An 18,000-square-foot facility on Commerce Road in Stamford ”” distinctive for the blue footbridge that feeds its back door ”” is the headquarters and main school building for the Greenwich Education Group. The Greenwich-founded GEG since 2003 has provided a growing body of education services to tuition-paying students in classes with typical 3-to-1 and 4-to-1, even 1-to-1, student-teacher ratios.
Victoria Newman, GEG”™s founder and executive director, said the effort began under the legal umbrella of home schooling. The company today employs a total 90 teachers and staff and taps 70 part-time instructors. Newman now runs, essentially, a growing school district that serves students with autism-spectrum challenges; students who might need help in a single subject or all of them; and, an acknowledged challenge for even the savviest teachers, the proverbial “smartest kid in the class” who is bored and at risk of hating the whole educational system. Five such whiz kids just graduated from GEG”™s Beacon school, having scratched intellectual itches like the math of architecture; they are bound this fall for schools that include UCLA, Reed College, Bucknell University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Another GEG academy is The Spire School, with the motto “Know Thyself.” It serves intellectually capable students in grades 6-12, who “when taught the appropriate skills, can leverage those strengths to increase self-efficacy and enhance their own experiences and quality of life.”
- From left, the Greenwich Education Group”™s Alisa Dror, Tammy Moscrip, Meredith Hafer, Victoria Newman and Andrea MacGilpin. Photo by Bill Fallon
This month, in preparation for September, Beacon moves into the former Hubbard Mansion at 111 W. North St. in Stamford. The relocation frees up space on Commerce Road for the other GEG schools ”” The Spire School, Links Academy (for shorter-term, focused help) and Pinnacle (GEG”™s special-needs academy) ”” to expand from their current 35 enrollees per school to 50 next year.
“We currently turn away more families than we accept,” said Meredith Hafer, Beacon”™s Harvard-educated head of school and go-to person for insights on Mandarin or philosophy.
The new Beacon site is the former Mother of God Academy: two buildings on half an acre with a gymnasium. Beacon is accredited, with 12 teachers and 35 students in grades 3-12, and features what Hafer called a “rigorous admissions process” that seeks the intellectually curious. She said much of the $37,000 to $48,000 annual tuition goes to teachers”™ salaries. “Find Your Own Light” is the school”™s self-directed ethos and motto.
The tuition at accredited, special-needs-themed Pinnacle is about $85,000. Pinnacle is a day school for students in grades 2-12 with autism spectrum disorders that may include high-functioning autism, Asperger”™s syndrome and other unspecified pervasive development disorders; nonverbal learning disability, where students do well with words but may struggle with other instructive cues and motor skills; and/or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Alisa Dror, head of Pinnacle with a doctorate in special education, said when Pinnacle opened in 2011 it attracted six students; 32 have enrolled for September. Its higher annual tuition reflects an almost 1-to-1 student-teacher ratio and a staff that includes a speech and language pathologist, clinical psychologist and school psychologist.
Dror said most students learn about GEG via word of mouth. She and leaders of the other schools reflected on the GEG mission and repeatedly circled back to the GEG”™s multiple accreditations as critical: hundreds of pages of paperwork and eagle-eyed reviews performed by veteran educators. (“So don”™t bother hiding anything,” Newman said. “They”™ll find it.”) Among its benefits, accreditation allows Spire and Pinnacle students to receive transportation from their home districts.
Dror said, “We all really strive to meet the students where they are. In all of our programs and all of our schools we have a huge degree of flexibility. It”™s complex on our end, but it”™s good for the students.” Dror joined Newman, Hafer, Links Director Andrea MacGilpin and Tammy Moscrip recently to discuss GEG”™s programs and progress.
Moscrip is executive director of both The Spire School ”” where tuition runs $58,000 for the lower grades to $62,500 to $64,000 for high school ”” and Links Academy, with Links filling the need for an accredited, one-on-one teaching service. She said Links is morphing from an exclusively short-term program ”” a student seeking help with a single topic, for example ”“ to a model where, in addition to the short-term help, students will enroll full-time. The transition has been organic, which complements Newman”™s statement that everything GEG does is in response to an educational need in the community.
Moscrip earned her psychology doctorate from Columbia University with a focus on neuroscience. She also has a master”™s and clinical license in social work. “We have rolling admissions until April and that is important,” she said. Students who struggled early used to tank all year, never catching up. At GEG, she said, “It”™s different. They”™re not thrown in a class that”™s on chapter 14 of ”˜Huck Finn”™ and they haven”™t read the book. We get to know a lot about the students so they”™re caught up and comfortable.”
The five educators all stressed the dedication and credentials of the teachers.
“That”™s what we”™re offering: access to incredibly passionate and brilliant teachers,” Hafer said.
The schools employ an economy of scale for internal processes like human resources and bookkeeping. The company also provides day- and boarding-school advisory services. The group”™s foundation so far has given students $225,000 in tuition help in the last four years. Other GEG services include test preparation, college counseling, diagnostic assessment, college essay boot camps, clinical and coaching services and social skills support.
“We”™re very hands-on,” Newman, a former teacher, said. “And we”™re very involved.” Strengths, challenges and necessary supports all receive individualized assessments, she said. “So many students like ours should be successful, but fail because the supports are not in place.”
Those supports include 10 full-time workers at the GEG Collaborative Center who help with services addressing executive function, speech and language therapy, neurological testing and academic assessments.
“One of the great things about GEG is that we use everyone,” MacGilpin said. “There could be medical reasons, an injury, and a child has to keep up. We”™ll work with the collaborative center to get whatever resources are needed.”
