierre-Alexandre Eid, Alex Posner/Grant Rosen, and Jackie Goodman/Danny Brereton, respectively.


===Constitution Committee===
===Constitution Committee===

Revision as of 18:40, 23 December 2010

This article is about the private school in New York City. For other schools named for Horace Mann, see Horace Mann School (disambiguation).
Horace Mann School
File:Hmlogo.jpg
Address
Map
231 West 246th St.

[Bronx]
,
New York
,
10471

United States
Information
TypeIndependent, college preparatory school
MottoMagna est veritas et prævalet
(Great is the truth and it prevails)
Established1887
HeadmasterDr. Thomas M. Kelly
GradesNursery 3's-12th
Enrollmentapprox. 1,750
CampusUrban and Suburban
Color(s)Maroon and white
MascotLions
NewspaperThe Record
YearbookThe Mannikin
Websitehttp://www.horacemann.org

The Horace Mann School is an independent college preparatory school in New York City founded in 1887. Horace Mann offers courses from nursery school to the twelfth grade and is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. The Upper, Middle, and Lower Divisions are located in Riverdale, a neighborhood of the Bronx, while the Nursery School is located in Manhattan and the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, a 275 acre (1.11288 km2) campus in Washington Depot, Connecticut, is the school's outdoor and community education center.

History

The school was founded in 1887 by Nicholas Murray Butler as a co-educational experimental and developmental unit of Teachers College at Columbia University.[1] Its first location was a building at 9 University Place in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The school moved in 1901 to 120th Street in Morningside Heights.[1] Columbia University followed suit soon afterwards, moving northwards to its present campus. The name of the school can still be seen on the northern-most building at the Columbia campus, named Horace Mann Hall, after education reformer Horace Mann. However, Horace Mann was becoming a school in its own right instead of a teaching laboratory, and it became more independent of the Columbia University and Teachers College. The Teachers College therefore created the Lincoln School, located on 110th Street, across the street from Central Park, to continue its experiments in teaching.

Shedding its co-educational roots, the school split into separate all-male and all-female schools. In 1914, the Boys' School moved to 246th Street in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and during the 1940s it severed formal ties with Columbia University and became Horace Mann School.[1] The Horace Mann School for Girls remained at Teachers College, and then merged with the Lincoln School in 1940, and finally closed in 1946.[1]

The New York School for Nursery Years (founded in 1954 on 90th Street in Manhattan) became the Horace Mann School for Nursery Years in 1968, and was co-ed.[1] In 1972, Horace Mann merged with the Barnard School, next door in Riverdale, to form the Horace Mann-Barnard Lower School for kindergarten through grade six, located on the former Barnard School campus. At that point, only the lower school was co-ed.[1] That changed in 1975, when Horace Mann School returned to its roots as a co-educational learning environment and began admitting females to the Upper School.[1] The Class of 1976 is Horace Mann School's last all-male class. In 1999, the sixth grade moved from the Horace Mann-Barnard campus to the main 246th Street campus and formed a distinct Middle Division along with the seventh and eighth grades.

Institution

Nursery school

Divisions

There are four divisions of Horace Mann, all co-educational: a Nursery Division (three year olds through kindergarten) located on 90th Street in Manhattan, a Lower Division (kindergarten through fifth grades) on the Horace Mann campus on Tibbett Avenue in Riverdale, a Middle Division (sixth through eighth grades) on the 246th Street campus in Riverdale, and an Upper Division (ninth through twelfth grades) also on the 246th Street campus. There is also the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, located on 275 acres (1.11288 km2} of land in Washington Depot, Connecticut, used for extended field trips for classes of students starting in second grade and an orientation program for new students entering the Middle or Upper Divisions. The Dorr facility was recently renovated and is currently LEED-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Current tuition for students in the Lower Division through the Upper Division is approximately $40,000 a year.[2] Financial aid at the school is based on need; no merit scholarships are awarded. For the 2010-2011 academic year, 17% of the students received more than $7,400,000 in aid.[2]

