Schools Want To Educate Leaders. But Are They Ready To Empower Them?

A new era of high school education evolves as schools start to implement opportunities for student input within their communities and curricula.

The Academy at Penguin Hall Class of 2022 throws their caps up in the air to celebrate their graduation. (Credit: Danny Ebersole/Ebersole Photo)

On June 13th, 2025, Molly Martins sent one of the worst emails of her life. “It is with a heavy heart that the Board of Trustees is informing you that The Academy at Penguin Hall is permanently closing its doors effective today.”

Martins, founder and president of The Academy at Penguin Hall (APH), had run out of options to keep the school financially afloat. The all-girls private school in Wenham, Massachusetts opened its doors in 2016. And now, after nine years of educating, enlightening and empowering students, or so their mission stated, APH was closed.

Although the email had only been sent to the current students, parents and staff in the APH community, the news spread like wildfire. Old high school group chats became active again as kids sent screenshots of the message to their alumni friends. Former members of the APH community found out their high school was closed on Instagram as students took to social media to post obituaries that read “RIP PENGUIN HALL.”

Sitting in my living room with my parents, shortly after completing my junior year of college, I received a text from my own high school group chat saying that APH was done for. There was no overwhelming sense of anger or sadness. Just shock — that my high school, with its constant decline of student enrollment and teachers quitting en masse, had honestly even lasted this long.

APH had brought a new type of all-girls education to the North Shore of Massachusetts — a school that strived to not only educate its students, but “empower” them to reconsider what their high school experience could be. Martins wanted to foster an environment where students could create school traditions and feel supported to speak out when they felt something could be changed or improved. However, students claim that a lack of basic structure mixed with financial issues caused the school to close.

When developing APH’s motto of “Educate, Enlighten, Empower,” Martins felt like it was the perfect way to sum up the type of education she wanted to provide to her students. Historically, women haven’t always had the chance to be educated, let alone be empowered — both in the classroom and beyond — so at APH, Martins wanted to equip her students by providing them with leadership opportunities to develop the confidence to be leaders in a co-ed environment.

“We’re empowering them through not only the education, but the opportunities for leadership. In a girls’ school, girls hold all the positions, right?” said Martins. “They’re the chair of every committee, they’re president of the Student Council, they’re the leads in the play. They’re everything.”

Alumni of APH slightly differed when it comes to what they believed true student empowerment was, claiming that they feel more valued when administration is open to student feedback and teachers are supportive of students’ needs — something that, they believe, APH could’ve improved on.

Although APH was ultimately unsuccessful, it did introduce students to a new generation of learning, where administration values student empowerment and leadership just as much as academics. By implementing project-based learning instead of AP classes and adding blocks dedicated to community bonding and practicing leadership skills, APH worked to create a balanced empowering and academic curriculum, Martins said. And it’s telling of a much larger educational trend that has started to appear in more school curricula nationwide.

Emma Willard, another all-girls private school in Troy, New York, has implemented APH’s student empowerment dreams into their curriculum, but with more success due to its 200-plus years of history and substantial endowment. Outside of private schools, New York City’s public schools have taken a different approach to letting students take charge of their education. Career readiness programs like FutureReadyNYC and highly specialized curricula have found their way into multiple high schools in the city, giving students the power of choice.

There are over 700 programs at 400 high schools in NYC featuring multiple different educational pathways, and more are opening up across the country. Bloomberg Philanthropies has donated $250 million to open high schools specialized in healthcare in 10 cities. With these programs, students are getting more opportunities to pick a high school experience that best prepares them for their future careers and entices them to want to attend school.

After the COVID-19 pandemic stopped all in-person learning in 2020, schools are still struggling to get students back in the classroom years after the shutdown. According to Chalkbeat, one in three students in New York City’s public schools missed 10% of the 2024–2025 school year. Supporters of student empowerment argue that providing students with multiple choices of academically challenging and engaging curricula could be a way to get students back in the classroom again.

