Last spring in March 2017, our school was visited by the Middle States Association for Schools and Colleges. This visit by an accreditation team was a resounding success!
After spending four days at the school visiting classrooms and interviewing our teachers as well as some of our students and parents, the team recommended our school for accreditation!
We expect to have the Association’s final decision sometime this fall.
Achieving accreditation will bring the school to a new level as it moves forward in its mission to raise God’s sons and daughters—our students—to become healthy and productive world citizens. It will validate, both to ourselves, our shareholders, and to prospective families, that New Hope School does in fact prepare its students well, both academically and in their character, for their next steps in high school, university, and beyond.
New Hope School calls itself a “Peace Academy.” More than anything, it seeks to help students to discover their true selves as God’s children, meaning that, each in their own way, they are meant to resemble God’s nature of love and concern for others. Our greatest hope is that our graduates, whatever their cultural backgrounds or religious beliefs, will go on to use their talents, knowledge, and skills to build a more peaceful world based on God’s love.
This event represents a culmination of a two-year process of self-examination on the part of New Hope School in preparation for a visit by the accreditation team.
Our school, started in the home of Jeanne Carroll in the fall of 1996, has traversed a long course of growth and development, moving to its current location in Clifton, graduating its first 8th grade class soon after, adopting a challenging Core Knowledge curriculum that raised the level of students’ academic achievement, and, most recently, seeking to enhance its after school program.
These accomplishments would not have been possible without the selfless investment of our school community—our Board, staff, and families—over the years. I am deeply grateful for their input, bringing the school to the point where it is today.