THE EPISCOPAL NEW YORKER
Founding of
Harlem Episcopal School at St. Luke's
Innovation Leads to Better
Education
By Jill Davis
It’s not very often that you get to witness the birth of a school. Most schools seem like permanent fixtures in their neighborhoods. But this year, Harlem is about to witness the start of the Harlem Episcopal School. This new facility — to be located in a preexisting church building — is the brainchild of the Rev. Dr. Johan Johnson, rector of St. Luke’s in Harlem.
“We have a church that seats 1000, and we see less than 100 on any given Sunday,” Johnson said. “A school allows our church’s ministry to be more relevant to the community while it opens the church to new families who may not have normally come.”
Education has been a focus of St. Luke’s for many years. Since 1991, the church has had its own tutoring program, called the Saturday School. The program connects volunteer tutors with children who need a little extra help with their studies. The idea of sponsoring a school seemed like a natural next step. To minimize start-up costs, the church building, located on West 141st Street at Convent Avenue, will be renovated and shared with the new school.
Executive Director of the Harlem Episcopal School, Vincent Dotoli, has taken on the full-time responsibility for overseeing the development of this groundbreaking venture to bring the best of independent school education to a traditionally underserved community in Harlem. He began formulating the concept for the school during his year of study as a Klingenstein Scholar at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He used his masters’ project as an opportunity to work with several colleagues to outline an initial plan for the creation of a new school for Harlem. Dotoli, Johnson and a small founding team began a feasibility study to develop the concept and determine whether the school could become a reality. After analyzing the educational needs in Public School Districts 5 and 6, interviewing educational leaders and local parents, visiting over 30 schools, setting up a non-profit organization and obtaining approval of the parish, they are ready to go forward with the preliminary phases of the school.
St. Luke’s, located in Harlem in Manhattan, will be the site of a new elementary school, Harlem Episcopal School, that is scheduled to open in the fall 2003.
Photo courtesy of ST. LUKE’S, MANHATTAN
“Districts 5 and 6, which include the Harlem and Washington Heights areas, are rated as the worst performing in the city,” said Dotoli, “and there are few alternatives available for bright, motivated students who show a lot of potential. Many just need to be given the right opportunity and access to a high quality education.”
The Harlem Episcopal School, which has educational professionals on its founding team and board of directors, is designed to be a coeducational, independent day school for children of all faiths and socio-economic means. It will start off with a kindergarten class in the first year, ultimately serving grades kindergarten through eighth. The school will be innovative. It will differ from other New York schools in that it will be one of the most culturally diverse schools in the country, since it is specifically designed to reflect the varied socio-economic, ethnic and religious backgrounds of the families who live in Harlem.
The school will use a sliding scale formula for tuition, allowing all qualified families to make a contribution to their children’s education based on what they can afford. Operating costs will be funded through a combination of tuition and aggressive fund-raising efforts. The school’s academic program will balance innovative practices with the best of what other independent schools have traditionally offered. It will have a longer school day (8 am to 5 pm) and small classes of no more than 16 students. The founding team believes that keeping the classes small increases the quality of the education, better preparing the students to succeed at the best secondary schools in the country.
Harlem Episcopal School is scheduled to open its doors in the fall of 2003, but at least $300,000 in funds still needs to be raised for the first year’s operating costs. For information about how to help the Harlem Episcopal School, contact Vincent Dotoli at 917-364-1557 or vdotoli@hotmail.com.