Every student has a different definition of what a good high school experience looks like, and now, more and more schools are starting to empower students to have a voice in what they want from their education. But as students use that voice, are the schools ready to hear it?

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When Martins was considering where to send her two youngest daughters to high school, she realized that the closest all-girls option was almost 30 miles away in Boston. Her daughters, Addie and Catherine Martins, attended St. Mary’s of the Annunciation School, a Catholic middle school in Danvers, Massachusetts.

While the school was co-ed, most of their middle school boys transferred to the newly opened St. John’s Prep Middle School, an extension of the all-boys Catholic high school, which most St. Mary’s boys ended up attending after middle school.

“Addie ended up having two years of essentially an all-girls education because there was only one boy in the class,” said Martins. She felt that girls didn’t necessarily need rigid learning structures to do well in school like boys did. She wanted her daughters and other girls to “find their own leadership style in a way that was not confined,” she explained.

Her three oldest daughters had all graduated from the local public school years ago, but she wanted to continue this all-girls education for Addie and Catherine. However, the only all-girls school in the area was a failing Catholic school on the verge of closure.

“I did not start a school for my kids,” emphasized Martins as she explained how APH came to fruition. Many parents in their community shared the same desire as Martins and her husband to have an all-girls education opportunity like boys did, she claims. When a parent mentioned that the old Penguin Hall mansion in town would make a cool all-girls school, Martins and her husband wondered if they could be the ones to do it.

Before Martins opened APH, she worked in financial administration in higher education and was quite familiar with acquiring real estate for the universities she worked for. Along with her husband, Al Martins, who owned a real estate and construction company, they worked with the previous owner of the property, Jim Mullen, to acquire Penguin Hall and convert it into the all-girls high school they believed students needed.

Of course, acquiring the property was no cheap task, as the Martins family needed to come up with $10 million. When they couldn’t secure all the money needed from investors and loans, Mullen ended up being the funding source. Penguin Hall was bought in February 2016. The Academy at Penguin Hall opened seven months later.

The Academy at Penguin Hall campus; where events like Convocation, Prom and Commencement were held. (Credit: @academypenguinhall on Instagram)

When Addie thought about where she would go to high school, she had assumed she would choose between the public school her older sisters had attended or one of the local private schools. Instead, her parents provided a third option: opening up a new one entirely.

“I remember vividly at the age of 11 years old being like, ‘This is a terrible idea. I don’t want to go to a high school with all girls,’” said Addie, about seven months after the announcement of APH’s closure.

While her sister Catherine was excited to be a part of such a unique high school experience, Addie held onto the idea that she could go somewhere else. When it came time for her to apply for high school, she submitted an application to the private Pingree School, which had the well-established STEM and sports programs that the newly opened APH did not.

“I don’t know if they just didn’t think I’d get in or they were hoping I wouldn’t,” said Addie of her parents. “I was all set thinking I’d go because I got in, and then they were like, ‘Actually, no. This will not happen.’”

Ironically, The Academy at Penguin Hall, which Addie says she was forced to go to, was shaping up to be a school that wanted to give its students an educational space where they could learn how to ask adults for support and practice speaking up for themselves.

When new schools open, many of them only open enrollment to freshmen their first year. Every year, as the originating class moves up a grade, they add on another freshmen class until they have a complete high school cohort with freshman to seniors. APH went in a different direction.

Nazareth Academy, the failing all-girls Catholic school in Wakefield, Massachusetts, did eventually close in May of 2016 and asked APH to take in their former students who were left without a school. So when APH opened its doors that September, a year earlier than planned because of Nazareth’s closure, four classes of students started at APH.

“It’s so hard to convey that the first day of the school was my first day of high school,” said Lila Caplan, a member of the originating freshman class. “The doors opened. I walked in. It was the very first day of school. And that always gets people.”

Caplan had grown up going to the public school in her small town and was quite tired of being in class with the same people learning the same “cut and dry” core curriculum. After her parents toured the APH building and talked with administrators, they believed that this was the educational opportunity Caplan was looking for.

