City Neighbors schools combine eight educational and community elements designed to work together to inspire children and provide an extraordinary public school education with high academic achievement.

1.    Arts-Integration - We believe in a creative, inquiry-based process of teaching and learning that uses the arts to assist students in understanding and applying skills.

2.    Project-Based Learning – Our curriculum is based on in-depth investigations of topics driven by student interest and informed by the Voluntary State Curriculum.

3.    Reggio Emilia – Children are strong, intellectually rich, and possess great potential; therefore we respect children’s creative capacities and individual learning styles by entering into a research partnership intended to stimulate and deepen children’s critical thinking.

4.    Inclusion – All students, no matter their ability and as much as possible, should be educated in general education classrooms.

5.    A Strong Foundation of Teacher Empowerment – Teachers are researches who study their students and enter into educational partnerships with them.  They must be routinely encouraged and well equipped for this task.

6.    Parent-school partnership – We believe in cooperative governance based on the principles of human dignity, consensus, and freedom; therefore we are structured as a parent/teacher cooperative.

7.    Small School Model – We value the individual attention students receive and the family feel of in a small school culture; therefore all City Neighbors schools are limited to 198 students.

8.    Diversity – We strive to create an environment that values all people through practices, procedures, curriculum, and relationships.

In our small-school model that is purposefully light in administration, the Principal of CNH is the only administrator in the school structure.  He/she is supported by an Office Administrator and works in close partnership with a working Board of Directors (made up of parents, students, and teachers).  Each member of the Board of Directors has an assigned volunteer support role in the school.  This unique system of cooperative governance enhances the school culture, empowers the teacher, and brings the school together as a community.