Each division of the school has its own Division Head. The Middle and Upper Divisions have separate student government bodies. The entire school is overseen by a Head of School. The ninth and current Head is Dr. Thomas M. Kelly, who previously served as Superintendent of Schools in Valhalla, New York. Kelly succeeded Dr. Eileen Mullady (who is currently the head of the Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad, CA), on July 1, 2005. Formerly of Princeton University and the Lawrenceville School,[3] Dr. Mullady was the namesake of one of the new buildings erected under her term. Prior to Dr. Mullady, the long-standing Head was the late R. Inslee Clark, Jr., previously Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale University.

The current Horace Mann Nursery Division Head is Marcia Levy, who replaced Patricia Zuroski when she was appointed to the position of Director of Diversity Initiatives. The current Lower Division Head is Wendy Steinthal, replacing Dr. Steven B. Tobolsky, who departed in June 2007 to run the Chestnut Hill School, an elite N-6 prep school outside Boston. The current Middle Division Head is Robin Ann Ingram, and the current Upper Division head is Dr. David Schiller. Glenn Sherratt is the current Director of the John Dorr Nature Laboratory.[1]

Academics

Horace Mann is known for its large number of college level courses. The school offers 20 Advanced Placement courses and 10 foreign languages. Its 220 faculty members hold 210 master's degrees and 34 doctoral degrees.

Students in the Upper Division are required to study English, World History, United States History, Biology, Chemistry and/or Physics, Geometry, Algebra II and Trigonometry, and also meet various requirements in the Arts, Computer Science, Health & Counseling, and Physical Education. Students must go beyond these basic requirements in at least some, if not all, subjects. They are also required to take at least three years of either French, German, Japanese, Latin, or Spanish. Additional classes in Greek, Italian, Mandarin, and Russian are offered.

Starting in eleventh grade, students have more flexibility with their requirements and can choose from courses in Economics, Psychology, Classical History, Government, Religion, Political Philosophy, United States Legal History, Calculus, Statistics, Science and Public Policy, among other elective classes.

Independent Study and Senior Projects, where students create their own coursework and present their findings in weekly meetings, are also common. Additionally, many students develop original research projects with faculty at Columbia University, Cornell University Medical Center, NYU, and Rockefeller University.

Arts

Horace Mann has an extensive arts program. The offerings include courses in the performing and visual arts. At least 1.5 arts credits are required for graduation, with at least one half-credit course in performance/studio arts and one half-credit course in art history/appreciation.

Horace Mann has two major instrumental ensembles: The Horace Mann Orchestra and the Horace Mann Jazz Band. The Jazz Band program is also split into two ensembles: the Contemporary Directions Ensemble and the Creative Arts Philharmonic. Each ensemble performs at least three to four concerts per year, culminating in a trip abroad. Recent trips have taken the Glee Club and Orchestra to Prague, Germany, France and Spain. Horace Mann also has an established Glee Club, which performs several concerts each year, including past performances at Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, and Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center. The Jazz Band has performed at many famous jazz clubs including Birdland and B.B. King's.

Admission

Admission to Horace Mann is highly selective. Decisions are based on an applicant's recent grades, an interview, and the candidate's score on either the ISEE or SSAT test.

Sixth grade is Horace Mann's largest entry point, with between 50 and 55 places available each year. In the ninth grade, Horace Mann traditionally enrolls between 40 and 45 new students. A smaller number of students are accepted in other grades, although there are no admissions to the twelfth grade.