Being the first-ever class at APH came with its own set of challenges, but Caplan loved being a part of “the guinea pig class,” as she called it. Nothing was established or set in stone because everything was new.

Of course, sometimes that meant that lunch was poorly structured as a two-hour unsupervised block where students could roam free in the giant mansion they went to school in known for its hidden doors and mysterious (and supposedly haunted) rooms. Other times, class projects and homework assignments didn’t go according to plan, since no one had ever completed them before.

Still, Caplan never viewed these failures as a bad thing, as she and her classmates could make changes along with administration. There were never any “This is the way we’ve always done it” justifications, she said, which allowed students to create traditions, like the annual all-school holiday book swap. They could also decide for themselves what the APH community would be like.

“I liked being able to voice my opinion and feeling empowered to do so,” said Caplan. “I think that that was a really good life lesson because when I went to college, it didn’t even dawn on me that I should be afraid of asking for something.”

As for academics, the standard curriculum at APH was the same as any other public or private school in Massachusetts. Students were required to take classes in all the core subject areas (math, science and humanities) and had to complete three years of language. In addition to the core curriculum, students also had to enroll in computer science, psychology or religion and arts electives in order to graduate.

But the faculty and staff at APH tried hard not to stress students out too much about grades to the point where they didn’t show students’ grades at all. Students could check their grades on specific assignments, but cumulative grades were hidden except for the report cards that were sent out quarterly. When applying to college, I had to ask my advisor what my GPA was for my applications since I had never seen it.

In its first year, APH tried to establish itself in the Catholic tradition, but this didn’t last. The school ended up aligning itself with spirituality rather than a specific religion, offering classes like World Religions and Death and Dying where students learned about how different religions understand death.

But the one facet of the curriculum that Martins made sure to never change was the absence of Advanced Placement, or AP, college-level classes. “An AP curriculum is one that everybody does the same thing. Everybody paints the same bowl of fruit, right? They memorize all the same information, they regurgitate all the same information on a test, and they’re given awards to say that was great,” said Martins. “So for us, the AP or IB or any of those really standardized types of learning were much more for if you’re trying to keep people in lanes and keep them in boxes. That’s exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do.”

During open houses, parents would ask Martins how many AP courses they offered in order to gauge how rigorous the curriculum was. Martins felt that some parents only wanted to “check off boxes” when it came to deciding which school their child should go to. Because Martins made sure parents knew that APH did not support the AP curriculum, this ended up dissuading many parents from sending their kids to APH, worried that their child wouldn’t be as competitive as a candidate when applying to college without AP credit. What did entice students to enroll at APH instead were the opportunities for community involvement and leadership that were unlike any found in schools in the area.

At the beginning of the school year, APH held a House Sorting Ceremony in which all the new members of the APH community were sorted into a house — Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Grey/Purple — just like at Hogwarts. (Grey House switched to Purple House in 2022 due to students complaining that grey was too boring of a color.) The houses were not just a student tradition as well. Every year, new teachers were sorted into houses along with first-years and transfer students, and they were also involved in all House activities.

New students and teachers wait to be sorted in their house during the 2021 House Sorting Ceremony. (Credit: @academypenguinhall on Instagram)

Houses were a chance for students of all grade levels to get together every two weeks and plan Spirit Week themes, undertake community service projects, and campaign to win the Pebble Cup trophy, which goes to the House with the most points — often earned through these community service ventures — at the end of the year. Each House also had two representatives who demonstrated their leadership by running House meetings.

“I loved having the different houses and getting to form the different personalities behind them,” said Caplan, a member of Red House often known for their huge, “in your face” spirit. “Even though [APH] was small, you had so many different outlets to express yourself, share your opinions, show who you were and show your personality.”

Along with students, teachers were also encouraged to show their personalities and knowledge through their teaching. Alick McLean started at APH in the fall of 2018, teaching eleventh grade global history. McLean had formerly taught in universities like Syracuse and NYU and then switched to teaching middle schoolers in order to connect with students more. In both cases, McLean was accustomed to prepping a syllabus and sticking to it throughout the semester. Coming to APH where students were used to giving input on curriculum topics and lesson plans was a bit of a shock to him at first.

