Cypress Hills Community School

Changemaker School
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Network Member Since 2013

Cypress Hills Community School is a small, community-based dual language school founded in 1997 by parents in collaboration with the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation. Before Cypress Hills Community School even had a school leadership team, it had a school governance council consisting of 50% parents and 50% teachers. Furthermore, Cypress Hills Community School is the only New York City public school with a dual leadership structure that includes both a parent co-director and a principal co-director. Leading from this strong base of parent engagement and family involvement, Cypress Hill Community School students benefit from a number of social and emotional learning programs (such as RULER, the 4Rs and a partnership with the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility) as well as student-led service-learning effort in which students work in small teams to plan service-learning projects during their advisory periods.