Rankings

Forbes Magazine ranks Horace Mann as the second best preparatory school in the country.[4] The Wall Street Journal ranks Horace Mann as the fourth best high school in the United States, as measured by student admission rates to exclusive colleges. Worth magazine ranked Horace Mann seventh out of all the nation's high schools based on the proportion of graduates attending Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities.[5]

School Government

Governing Council

The main branch of the School Government is the Governing Council. The Governing Council is in its 40th year of operation this year, and is defined by the school's constitution (which it created) as the central legislative body of Horace Mann. The legislature has five full time elected student members and two student alternates from each grade 9-12, along with 11 full time elected faculty members and three faculty alternates. Faculty members each have two votes to keep the voting balance in the Council at 50% student and 50% faculty, as defined by the Constitution. In the event of a tie, the Chairman of the Governing Council casts the tie-breaking vote. Each year the Governing Council elects a Chairman to act as the Chief Legislator, to write and sign legislation, and to oversee the council's meetings, which are typically every Tuesday. The Chairman of the Governing Council is elected by the representatives, and can be any member of the Council, faculty or student. Over the years the Governing Council has removed the once-strict dress code (this was accomplished in 1969, when the structure was known as the Community Council), instituted an honor code, begun a debit card system to pay for items at the cafeteria and bookstore, and revised the school's constitution. The school also has a Student Body President and a Student Body Vice-President (SBP and SBVP), which are elected by the entire Upper Division and the eighth grade. Both the Chairman of the Governing Council and the Student Body President are ex-officio members of the school's Board of Trustees. The two figures may also hold assemblies of the student and faculty bodies, and may call any legislation or constitutional amendment to a school-wide referendum vote.


The Chairman of the Governing Council this year is Justin Katiraei. The Chairman of the Governing Council's Secretary is James Ruben. The Student Body President is William Stern and the SBVP is Erica Chiang. This year, the Governing Council has adopted new democratic financial conduct regulations for clubs and publications (which the government funds), passed legislation to give students the right to bring home a copy of their final exams, passed a law to allow rising seniors the opportunity to request a faculty member to teach them, adopted enhanced procedural measures that facilitate ending debate on unpopular amendments, passed legislation to fight bullying, and passed a law to allow students the ability to rent textbooks directly from the school, rather than having to purchase them from outside companies each year. All laws are passed with a simple majority vote, and are then signed by the Chairman of the Governing Council and the Head of the Upper Division/Head of School, depending on the legislation.

Class Presidents

In addition to the Governing Council which enacts school wide policy, each grade 9-12 elects their own Class Presidents. The Student Body President, Class Presidents, and school administration are responsible for execution of the Governing Council's laws. The Presidents of the Senior Class, Junior Class, Sophomore Class, and Freshman Class are Justin Katiraei/Katie Cacouris, James Ruben/Pierre-Alexandre Eid, Alex Posner/Grant Rosen, and Jackie Goodman/Danny Brereton, respectively.

Constitution Committee

The Constitution Committee is the main Judiciary Body of the school, and is charged with declaring constitutionality. There are five members of the Constitution Committee, all of whom are appointed by the Chairman of the Governing Council. This year, Katiraei appointed two faculty members (Peggy Hartmann and Barbara Tischler) and three student members (Alexander Daniel, Matthew Meltzer, and Nathan Raab) to the Committee. The Committee requires a simple majority for its rulings.


Student life

Co-curricular activities are an integral part of Horace Mann. Clubs give students the opportunity to produce publications, hone their debating skills, participate in activism and much more. The school has a considerable number of clubs, especially in the Upper Division. Prominent clubs include:

  • Activist Art Committee
  • Amnesty International
  • Anime Club
  • Arabic Club
  • Book Day Committee
  • Computer Science Club
  • Dance Company
  • Documentary Film Club
  • East Wind West Wind
  • Fashion Forward
  • French Club
  • Fusion Club
  • Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA)
  • German Club

Student publications

Horace Mann also has a significant number of student publications. Many of them have won national awards. Prominent publications include:

The Record, established in 1903, is the weekly, student-run newspaper. Throughout its history, The Record has won national journalism awards and has been staffed by students who went on to become distinguished journalists and authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners Anthony Lewis (class of 1944), Richard Kluger (class of 1952) and Robert Caro (class of 1953). In 1954, Horace Mann made national headlines for translating a copy of The Record into Russian and distributing it in the USSR. The purpose of the exercise was to show Russian schoolchildren what life in America was like. The staff purposely kept in an article about the Horace Mann soccer team's losing one of its games to demonstrate the operation of an independent free press.[6][7] The American Scholastic Press Association twice honored The Record as the "Best High School Weekly Newspaper" for 2001-2002 (Volume 99) and 2003-2004 (Volume 101). It was also named a National Pacemaker in 2004 (Volume 101) and in 2006 was a Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Medalist (Volume 103). The Record is published every Friday during the academic year[8] and can be found online here.