“It was hard for me to connect with the students in the very beginning,” said McLean. “I just ended up kind of humbling myself and just listening to the students in what they needed. I think over the course of the first semester, I adapted my approach to teaching to try to involve their ways of thinking and to be really listening closely with them.”

McLean’s global history class worked closely with the global literature class that all juniors were required to take. Instead of being handed a specific class plan from the APH administration, McLean and his humanities co-teacher worked together to create a curriculum map based on their own interests and students’ feedback.

“It opened a worldview because we had teachers that really cared about what they were doing and they were all PhDs who had really niche research areas,” said Addie Martins.

Teachers were also encouraged to bond with students to establish an overall friendly environment at APH and to make students feel comfortable suggesting class improvements and ideas. Every teacher had a desk in what was called “The Hive,” which was positioned right in a hallway where students had to pass multiple times a day. The Hive was made up of cubicles lining a wide hallway that connected the old part of the building called “The Manor House” to the newer part of the building where the majority of classrooms were. This enforced a culture where students could easily visit all their favorite teachers in one place and formed a sense of comradery with fellow teachers as well.

In the early years of APH, this way of learning worked well. When students and teachers petitioned to add new electives, the administration listened. When the students asked Martins to create a tradition where the seniors got to sleep over in the school one night before graduation, the Senior Retreat Sleepover was established.

According to Addie, her first year and half at APH “felt like real school.” That was until the COVID-19 pandemic shut schools down.

In the spring of 2020, after the pandemic forced schools to switch to online learning, APH excelled at getting students back in the virtual classroom and listening to their needs during the pandemic. Administration also successfully implemented student input into the new remote curriculum by shortening the traditional hour and 15-minute class sessions and telling teachers to limit the amount of homework they gave students. When students complained of being too fatigued by staring at a computer screen all day, APH listened and made changes.

However, as in-person learning gradually returned, it was difficult to resume normal operations as students were no longer accustomed to taking tests and doing homework. And so, academic standards faltered, as well as the administration’s authority.

Addie remembers her parents talking to her about a math teacher who was uncomfortable assigning a test after the pandemic because he didn’t believe that students would actually try and do it. “My parents were like, ‘Oh, what do we do about that?’” she recalled. “I was like, ‘You should just assign the test. This is a school. You run the school. People need to learn.’”

But the administration was handling an even bigger challenge besides students not wanting to take tests. When students are encouraged to demand change, it may not be what the administrators want.

During the 2021–2022 academic school year, the students of color at APH, who only made up 6% of the student body at the time, spoke up loud enough that the administration couldn’t ignore them. The 6% Club, as they named themselves, were demanding deep systemic changes within the school to be more welcoming to students of color. Many other classmates rallied with them and demanded that certain teachers accused of committing microaggressions be fired.

“One of the things that independent schools always struggle with, because of the tuition and stuff like that, is building diversity in terms of your student body, whether it’s socioeconomic diversity, geographic or racial,” said Jan Healy, the school’s dean of academics.

Healy claimed that APH did have geographic diversity and a decent racial diversity — although the 6% statistic states otherwise; however, she didn’t believe that the school was good at “making everybody feel embraced and welcomed.”

She was aware that students were struggling with certain teachers and were relying on the administration to help them, but she also didn’t have the necessary power to make the changes the student body was asking for. That power was reserved for Martins.

To address concerns, both Healy and Martins had a meeting with the senior class — the most vocal among all grade levels — at the beginning of the second semester to open up a line of communication. In that room along with my senior class, I witnessed a number of students getting so angry to the point of being brought to tears. Some mentioned how unsafe they felt at the school because of harmful comments teachers had said and how frustrated they were at the administration’s lack of response. They were angry that APH had taught them how to use their voices to stand up for themselves, but that nothing was being done about it.

The emotion in the room got to be too much for Healy. Watching the students she cared so much about be so angry over something she was trying to fix was brutal. She ran out of the room crying and announced her departure from APH a week later.

