The size of the community ensures an intimacy that allows us to give all students the personal attention they deserve. Along with our 11:1 student-teacher ratio, we consider it one of our greatest assets.

We begin and end each school day at our campus in the Chinatown-International District. We also take lots of field trips and encourage other activities such as Independent Study and service projects that happen off-campus. As a community school we want to take advantage of the resources of the larger community and get away from the notion that learning only happens in a school building.

Do you have any attendance requirements?

There are 171 days in the 2017–2018 school year, each 6 hours 40 minutes in duration, for a total of 1,140 school hours. Each student must be present in school-approved activities for at least 1000 of those hours, which we call Community Hours. To be eligible to graduate from PSCS, students must attend the school for at least three full years (and be at least 16 years old).

Most of our students choose to pursue graduating from PSCS and earn a high school diploma. In rare cases, students choose not to work towards a high school diploma, believing they will be better served by following a less traditional path through high school. We support our students in whatever path they choose to take.

There are no required academic courses at PSCS, but that is not meant to suggest that PSCS students do not pursue academics. Quite the contrary, actually. Our students learn to set goals and do the work needed to achieve these goals, and many goals require academic-type skills. For instance, a common goal is gaining admittance to a college or university. And since college entrance typically involves a demonstration of academic competence, students choose academic offerings to develop this competence. An important thing to note about a PSCS education is our belief that developing academic skills is a natural byproduct to being in a loving, nurturing, supportive community designed to help people identify and achieve their goals.

This question presupposes that being forced to take certain classes means people actually learn those things being "taught." At PSCS, students pursue learning at their own pace, driven by their curiosity. Over the years, we have found that they naturally come upon what are considered “basics” at other schools in their own time. Most often, this happens in the context of a deeper passion and is more likely to happen the longer the student is at the school. For example, we had a student realize that he wanted to do computer programming. As he started programming, he recognized that he needed math and launched into algebra, pursuing it endlessly for weeks. Rather than learning it for the purpose of passing a test (and then forgetting it afterwards), he learned it as part of pursuing a personal interest and has the knowledge for life.

Many of the courses and activities offered at school will have assigned work students need to do outside of class. But in a school like PSCS, where students are given the freedom to pursue their own interests in unique and creative ways, there is often much less distinction between working at home and working at school. In other words, the amount of work students do at home is based on a number of personal choices they make, all related to their goals.

Students interested in going to college work closely with staff members to develop a strategy for getting into a college program that interests them. This involves identifying college entrance requirements and doing the work to meet them, which sometimes includes preparing for and taking the SAT or other admissions exams. But we want to stress that there are unique paths for gaining admittance to colleges, not just the one-size-fits-all GPA, AP classes, and SAT scores that get popularized by the media. When our students decide they want to attend college, we work with them to identify paths that help them achieve that goal.

Given the extraordinary nature of the school, parents and students need to carefully consider whether the school is right for them. There is an adjustment to coming to a school in which the academics made mandatory in most schools are made optional. Such an adjustment requires patience and trust, and a belief that each human being has a unique wisdom that needs only a supportive environment, caring people, and time to be made known. PSCS is not the right school for children with extreme behavior challenges who require constant adult supervision. And it’s not the right school for parents who feel they need to make most of the educational decisions for their children.