New charter school to prepare kids for health careers
When the Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health and Science Charter School opens its doors next fall, it will be the first char-ter school in New York City to offer a Career and Technical Education program geared specifically toward preparing stu-dents for jobs in the health care sector, including Emergency Medical Techni-cian (EMT) certification.
“Health care is one of the fastest grow-ing and most lucrative sectors in the country, and yet the Bronx has one of the lowest rates of high school graduates en-tering this field,” said John Xavier, prin-cipal of the school. “Lack of education and opportunity are keeping our students out of this sector, and our goal with the Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health and Sci-ences Charter School is to change that.”
The school, which will open in Sep-tember 2010, will initially serve 100 stu-dents in grade six. Each year the Izquierdo Health and Science Charter School will add one grade, eventually growing to serve 700 students in grades 6-12. The school will combine a strong sci-ence and mathematics curriculum with career education in health science, and students will have the opportunity to en-roll in EMT certification courses.
Students will take multiple science courses every year in addition to mathe-matics, English, Latin, history and dance or martial arts.As the school grows to capacity it will develop a comprehensive after-school program that will provide fine and performing arts, including mu-sic, drama and film, and boys and girls team sports, including baseball, basket-ball and soccer.
“The school was created to provide a quality education that would free the children of the South Bronx from the bonds of poverty and ultimately provide quality health care and a happy and healthy community,” said Dr. Richard Izquierdo, who founded the school and has been a prominent pediatrician, fam-ily physician, and community and public health advocate for the past 40 years. “Our communities need this type of school,” Dr. Izquierdo continued.
To support its curriculum, the school will partner with the Urban Health Plan, Inc. (UHP), which will provide profes-sional development to enhance the health and science curriculum and create an effective career education model.The school will have access to UHP’s human resources in order to draw highly quali-fied instructors and mentors from a workforce that includes nearly 400 em-ployees and 80 medical professionals.UHP will also provide professional and academic opportunities to students through seminars, site visits, health ca-reer counseling and an internship pro-gram and summer and part-time job op-portunities.
“The beauty of this school is that upon graduation, not only will students be ready academically to enter college, they will also be prepared to enter a number of health careers,” said Paloma Hernandez, president of Urban Health Plan.
Open house information sessions for students and parents will be held at Ur-ban Health Plan’s El Nuevo San Juan health center at 1065 Southern Boulevard and will continue through the winter and into the spring, when the school will hold a reception to introduce itself more for-mally to the community.
For further information please con-tact:Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health & Sci-ence Charter School c/o NYC Charter School Center 111 Broadway, Suite 604, New York, NY 10006, by phone: (212) 227-2763.
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