The Horace Mann Review, now in its twentieth volume, is a journal of opinion on current events, politics, public policy, and culture. The Review covers issues from unique and otherwise unexamined perspectives. The publication has paying subscribers throughout the nation and abroad and has been the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in journalism. In April 2001, the American Scholastic Press Association (ASPA) honored the Review with its award for Best Magazine. The Review's 2005-2006 volume was honored with a first place finish in the American Scholastic Press Awards critique. The Review is a finalist for the National Scholastic Press Association's Magazine Pacemaker of the Year award for 2007, the highest honor in high school journalism.[9] The Review was again awarded the ASPA's Best Magazine Award in 2009 for its eighteenth volume.

The Mannikin is the yearbook of the Horace Mann School. Traditional sections include Student Life, Underclassmen, Seniors (each graduate receives a half-page to design as they wish), Athletics, Faculty, and Advertisements. At 560 pages, the Mannikin is one of the largest high school yearbooks in New York State. In addition, the Mannikin has won numerous awards from the American Scholastic Press Association.

Other school publications include: Folio 51, the magazine dedicated to women's issues, HM Voyager, the travel publication, Manuscript the creative writing publication, Insight, the photography publication, The Score, a sports newspaper, Images, an art magazine, the Thespian, a theatre publication, Cinemann, a magazine related to current movies, Lola's Kitchen, a one-page periodical published by the Gay Straight Alliance, and InsideOut, a health publication. In addition, a literary-arts magazine called Muse, featuring the work of Middle School students, is published each year.

Athletics

Interscholastic leagues

Horace Mann School is a part of the Ivy Preparatory School League, a division of the greater New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS), which comprises all the private schools in the New York State. Fieldston, Riverdale, and Horace Mann together are known as the "Hilltop schools," as all three are located within two miles (3 km) of each other in the Riverdale-Fieldston section of the Bronx, on a hill, literally, above Van Cortlandt Park. The three also share a great interscholastic sports rivalry; Horace Mann's annual charity basketball game, the Buzzell Game, is almost always versus Riverdale, and sometimes Fieldston.

Sports teams

Interscholastic Athletic Teams
Sport Level Season Gender
Baseball V, JV, MD Spring Boys'
Basketball V, JV, MD Winter Boys', Girls'
Crew V, JV Spring Boys', Girls', Coed
Cross-Country V, JV, MD Fall Girls', Boys', Coed (MD Only)
Field Hockey V, JV, MD Fall Girls'
Fencing V, JV Winter Boys', Girls'
Football V, JV, MD Fall Boys'
Golf V Spring Coed
Gymnastics V, JV Winter Girls'
Lacrosse V, JV, MD Spring Boys', Girls'
Soccer V, JV, MD Fall Boys', Girls'
Sailing V Spring Boys', Girls'
Skiing V Winter Boys', Girls'
Softball V, JV, MD Spring Girls'
Squash V Winter Coed
Swimming V, JV, MD Winter Boys', Girls'
Tennis V, JV, MD Fall (Girls'), Spring (Boys') Boys', Girls'
Track (indoor) V, JV Winter Boys', Girls'
Track (outdoor) V, JV, MD Spring Boys', Girls', Coed (MD Only)
Ultimate (Frisbee) V, JV Spring Coed
Volleyball V, JV, MD Fall, Spring Girls', Boys'^
Water Polo V, JV, MD Fall Coed
Wrestling V, JV, MD Winter Coed

^- boys' volleyball takes place during the spring, while girls' takes place in the fall

Notable alumni

Category:Horace Mann School alumni

Writer Jack Kerouac attended Horace Mann for one year of high school as part of the class of 1940 and played on the football team.[11] Hollywood agent and Broadway producer Leland Hayward also attended.

