Horace Mann School

Template:Short description Template:For Template:Multiple issues Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox school Horace Mann School (also known as Horace Mann or HM) is an American private, independent college-preparatory school in the Bronx, founded in 1887. Horace Mann is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League, educating students from the New York metropolitan area from nursery school to the twelfth grade. The Upper, Middle, and Lower Divisions are located in Riverdale, a neighborhood of the Bronx, while the Nursery School is located in Manhattan. The John Dorr Nature Laboratory, a Template:Convert campus in Washington Depot, Connecticut, serves as the school's outdoor and community education center.<ref name="dorr">Template:Cite news</ref> Certain grades go during the year to learn outdoor and away-from-home skills.

History

Teachers College, Columbia University

Main entrance

19th century

The school was founded in 1887 by Nicholas Murray Butler as a co-educational experimental and developmental unit of Teachers College at Columbia University.<ref name="Provenzo">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="History">Template:Cite web</ref> Its first location was 9 University Place in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The school moved in 1901 to 120th Street in Morningside Heights.<ref name="History" /> Horace Mann became independent of the Columbia University and Teachers College in 1940.

20th century

The school split into separate all-male and all-female schools and in 1914, the Boys' School moved to 246th Street in Riverdale, Bronx, and during the 1940s it severed formal ties with Columbia University and became Horace Mann School.<ref name="History" /> The Horace Mann School for Girls remained at Teachers College, and then merged with the Lincoln School in 1940, and finally closed in 1946.<ref name="History" />

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.<ref name="History" /> In 1972, Horace Mann merged with the Barnard School for Boys, 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 mixed.<ref name="History" /> In 1975, the Horace Mann School returned to its roots as a co-educational learning environment and began admitting girls to the Upper School.<ref name="History" /> 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.

The Horace Mann School was named after Horace Mann, who was a lawyer who served in the Massachusetts State Legislature and was the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1837 and 1848, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the first president of Antioch College. He used each of his positions to proclaim that every person, regardless of their background, should receive a public education based on the principles and practices of a free society. Mann played a leading role in establishing the U.S. elementary school system.

Institution

Nursery school

Fisher Hall, a building containing the school's main cafeteria

The school is a private "nonprofit organization under the Education Law of New York State and holds a charter from the New York State Board of Regents [and is] a 501(c) 3 [tax-exempt] organization authorized by the Internal Revenue Service".<ref name="facts"/>

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 Template:Convert 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 $61,900 a year.<ref name="Tuition">Template:Cite web</ref> Financial aid at the school is solely based on need. For the 2023–24 academic year, 15% of the students received more than $14 million in aid.<ref name="Tuition"/>

Academics

HM offers twenty-six Honors courses and six foreign languages.<ref name="facts"/>

Students in the Upper Division are required to study English, United States history, biology, chemistry, or physics or both, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry, and also meet various requirements in the arts, computer science, health and counseling, and physical education. Students must go beyond these basic requirements in at least some, if not all, subjects. They must also take at least through the level-three courses of either Chinese, French, Japanese, or Spanish. Half-credit foreign language classes are also offered for Greek and Latin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Starting in eleventh grade, students have more flexibility with their course requirements and can choose from a variety of electives, including biotechnology, calculus, economics, ethics, psychology, religion, political philosophy, United States legal history, art history, and statistics, among others.<ref name = "Studies">Template:Cite web</ref>

Non-academic requirements

To graduate, all students are required to take a swim test and American Red Cross CPR certification.

Community service is required throughout the curriculum. During high school, students are required to attend grade-wide "Service-Learning Days". The school additionally offers extracurricular additional "service-learning" to high school students as participants in its "Service-Learning Team" or "HM 246".<ref name="Studies"/> 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 an annual "Caring-in-Action" day dedicated to community service that students and their families can attend.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Admission

Horace Mann

Admission is selective, with decisions based on recent grades, an interview, an essay, and the candidate's score on either the ISEE or SSAT test. The largest entry point is sixth grade, with between 50 and 55 places available each year. In the ninth grade, 40 to 45 new students are traditionally enrolled.<ref>Fast Facts about HM Admissions Template:Webarchive Retrieved 2012-10-24.</ref>

Rankings

In 2017, Niche ranked HM as the best private K -12 school in the United States. Three years later, in 2020, Niche ranked HM the third-best K–12 private school in the country and the 12th-best private high school in the country.<ref name="niche.com">Template:Cite web</ref> In 2024, the Niche survey ranked Horace Mann the fifth-best private high school in the country.<ref name="niche.com2024">Template:Cite web</ref>

Sexual abuse scandal

Initial reports

On June 6, 2012, The New York Times Magazine published an article by a former student, alleging multiple instances of sexual abuse of students by teachers at the school. The incidents occurred during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The article also addressed how school administrators dealt with the incidents over time, both within the school community and, in the case of one teacher, in a post-employment reference. The victims were identified by partial name or letter. The New York State statute of limitations in most or all incidents ran out when the former students turned 23. Several of the central figures were dead, at least two by suicide—one of the accused and one of the students.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> One of the accused, music teacher Johannes Somary, died in 2011.<ref name="NYer01">Template:Cite magazine</ref> On June 23, 2012, The New York Times reported that Tek Young Lin, Horace Mann's former chaplain who also served as an English teacher and track coach, admitted that he had had sexual relations with several male students.<ref name="jenny">Template:Cite news</ref>

Hilltop Cares Foundation

As a result of the sexual abuse and resulting controversy, the Hilltop Cares Foundation was formed in the summer of 2012 by members of the Horace Mann community, including alumni, to help victims from the school and to promote healing.<ref name="The Horace Mann Record">Template:Cite web</ref> The charitable organization helps alumni with their therapy costs and addresses related issues in the broader community.<ref name="The New York Times">Template:Cite news</ref> It is a nonprofit and independent of the school's administration and board of trustees.<ref name="Org Council">Template:Cite web</ref> The Chair for Hilltop Cares said they strive to bring healing to the Horace Mann community.<ref name="The Horace Mann Record" />

Negotiations

In March 2013, the school was reportedly in negotiation with more than thirty students for compensation related to the abuse claims.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Eighteen different faculty members had been accused, and events spanning the four decades prior to 2000 identified.<ref name="NYer01" /> In March 2013, The New Yorker published an article discussing sexual abuse allegations against former Horace Mann English teacher Robert Berman.<ref name="NYer01" /> In April, The New York Times reported the school had settled with about 27 of the 37 students identified as having been abused. The school formally apologized to the community on May 24 for the events that had occurred and published the actions the school has taken and protocols that were put in place to protect current and future students.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• Education in New York City
• List of high schools in New York City

External links

• Template:Official website