Meanwhile, Addie Martins watched as her classmates yelled at her mother for an hour. While she believed the students were all bringing up important concerns, she didn’t believe this was the right way to go about it.

“I think there needed to be more of a divide between students and administration because that was horrible for everyone involved. The people obviously have valid things to say, but also, I was sitting there listening to people rag on my mom about how awful she was as a human being,” said Addie. “It’s okay to have an opinion, but also, in the real world, you’re not going to just aggressively berate people, and they’re just going to sit there and take it.” She ultimately left the room due to a panic attack.

Addie believes that APH was different after the pandemic. After Healy left in the middle of the school year, many qualified teachers followed suit. As students watched as their favorite teachers they had created strong bonds with leave, they didn’t really have the desire to stay.

Although the pandemic actually boosted APH’s enrollment due to their swiftness of getting students back in the classroom before many other schools in the area, their enrollment quickly dropped right back down after other schools reopened.

With a steadily decreasing number of students and a rapidly increasing tuition — in 2018, tuition was at $22,800 a year, and in 2025, it was up to $42,800 a year — rumors started to spread that APH would not last long.

As teachers started to stay out of school due to late paychecks, students were left fending for themselves in empty classrooms. They were, in fact, empowered to do whatever they wanted at school — just not in the way they expected.

A marketing image from APH. (Credit: @academypenguinhall on Instagram)

In June of 2025, Martins had officially run out of money to keep the school afloat. She announced the closure shortly after the last day of the 2024–2025 school year.

“I can’t even describe how difficult and heartwrenching it was,” said Martins. “It was the girls I felt the worst for and future students who could have come and could have done what I saw happen for ten years.”

For now, Martins is working through the bankruptcy process in order to pay back the teachers who are owed missing paychecks and retirement funds and students and parents who have lost tuition checks for the 2025–2026 school year — a process that, she says, feels like “death by a thousand cuts.”

The alums of APH have mixed opinions. For Addie, she’s happy that she never has to think about The Academy at Penguin Hall again, having heard nonstop talk about it for the past ten years of her life. For others, they feel genuine sadness for the type of education future generations of students have lost out on.

“That place saved me so many times and set me up in a way for life that I could have never imagined. I’m now the biggest advocate for all girls’ education, especially at the high school age,” said Caplan. She had always envisioned sending her future daughters to APH to get the same education she experienced. With the announcement of the school closure, her plans have now changed.

“Well, there goes that dream.”

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Ten minutes outside of Albany in Troy, New York, sits Emma Willard School, a longstanding all-girls boarding and day school made up of multiple Gothic buildings connected by perfectly manicured lawns and clean, crisp pathways. Its campus is equivalent to one of a prestigious Ivy League university, but for teenagers.

Emma Willard is an all-girls school similar to APH but larger in terms of history, student body and endowment. Founded in 1814, Emma Willard is so old that when you see a plaque honoring an alumna who was in the Class of ’18, there are three possible centuries to choose from.

The historic buildings that make up the expansive Emma Willard campus. (Credit: Molly Siener)

In this century, Emma Willard has adopted similar values on school leadership and empowerment alongside APH, but has been more successful, considering that the school is still operational.

“Honoring its founder’s vision, Emma Willard School proudly fosters in each young woman a love of learning, the habits of an intellectual life, and the character, moral strength, and qualities of leadership to serve and shape her world,” the school’s mission, last adopted in 2002, reads on its website.

The website also states three values that Emma Willard lived by, which are embodied in the school: “education, edification, and empowerment for all.”

In the past few decades, Emma Willard has taken steps to implement leadership skills and allow for more academic freedom in its curriculum. Students also have support from a large faculty that all have a specific role in encouraging students to feel supported to step into these leadership roles and make changes at the school.

Similar to APH, Emma Willard has removed AP classes from their curriculum, believing that students better benefit from teachers having the freedom to create their own creative and rigorous lesson plans rather than teaching for an AP exam. However, Emma Willard has gone a step further and replaced the AP curriculum with their own Advanced Studies (AS) courses in a multitude of different subjects like calculus, computer science and studio art.

