Vision 2015

Community Prep’s mission is to nourish students who value academic success and leadership.  From a 2015 vantage point, a chronicle of Community Prep accomplishments might include these highlights.

Reach

Community Prep’s 154 third through eighth graders reflect the ethnic and economic demographics of Providence.  20% of our students live in the neighborhoods that surround the school.  We use our Neighborhood Advisory Council to help us to partner with local leaders to address educational and social issues.

We bring leaders from a wide variety of schools together to discuss best practices.  We have helped to create a national coalition of private schools with similar missions to position all of our schools for national funding.

Achievement

More than 95% of Community Prep's 640 graduates enrolled in college-preparatory high-school programs.  Approximately 85% of the alumni who graduated before 2011 are either in college or have earned their degrees.  Most of those graduates have degrees from four-year colleges.  Many graduates are business, professional and civic leaders.  They exemplify our school’s ability to teach students to be successful -- academically, personally and socially -- and to nurture in them a commitment to community service. Many of our alumni have become an integral part of school activities.  They serve as mentors, advisors, and role models.  Twenty percent of our trustees are alumni.

Community Prep serves as a model to other schools.  It has directly influenced the founding of five new schools through advising or consulting with school founders and start-up teams.

Curriculum

Within the framework of a rigorous college-prep curriculum emphasizing basic and higher order reading, writing, math and thinking skills, every student writes an effective, age-appropriate plan for accomplishing his/her own academic and social goals, which are worked out in parent-teacher-student conferences.

All curriculum and pedagogical choices at Community Prep are guided by the goals of instilling in students a love of learning and abiding respect for the educational process, and providing them with the tools to be lifelong learners.  Teachers instill a love of reading using various methods to engage and excite students about reading.  Students have frequent opportunities to express themselves in writing and are exposed to a wide variety of writing styles, structures and strategies.  Students solve complex problems in math and other disciplines.

The teachers excel at collecting evidence of student achievement and using this evidence to improve the curriculum and their teaching.  Our recent improvement in the teaching of science is the result of aligning our curriculum with Rhode Island State standards and assessing our NECAP science results. We continue to use our acceptance rate to Classical and our NECAP scores as annual indications of the effectiveness of our curriculum and teaching methods.

We are very proud of the fact that our arts program is even stronger than it was in 2010.  Students are inspired to pursue the arts during the school day and after school as well.

We continue to emphasize physical fitness and team sports with the goal of having all of our students as fit physically as they are academically.

Service learning programs, as well as our use of small instructional groups in the classrooms, are models for helping children become future leaders.  At every grade level, students are given regular opportunities to enrich their lives by helping others.

We teach environmental stewardship.

Professional Development

Our teachers are leaders in their fields.  They attend and present at local and national workshops.  Our close relationships with several universities allow them to help train students preparing to enter the profession.  This teacher training gives us the opportunities to attract bright and talented teachers, or interest them in those schools whose beginnings were inspired by us.

The Campus

The school remains at 126 Somerset Street, where we own the site (35,700 sq. ft.) and the school building (24,000 sq. ft.), as well as three nearby houses (among them a land area of 19,000 sq. ft.). We need to add to our campus and expand our school building so that we can serve more students and to provide a science classroom, a gymnasium, arts facilities and a sports field.  We will continue to partner with Meeting Street School and other neighborhood organizations to share facilities.

As we make building and campus decisions the principles of environmental stewardship are very important to our choices.

Tuition and Funding

Tuition remains at or below the Providence public-school costs.  Our historical and planned tuition and demographic profiles are:

Our historical and planned funding profiles are: