Fall is in the air. Temperatures are dropping, leaves are changing, footballs are flying, the Yankees are vacationing and the Norwood News is writing about schools. Two issues ago, we reported on what’s new at local elementary and middle schools. Now, we’re back with our annual high school preview.

Thousands of local eighth-graders, with their parents’ help, will soon be deciding where to spend the next four years of their young lives and they need all the information they can get. Most schools will be opening their doors to prospective students with open houses and other events (see sidebar), but this will give parents and kids a head start.

Schools not listed did not respond to our persistent inquiries. Here’s what we did find out:

Discovery High School – Walton Campus, 2780 Reservoir Ave.
Now in its fourth year of existence, everything is coming together in the eyes of Discovery Principal Scott Goldner. Next June, the art-technology school on the Walton campus will be graduating seniors for the first time. Discovery also becomes an Empowerment school, which means Goldner is free to take chances and run the school the “Discovery way,” as he likes to describe the school’s progressive and aggressive approach to education.

This year also marks the first time Goldner will be able to fully implement and integrate the four Discovery themes that each class will emphasize. For freshmen, it will be “discover myself.” For sophomores, it will be “discover my community.” For juniors, it will be “discover my world.” And for seniors, it will be “discover my future.”

“All the themes involve creative arts integration,” Goldner said in a phone interview. “We want all of our kids to graduate with a sound creative and technical arts education.”

To go along with the four themes, Goldner will continue to focus on Discovery’s “four pillars,” which are academics, technology, creativity and collaboration.

As part of the Empowerment program this year, Goldner is also instituting advisory classes for each grade, which meet twice a week to work on college applications. These classes will be smaller and grouped by grade.

Goldner says Discovery is also committed to continued partnerships with various outside arts organizations, including Manhattan Class Company, an off-Broadway theatre group; the Lehman Art Gallery; and DreamYard, a non-profit arts group that works with public schools.

The first senior class at Discovery will focus on the art of film. All seniors will take a film class, create a film of their own and organize a film festival. Later this school year they will be showing, discussing and dissecting films by Spike Lee.

Discovery’s enrollment is now up to 370, but will expand to around 420 over the next few years.

Kingsbridge International High School
Walton Campus, 2780 Reservoir Ave.
Students at Kingsbridge International come from more than 20 different countries – Ecuador, India, Mexico, Guinea, Senegal, Venezuela, Jordan, Bangladesh, and Yemen just to name a few – and they all have one thing in common: they can’t speak English. At least not very well.

In fact, once a Kingsbridge International student’s English skills reach a certain proficiency level, they are encouraged to transfer to another school. And once they do, it means Kingsbridge International teachers, many of them former immigrants or ex-Peace Corps volunteers, have done their job.

“It’s full-on immersion into the English language,” said Naveen Kanithi, International’s coordinator of special programs. “Even if you’re a physics teacher, you’re also teaching English.”

International, located on the Walton campus, is now entering its second year of existence. This year, with a full load of ninth and 10th graders, the school is up to 216 kids, which is exciting, Kanithi says. Now, some of the kids who have been there can informally mentor new students coming in, he says.

The growing high school is working on creating more outside partnerships this year and continuing to expand its gardening program (they have a partnership with the New York Botanical Garden). To further students’ outdoor education, the Sierra Club is helping out by sponsoring a group trip to Vermont.

The green-friendly school is attempting to beef up its in-school and after-school arts and music programs. The school just bought a bevy of new instruments for the school band, which, Kanithi says, thrives because of its diversity.

Wherever these kids come from, hip-hop seems to be a universal form of communication at International. Kanithi says he often sits in during music class and finds kids freestyling in their native tongues. “One kid will spit some rhymes in French and then the next will be speaking Arabic,” he says. “It’s great.”

Celia Cruz School of Music – Walton Campus, 2780 Reservoir Ave.
At Celia Cruz, it’s all about the music. The school recruits mostly from middle schools with stellar musical reputations. Prospective students must audition as if they were trying out for a part in a Broadway musical. During the auditions, which happen in December and January, kids have to sing a song of their own choosing, tap rhythms and sing a scale. Those who play instruments must do the same, but with their tuba, guitar or whatever they play.

Three days a week, the budding musicians in the ensemble groups go to Lehman College (the school’s community partner as arranged by New Visions for Public Schools which helps Celia Cruz with funding and guidance) where they receive an hour and a half of intense instruction.

The school has several bands of varying levels and genres that play all over city and sometimes around the country at events and competitions.

Last year, Celia Cruz made it all the way down to Florida. Two years ago, at a New Jersey competition, the school took home almost all the hardware. In the spring, they will be at the Showcase Music Festival at Lincoln Center. And the jazz band always plays the St. Peter’s Church Jazz Festival on Manhattan’s East Side.

Now entering its fourth year, Celia Cruz will graduate seniors for the first time next June. They now have the entire third floor of Walton for its 350 students, which is nice, says Assistant Principal Jerrod Mabry. But eventually they would like their own building, he says.

Mabry is counting on a host of new teachers to help students improve academically as well as musically. “We really want our kids to be as academically sound as they are in music,” Mabry says.

Academy of Mount St. Ursula – 330 Bedford Park Blvd.
The big news out of this small all-girls Catholic school in Bedford Park is that it is separating administrative responsibilities. For the first time in Mount St. Ursula’s 150-year history, a layperson, Jane Martinez Dowling, will be entrusted with advancing the school’s mission as chief executive officer, while Sister Mary Beth Read will remain in charge of education as the principal.