The AS courses are “comparable to Advanced Placement courses in rigor and workload,” but Emma Willard does cap the amount of AS classes a student can take per year in order for students to engage in all class offerings and to avoid overworking themselves.

Students are also able to participate in multiple clubs, affinity groups and student leadership groups to get involved within the community and be in leadership positions.

“I think the main thing about Emma is there are just so many opportunities for having these leadership roles. There are Proctors, Prefects, SDLG; there’s tons, and you can do whatever floats your boat,” said sophomore Alankrita Biswas. “Once you’re in that role, you can explore different ways to lead, and if you ever need support, there are just so many adults there to help you.”

To be a part of organizations like the Wellness Advocates (WELLIES) or a representative of the Student Diversity Leadership Group (SDLG), students must undergo an intense application process. Once selected by faculty and current club leaders, students then receive training by departments like the Office of Equity and Inclusion or the Health and Counseling Center to prepare students to be the best possible leaders for the student body.

In these leadership roles, students are able to take the concerns of the student body to faculty members and the administration and are a large part of how students can implement change at school.

“As the Office of Equity and Inclusion…students will come to us and say, ‘These are the kinds of things that are on our mind,’ and that’s why we have the student leadership groups. We see them as a liaison to help us understand what are the things that the students are experiencing right now,” said Gemma Halfi, Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Halfi has been working at Emma Willard since 2004, when she was hired as a dorm parent to make some extra money while attending grad school. She had originally planned to complete her degree in special education and leave Emma Willard to go teach at a public school, but found herself making a real connection with the students at the school and eventually worked her way up into a position in the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

Because Halfi has worked at Emma Willard for over 20 years, she has witnessed and also played an active role in many of the changes within the school curriculum and community. She was one of the pioneering faculty members who helped introduce a more gender-inclusive philosophy into the Emma Willard community, and she created the SDLG that she now runs with the 16 students hand-picked to be the active voices for school diversity.

But inciting change hasn’t always been easy. Unlike APH, where nothing was established or set in stone, Emma Willard has over 200 years of history to consider when making changes. Something as simple as moving Revels — a tradition where seniors spend a week putting on Emma’s traditional end-of-year play — from the original auditorium to a newly built one has received substantial pushback from alumni.

A photo from the first May Day celebration at Emma Willard in 1912; an ongoing tradition where first-year students decorate a Maypole. (Credit: @emmawillardschool on Instagram)

Halfi realizes that certain changes are hard to make at Emma Willard, and she understands the frustration within the student body, but she is still proud of the work that she and other faculty members have done to bring the school into the modern era, especially when it comes to making students of all gender identities feel included.

“I think we actually have come a long way. Most of the employees have gotten really good at stopping the use of female-centered group pronouns or gendered group pronouns at all,” said Halfi. “But I think we’ve done a really good job with shifting that culture…[with] little things like that that I hope make a difference, and I think they do.”

However, when talking to the students and graduates of Emma Willard, many of them claimed that administration and their lack of substantive responses to students’ opinions were the things they disliked most about their school.

“We hated the admin,” said Ollie Mundahl, a graduate of the Class of 2022. Mundahl recalls often being frustrated with the administration for always offering spaces for students to give input but never doing anything with that feedback. “It was like, ‘We’re fighting against the administration, [but] why aren’t they listening to us? They taught us to be like this.’”

In a school that prides itself on nurturing empowered students, the faculty believes that it’s important that the school is prepared for when those students put those lessons into practice. Director of Student Life and Community Emily Carton’s number one rule for student input is that if the administration is going to ask for feedback, they must know what they’re going to do with it — a rule Carton says that the Emma Willard administration is still trying to master.

“I think being really transparent and upfront is necessary,” said Carton. There are over 100 students involved in student leadership at Emma Willard who all have different desires. Carton knows that the administration won’t be open to changing everything, and it’s her job to make sure that students understand “what is within [their] purview to change.”

