MIDDLETOWN – Oak Hill Academy, currently a private school in Lincroft educating students through eighth grade, is hoping to launch a new high school in the fall of 2020.
The Socrates School at Oak Hill Academy will be “an alternative high school for curious students that uses a personalized approach to education,” said Joseph A. Pacelli, headmaster of Oak Hill.
In its inaugural year the school could feature a class of 10 students. Annual tuition may be priced around $18,000 a year, said Pacelli.
Oak Hill’s current enrollment is 292 students pre-K through eighth grade, with an annual tuition rate of $20,100, according to the school’s website.
“It’s going to be a shift from traditional schooling as we know it and different than anything else offered in our area,” said Pacelli. “We’ve taken a hard look at where our schools are now and the direction they should be going.”
Oak Hill wants to invest in a program that will create passion among its students by not pigeonholing their academic path, but providing structure with room to explore any interest they may have, said Pacelli.
“Our world has evolved. Our technology has evolved. Why hasn’t our education system?” Pacelli asked. “Quite frankly, the same old methods are boring. Teachers are teaching the same way as it’s always been done. Information is being distributed the same way it always has been. It shouldn’t be. There are new ways, and it’s time for the kids to take more control.”
The Socrates School will begin with an initial freshman class, and offer an additional higher grade of study each year through the 2023 school year, establishing a four-year high school program.
The writing intensive program will feature at least one-quarter of instruction time in an online setting and tap into state-of-the-art educational tools like the The Big History Project, an ongoing, unified global initiative founded by Bill Gates and David Christian to gain a better understanding about the history of the cosmos, Earth, life and humanity. The course covers history from the Big Bang through present day with interdisciplinary methods.
Pacelli also pointed to the Great Books Foundation, another potential program for The Socrates School that publishes great literary works in an online database and uses them to promote reading and discussion programs as a means for critical and reflective thinking activities, as well as social engagement between students.
“We hope to identify books over a particular period of time and integrate them into our Big History Project,” Pacelli said. “Everything will be connected and working toward our ultimate goal.”
Pacelli said that goal is to provide a four-year educational experience that leads to better prepared students as they take the next step in their academic careers, whether it be a four-year university, a community college or a trade school.
To help aid that progression up the academic ladder, Pacelli said each student will be developing an e-portfolio, an easy-to-navigate and easily digestible online record supplied to admissions officers that will display each student’s growth and progression over their four years at The Socrates School.
Academic days at the new high school will be divided into blocks, beginning with the Socratic Block, a humanities-based curriculum focusing on social studies and English/language arts that would incorporate lesson plans from both the Big History Project and the Great Books Foundation.
Next would be the Academic Block, a math, science and foreign language curriculum provided by the Laurel Springs School, an accredited online private school that would allow educators to hone in on each individual student’s learning level and instruct that student at an appropriate pace.
The Laurel Springs School offers students a one-on-one relationship with teachers, and allows students, should they choose to do so, an opportunity to advance as far beyond the mandatory graduation requirements as they would like.
Students would round out their days with an Elective Block that focuses on an area of study of their choosing, and a Flex Block for physical education, community service-based efforts and an apprenticeship during their senior year, for which Pacelli hopes to forge partnerships with Bell Works, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the Count Basie Center for the Arts and countless other organizations in the area.
“This is something we’ve been considering for years, but we wanted to do it right and not duplicate what’s already out there,” Pacelli said. “It eats at us when we hear from our graduates that when they left Oak Hill, they were hoping to find something more to bridge the gap between high school and college. We want to use the resources we have to offer that to them.”
Oak Hill Academy is hosting a May 14 informational meeting with a question-and-answer session at the school’s technology center at 7 p.m. To register for the meeting visit the Socrates School page at oakhillacademy.com.
Outside of Catholic schools, Ranney School in Tinton Falls is the only other independent, co-educational high school in Monmouth County. Now more than ever, creative secondary education offerings are in demand by local families, said Erin Avery, founder of Avery Educational Resources in Fair Haven, a school consulting and test prep firm.
“I applaud Oak Hill’s courage to move into the secondary school space and offer a hybrid model that allows students the flexibility to enjoy both in-person and virtual learning options, which is already taking place at the college level.”
This article was first published in the April 11-17, 2019 print edition of The Two River Times.
