GVYC offers three Out-of-School-Time programs in partnership with Essex Street Academy (ESA).

After-school

The daily afterschool program provides tutoring at ESA four days a week in every subject, as well as activities including a mock trial team, swimming, weight lifting, theater, piano, chorus, chess, robotics, community service, student government, yoga, running, step, yearbook, and poetry. We also offer the following PSAL sports: Basketball, Bowling, Volleyball, Baseball, Tennis

Super Saturday program

This supplemental educational program serves 60 students a year on Saturday mornings. It offers a combination of academic support and art enrichment activities including arts, cooking, counseling, fashion, open gym, SAT prep, and tutoring.

Evening Center

This is a brand-new, innovative gang violence prevention program established in collaboration with psychiatrist Jeffrey Solomon. It provides youth who are gang-involved or at high risk of gang involvement with counseling, GED preparation, education/career planning, constructive activities such as open gym, arts, and weight room, and a safe haven two evenings a week. Launching this spring, it will begin by serving approximately 10 ESA students and 15 local youth who are not currently attending school.

Contact
212-475-4773

Alex Shub, ESA Principal
ashub@essexstreetacademy.org

Erin Carstensen, ESA Assistant Principal
ecarstensen@essexstreetacademy.org

Amy Basile, ESA Operations Director
abasile@essexstreetacademy.org

Demographics

The students in the Out-of-School-Time programs at Essex Street Academy reflect the makeup of the student body, which is 56% Latino, 30% Black, 8% White, 5% Asian, and 1% Native American or other. Seventy-three percent of our students live below the poverty line, and 40 percent speak a language other than English at home.

Essex Street Academy

Essex Street Academy (ESA) is a small New York Performance Standards Consortium school located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We are a public school open to high school students from all five boroughs. At ESA, we prepare all of our students for success in college and in life by treating them as individuals with specific strengths and needs, and appealing to their intellectual curiosity in our courses. We also provide a safe learning environment where students’ needs are our number one priority.

At ESA, we believe in developing students’ ability to apply sophisticated skills to solve complex problems. We offer core and elective courses that challenge students to develop their own ideas. With an emphasis on project-based learning, students spend their four years developing a portfolio that reflects their intellectual growth. Students learn the skill of making an argument supported by evidence by: designing and conducting experiments, developing a historical thesis, analyzing works of literature, and developing solutions and proofs to mathematical problems. Our students are active, not passive, and will graduate from our school confident in their ability to tackle any problem they encounter.

The ESA staff prioritizes students above all else and is aware of what is going on in their lives. A small class sizes make a personalized approach to education possible. We cap our class size at 20, enabling teachers to develop an individual relationship with each student. Students participate in an advisory group of 10-12 students and one teacher, and have access to four social workers. We therefore provide students with the social support network they need to be happy and successful in high school and, ultimately, to succeed at the college of their choice.