Carton joined the school community in 2021 right after the pandemic and was in charge of putting rules back in place. She is aware that she and other faculty members will sometimes receive anger from students who are frustrated with decisions being made out of their control. However, Carton doesn’t take this personally, as she believes it’s her job to work together with her students and maintain a culture of openness that students can rely on.

“Don’t undervalue what a teenager can do. I think it’s really easy to think that as adults, we have all the solutions…but at the same time the students are living the day-to-day experience,” said Carton. “If you can establish a culture in which you are open to feedback, in which you don’t take critical feedback personally, where you say, ‘Okay we’re going to work together on fixing things’… you can be open to what students can do.”

Carton believes there’s still room for improvement within the Emma Willard community in terms of institutional transparency and active listening. But with the introduction of students in primarily adult-run committees like the Tech Wellness Committee and Civic Discourse Committee, students are being allowed to share opinions in a safe space where they can learn to become empowered individuals.

When talking with Biswas during my tour of Emma Willard, I asked her what her favorite thing about the school was and if there was anything that she thought the school could improve upon. She jumped at the chance to emphasize the student-teacher relationships within the school and how she feels as if she can talk to teachers like Halfi about anything. Biswas then explained that she would like to see more spaces for open discussions where students with differing political ideologies could engage in.

According to Mundahl, the school is “so socially conscious and woke that you forget what the real world is.” She explained that during her time at Emma Willard, she was constantly surrounded by classmates with the same opinions as herself, which made her feel as if she were living in what she called a “privileged bubble.” Current students like Biswas would like to implement spaces where students with differing opinions can partake in healthy discourse with each other. But she isn’t too worried that Emma Willard won’t live up to her expectations.

“We’re already working on that, so we’ll see how that goes.”

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New York City is the largest school district in the U.S.. According to the NYC Department of Education (DOE), 906,248 students attend one out of the 1,597 schools within New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) in the 2024–2025 school year. With so many school options within the city, eighth graders are faced with an intense application process to get into the high school program that best fits their educational needs.

But the choice goes far beyond just picking which school will provide the best academics or well-rounded education for their students. In the past few years, the DOE has started to develop and implement new career readiness programs within NYCPS, like FutureReadyNYC, in which students are given the opportunity to work one-on-one with career and financial advisors and explore career paths that they are interested in.

Additionally, new schools are opening all over the five boroughs that feature highly specific curricula. In fact, all seven of the new schools opened fall 2025 are specialized, ranging in programs focusing on healthcare to STEAM. As NYCPS places an emphasis on opening new schools with specialized curricula, students are able to attend a school that best aligns with what they want their high school education to look like and surround themselves with a smaller student body who shares similar passions and interests.

“I was very much raised in music. My mom is a violinist and my two sisters are in music also,” said senior Liam Meyers. “I think music is such a connecting force. I don’t think there’s a better high school for this kind of focus and practice.”

Meyers is a senior at Special Music School (SMS), a K-12 school at Lincoln Center in partnership with the Kaufman Music Center, which funds the entirety of the music program. The high school branch, which was opened in 2013, accepts around 50 students each year, with each student picking a concentration to study out of three options: vocal, composition and instrumental.

SMS is ranked 27th in NYCPS high schools according to the U.S. News and World Report. With a rigorous academic program, which does include AP classes, along with “an intensive conservatory-prep music education,” SMS students are given the tools to leave high school with a quality education that prepares them for higher education or a career in music.

Special Music School celebrates both musical and academic achievements by showcasing students’ work and photos in the hallways. (Credit: Molly Siener)

While SMS doesn’t specifically emphasize empowerment or leadership in its mission statement like APH and Emma Willard do, similarities can still be found within their curriculum and school culture. On its website, SMS describes itself as a “student-centered, collaborative learning community supported by an innovative interdisciplinary curriculum and small class sizes that afford individualized learning experiences and strong teacher-student relationships.”

With only 50 students per grade and multiple opportunities for grades to gather together, such as the biweekly performance class where students support their classmates’ musical performances, SMS has created its own unique community that receives around 400 applications a year.