Miscellaneous

The school's motto is "Magna est veritas et prævalet," meaning "Great is the truth, and it prevails." It comes from the King James version of the Old Testament, which is usually translated today as "Magna est veritas et prævalebit," or will prevail. The school mascot is a lion, possibly a holdover from the days when the school was associated with Columbia University, whose mascot is also a lion. The Swim and Water Polo Teams have adopted the Sea Lion as their unofficial mascots, as the Varsity Ski Team has the Mountain Lion.

All students are required to take American Red Cross CPR certification, as well as a swim test, in order to graduate. Horace Mann students are also required to complete at least 80 hours of community service, with at least 40 hours in ninth and tenth grades and 40 hours in eleventh and twelfth. In eighth grade, one out-of-school project or three in-school projects are necessary for graduation to the ninth grade; in sixth and seventh grades a homeroom project is done cooperatively. In the Lower and Nursery Divisions, there is no community service requirement, although there is an annual "Caring-in-Action" day dedicated to community service that students and their families can attend.

Several films have been shot on the Horace Mann campus over the years, including Splendor in the Grass and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "A Long Tradition". Horace Mann School. Retrieved 2010-12-20.
  2. ^ a b Horace Mann School - About hm / Costs
  3. ^ Pacific Ridge School - Staff
  4. ^ Laneri, Raquel (2010-04-29). "No. 2: Horace Mann". Forbes.
  5. ^ Prep School USA. "2003 High School Rankings," citing the Sept. 2002 Worth magazine article "Getting Inside the Ivy Gates" by Reshma Memon Yaqub.
  6. ^ http://www.horacemann.pvt.k12.ny.us/general/history/history_the_record.html
  7. ^ New York Times. "A Student Paper Savors Its Past, and Its Stars." by Seth Kugel. October 13, 2002. http://www.highschooljournalism.org/Content.cfm?mode=1&newsid=107&id=65
  8. ^ "About Us", The Record
  9. ^ "American Scholastic Press Association". American Scholastic Press Association. Retrieved 2006-12-19.
  10. ^ http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/draft2008/news/story?id=3423039
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Alumni Council
  12. ^ http://nymag.com/news/features/45592/index1.html
  13. ^ Lee, Felicia R (2006-02-06). "Chatty Host Who Makes Archaeology Glamorous". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-06-24.
  14. ^ http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/html/erm/erm99/erm99028.html
  15. ^ Art of the States: Changes
  16. ^ http://www.ticketmaster.com/Peter-Cincotti-tickets/artist/874926
  17. ^ http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Fellows/cohn-per-lang.html
  18. ^ "Peter Deutsch". The Washington Post.
  19. ^ Oser, Alan S. (1995-05-20). "Seymour B. Durst, Real-Estate Developer Who Led Growth on West Side, Dies at 81". The New York Times.
  20. ^ Lambert, Bruce (1992-08-09). "Alison L. Gertz, Whose Infection Alerted Many to AIDS, Dies at 26". The New York Times.
  21. ^ http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/hongrads/2006/legg.bspx
  22. ^ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CC8QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.horacemannalumni.org%2FHoraceMannMusic.pdf
  23. ^ Smith, Neal Griffith (1998). "In Memoriam: Martin Humphrey Moynihan, 1926-1996" (PDF online facsimile). The Auk. 115 (3). Washington DC: American Ornithologists' Union: 755–758. ISSN 0004-8038. OCLC 89673496. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  24. ^ "A Hawk Who Earned His Feathers Under Clinton," The Forward, November 1, 2002.
  25. ^ Hakim, Danny. "A Gilded Path to Political Stardom, With Detours", The New York Times, October 12, 2006. Accessed May 20, 2008.

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