There’s good news for parents worried about being wait-listed for private Kindergarten and nursery seats. The venerable Alexander Robertson School (ARS) will be opening up a few more spaces in its incoming Kindergarten class this September, and it has also just announced that it will be expanding its K-5 school with the launch of a pre-K class for 4-year-olds, which is now accepting applicants for the fall.
Why all this sudden activity at ARS? The well respected and much beloved Upper West Side school has appointed a new Head of School—Irwin Shlachter—who is known to many Upper West Side families as the legendary Head of the Rodeph Shalom School for over two decades and to downtown Manhattanites as the leader of the former Claremont Prep.
“Expanding schools is what I do,” Shlachter, who increased enrollment at Claremont Prep tenfold and expanded The Rodeph Shalom School from a K-6 school to a nursery-8 school, explained. However, he does not foresee expanding ARS on this sort of scale. “ARS is a small school by design,” he continued. “To double its size would be to change what’s special about the school.”
In addition to welcoming Shlachter as the new Head of School, ARS is also adding a few more distinguished educators to its board. Both Lydia Spinelli, the long-time Director of the Brick Church School, and Dr. Richard Soghoian, Headmaster of Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, have agreed to join the ARS School Committee.
ARS’s academic programming is expanding as well. “We have just elected to be the first school in New York to offer the Smithsonian Science Education Center’s Science and Technology Concepts (STC) curriculum,” Shlachter said. Beyond the STC curriculum, ARS is strong in the arts, teaches French to all grades, and has a wonderful music program. Social Studies are augmented by the highly acclaimed “History Alive” program; and the wildly popular Singapore Math curriculum rounds out the field.
As Shlachter explains, a K-5 school like ARS isn’t as in vogue right now with parents who prefer to send their children to independent schools that go all the way from Kindergarten to grade 12. But schools like ARS remain very popular with parents who like the idea of beginning their child’s education in a nurturing environment with strong academics that goes up to grade 5, and then making a change to a new academic environment when they understand their child’s needs much better—and when, frankly, many children are ready for a change of school. “At our school, students get to be little kids for a lot longer without the pressure of having to live-up to how older children behave,” Shlachter said. “Everything about this institution is geared towards where they are now not where they’ll be going on to college.”
The Alexander Robertson School was founded in 1789 by the Scots Presbyterian Church to educate the children of farmers and “common folk” so that they could become active and engaged citizens. It has been at the same Central Park West location since the surrounding area was farmland. ARS is presently run by the Second Presbyterian Church as a nondenominational school with a strong ethical foundation that’s an integral part of its educational philosophy. For example, the children participate in a class they call “Everyday Ethics,” which includes using a well established reconciliation model to settle disagreements amongst classmates. “The children learn what it means to live in a community” explained Tina Jackson, ARS’s Academic Dean.
Reverend Leslie Merlin, Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, describes ARS a “a little gem of a school.” One need only see the school’s children at drop-off to realize its wonderfully diverse student population. “We welcome families of all ethnicities, family configurations, and religious traditions,” Merlin said.
For parents interested in learning more about ARS, including its new nursery school and expanding Kindergarten, visit alexanderrobertson.org or contact the admissions office at 212-663-2844 or [email protected].