“This structure has been adopted by many schools to address the divergent demands of managing a school today – the day-to-day oversight of the education of our students versus financial management, development and public relations responsibilities,” said Jean Hannigan Moran, an Academy alumna and chair of the Board of Trustees, in a statement.

“I am excited to work with Mary Beth Read, MSU’s outstanding principal, the staff, and all of the Ursulines to help achieve MSU’s mission, as we strive to give so many deserving students the excellent education they deserve,” Dowling said in a statement.

Ursula is the oldest Catholic girls school in New York State. MSU’s 2006 graduates gained acceptance to 127 colleges and were awarded more than $5 million in scholarships and financial aid.

The Marie Curie High School for Nursing, Medicine and the Allied Health Professions – 120 W. 231st St. (the old MS 143 building).
Marie Curie likes to refer to itself as a “junior high-high school” though it’s not completely either. Of course, that will change come next year when the health care-based school in Kingsbridge takes on its first senior class. But for now, Marie Curie remains a work in progress with seventh to 11th graders.

This year, Marie Curie is expanding its internship program at area hospitals. Every Wednesday, most 10th and 11th graders go to one of several different hospitals – Our Lady of Mercy, Jacobi, and North Central Bronx to name a few – where they assist nurses, doctors and other health care professionals. The goal is to give the students an idea of what it would be like to go into a career in health care.

While the upperclassmen participate in internships, ninth graders learn HIV awareness, CPR and first aid skills. Eventually, Principal Rodney Fisher says, they would like students to venture out to other high schools and do some peer health education.

Fisher says the school is still working on how to incorporate more health-related learning into the seventh and eighth grade classes. For now, students learn mostly about nutrition, fitness and child obesity issues. Every month, Fisher brings in a different speaker to talk about a specific health-related topic. In October, for example, someone will come in to talk about diabetes.

As an Empowerment school, Fisher is using his additional funds to pay for full-time math and literacy coaches and to bolster after-school activities such as art and sports clubs. Fisher is very interested in exploring the connection between art and healing – a burgeoning field called art therapy.

Right now, Marie Curie doesn’t participate in any varsity sports, but Fisher says this year the school will be evaluating interest with an eye on possibly joining some of the Public School Athletic Leagues (PSAL) next year.

Enrollment at Marie Curie is up to around 425 students this year. There will be an open house for potential ninth grade students for the 2007-08 academic year on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Marie Curie auditorium.

DeWitt Clinton – 100 W. Mosholu Parkway South.
There is good news coming out of DeWitt Clinton this year. The safety issues that clouded the 4,600-student school for much of last year have died down significantly, according to Principal Geraldine Ambrosio.
However, the school remains short on school safety agents. This problem is amplified in the morning when kids are being processed through metal detectors before school starts. Because they are short-staffed, the line often gets backed up, causing frustrating delays.

This year, Clinton has opened up a new future teacher program for ninth graders. The program allows students to use their regular ninth-grade curriculum to help tutor elementary school kids at local community centers and other organizations. Then, later in the year, those same ninth graders go to local elementary schools to read to the kids.

Ambrosio is happy to announce that 2006 graduates from Clinton received a total of $52 million in scholarships and financial aid.

Bronx Aerospace Academy – Evander Childs campus
800 E. Gun Hill Rd.
The Aerospace Academy (located on the Evander Childs campus) is looking to build on the tremendous success it achieved with its first graduating class last June when the military-style public school graduated 93 percent of its seniors (see previous issue of the Norwood News).

The Educational Counseling Center of Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, which is Aerospace’s community partner, provides guidance to graduating students looking into colleges. All 53 of Aerospace’s 2006 graduates went on to either college or the military. But that doesn’t mean Aerospace leaders are satisfied and will sit back on their laurels.

“We want to take this thing to a whole new level,” Captain Barbara Kirkweg, the Academy’s principal, told the Norwood News over the summer.

One new program that Kirkweg is implementing this year is “The Oliver Project,” which is an Empowerment School Initiative (Aerospace was happy to become one of the 300 plus schools to join the Empowerment Program) designed to address the literacy deficit in males. The school has selected a cohort from each grade level to participate in the project.

“This project will use a series of new teaching strategies and relevant, engaging literature to get boys reading!” writes Kirkweg in an e-mail.

Kirkweg is also looking for additional funding to keep her young flyboys and girls in the air. A New Visions grant allowed students to get significant air time at Farmingdale Airport on Long Island, but the funding ran out after last school year.

Evander Childs – 800 E. Gun Hill Rd.
Assistant Principal Linda Resnick has been at Evander Childs for 30 years and she will be there for two more to oversee the school she’s grown to know and love as it fades away.

As part of the Bloomberg administration’s plan to break big schools up into smaller, themed schools (like the Bronx Aerospace Academy), Evander Childs is going the way of the dinosaur. Two years ago, Evander Childs stopped accepting new students. Now, the school is made up of only juniors and seniors. Next year, there will only be seniors. The year after that, Evander Childs will only be a campus for six other small schools and Resnick will retire.

[In an interesting side note, the individual schools rarely mix, but they all come together to compete in varsity sports as Evander Childs. The same is true of the small schools that now make up Walton.]

The jovial administrator could have retired a couple years ago, but she wanted to stay until the end in order to make the last students’ final years seem as normal as possible. But, it’s still sad, she says.

“We’re trying to keep spirits up,” Resnick says. To do this, Resnick says, the school is trying to continue long-standing traditions like senior parties and college trips. She says despite its drop in numbers, Evander Childs continues to compete on a high level in debate and mock trial competitions.

As Evander Childs fades away, the other schools on the campus will take on more students to fill up the space. Or as Resnick says, “As we implode, they explode.”