OUR MISSION AND VISION
Founding Principal: NormaVega
She has been an educator with the NYCDOE for 22 years. Though a social worker by trade she went on to receive her Masters in Educational Administration from The Bank Street Graduate School of Education where her career as Principal began. She became Principal of Bronx International High School and in 2008 was given the opportunity to design and found her own school, ELLIS. She has dedicated her life’s work to adolescent immigrant youth believing in their potential. Her belief in their tenacity and innate ability to overcome inspired her to design a school just for them.
OUR STUDENTS
ELLIS serves a linguistically and culturally diverse population from across the Bronx and northern Manhattan, nearly all coming to ELLIS within weeks or months of first setting foot on U.S. soil. Our students come from over 20 countries and speak more than 10 different languages. English is the second or the third or fourth language of every ELLIS student. Students have a wide array of prior educational experiences, ranging from 0 to 12 years of formal schooling.
Students who enroll at ELLIS (1) have less than one year living in the United States, (2) are not yet proficient in English, and (3) are over-age (15.5 to 19 years old) for entering a New York City high school. While many students enter with a high school transcript from their native countries, ELLIS understands that students need at least 3-4 years to build their academic language proficiency in English, as well as their habits of mind and work across all subject areas, in order to be ready for entry and success at an American university.
ELLIS is a member of The Internationals Network for Public Schools. Starting with the International High School at LaGuardia, the network now includes over a dozen public high schools in New York City and California whose holistic, personal approach to serving recent immigrants and emphasis on portfolio-based performance assessment has proven successful in graduating English language learners at significantly higher rates than New York City-wide averages.
As per the New York State Board of Regents, graduation requirements for a Regents Diploma at ELLIS and other Internationals Network schools include satisfactory scores on Mathematics and English exams as well as a series of five performance-based assessment tasks (PBATs) that are presented in the form of “Capstone” Graduation Portfolios.