Our Schools
New Design High School
New Design High School (NDHS) is a small academic high school with a focus on design, located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the Seward Park Campus. We are a college preparatory school that uses the concept of design to assist in meeting the holistic needs of adolescents, including the academic, intellectual, social, emotional and artistic sides of students.
NDHS integrates the idea, concept and process of design into a progressive, academic, high school curriculum, thereby offering a model of innovative and comprehensive education. The school community believes that design and the design process allow students to experience a more experiential form of inquiry-based education that is focused on understanding real world contexts, self-expression and problem solving. We believe that when students are engaged in the process of designing, they are learning to observe, seek problems, identify needs, frame problems, work collaboratively, explore and appreciate solutions, weigh alternatives, and communicate their ideas verbally, graphically and physically.
The design process also includes periods for self-assessment, critiques of works in progress, revisions and opportunities for reflection on the entire process. NDHS integrates all of its classes with the idea of design and the design process, as well as offer classes in design. NDHS currently has over 400 students in grades 9-12.
New Design Middle School (Opening this Fall!)
“We all hear about students dropping out of high school, but the truth is they drop out in middle school…It just takes them a few years to get out the door”… Eric Komoroff, CofU Founder.
- It’s not about the next three years, but the next eleven. Our students commit to designing their path to high school and college graduation and we support them along the way.
- Students should spend all their time learning. We build strong relationships with our students and provide them with a consistent school so that students feel safe and cared for by adults. In this environment, students have what they need so they can spend all their time learning.
- Building confident readers, writers, and speakers is every teacher’s job. For students to be successful in school and life they need to master their literacy skills. All our teachers design literacy into their classrooms and are committed to this goal.
- Students should apply what they are learning in all their classes to meaningful real world settings. Our teachers are building the next generation of authors, mathematicians, scientists, historians, and designers. Our students will never build the skills to reach these roles in life unless we apply their learning outside the classroom.
- Students should be empowered to design their school, neighborhood, and city with their education. At New Design Middle School, our students “explore their world” then “make their mark” with a widening focus of our design work each year. These design projects teach students how to be leaders and be the change they want to see in the world.
- Founding Principal Dan Black is a former English Language Arts, Bilingual, Science and Math Teacher, Curriculum Specialist, Achievement Coach, Principal Intern and Educational Policy Analyst, and holds degrees from both Vanderbilt and Harvard Universities. Dan is super excited to take the plunge into school leadership, and is committedto making sure that every single classroom at New Design Middle School is a place where students are engaged, supported, and challenged to learn…and to have fun.
We are so so excited to see New Design Middle school become a reality, and we are looking forward to years of supporting youth and their families as they define their purpose and potential one good choice at a time!