SMS is just one example of a school in the NYCPS that provides a specialized curriculum that gives students the chance to pursue an education that they are passionate about. With 16 different Career Technical Education (CTE) programs and additional specialized schools for students to choose from, high school students in NYC are empowered to pick a high school education that best suits their desires for what they want their education to look like.

Students who have an interest in film can study at schools like Motion Picture Technical High School or the Academy for Careers in Television or Film. Students who’d like a school with advanced STEM programs can go to the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at CCNY or New Explorations in Science, Technology & Math School (NEST+M). Students who’d like to get a head start on a business career might be interested in the High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology or Manhattan Business Academy.

The Queens Innovation Center houses four different schools — three with specialized curricula: Northwell School of Health Sciences, Motion Picture Technical High School and Gotham Tech High School. (Credit: Molly Siener)

Northwell School of Health Sciences (NSHS), located in the Queens Innovation Center in Woodside, is concluding its first semester with a class of 216 ninth graders and over 2,000 applications for the 2026–27 school year. The school was created in partnership with Northwell Health and funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies as one of their ten specialized healthcare high schools across the country.

“The goal is that [students] leave with an industry-recognized credential that they could be employed with after graduation,” said Jennifer Saleta, the chief administrative officer for Northwell’s Center for Learning and Innovation. “And the goal would be for them to come work for Northwell after graduation, or if they do go on to college, come back four years later and still be able to interview and work for us.”

In crafting their curriculum, NSHS looked to see where the gaps in the workforce were and what jobs in healthcare could be attainable with a high school education. Four CTE pathways were created for students to choose from: licensed practical nursing (LPN), medical assisting, behavioral mental health and healthcare management. Students will be expected to choose a pathway their junior year and work with Northwell mentors to obtain their CTE certification upon graduation.

“These kids have high hopes, and they will achieve them,” said Saleta. “We’re there to make sure they do.”

So far, Saleta explained that the kids at NSHS are hitting groundbreaking milestones with 80% of students on the honor roll and a 98% attendance rate. Saleta attributes these achievements to NSHS principal Erika Hurtado-Valentino, whose strong relationship and connection to the students has inspired them to succeed. “She knows every one of their names and she knows every one of their stories,” said Saleta. “She has 216 kids who want to be there and have very high aspirations.”

And there are still ways for students to get even more involved in their education once they’ve started high school by developing leadership skills in clubs. At SMS, Meyers is one of the editor-in-chiefs of the new student newspaper Ragtime. But some schools are going a step further by encouraging their students to take initiative and think about their futures after high school.

FutureReadyNYC (FRNYC) was launched by the DOE in 2021 to give students in all high schools the opportunity to explore potential careers with a four-year course designed to prepare students for a sustainable life after high school.

“A lot of research has come out showing that oftentimes students are leaving with a CTE degree, but it’s not moving them closer to that readiness for that career,” said Lillian Schenk, the deputy executive director of FRNYC. “FutureReady is like an evolution of that.”

By offering one-on-one career advising and paid workplace internships, FRNYC is getting high schoolers interested and involved in their futures by allowing students to be a big part of shaping them. Participation in the FRNYC program is completely optional, with students deciding at the end of ninth grade whether they would like to finish out the four-year course. At the end of every year, students are also required to complete career interest surveys to help their career plans grow with their changing interests.

Educational empowerment looks different within the model of the city’s public high school education, but it’s possible through the opportunities of specialized curricula that educators spend time crafting to attract the types of students that will thrive within their community. And in many cases, supportive teacher-student relationships remain a necessity within schools to provide a beneficial high school experience for students.

Public school students may not get the exact same experiences as those who attend private schools, but in New York City, with multiple opportunities for a high school education that fits the specific needs of every teenager, students get choices. And that’s empowering.

“You think about young people and how they have their whole lives ahead of them,” said Schenck. “They should be excited about the opportunities in front of them and see themselves as capable of meeting those challenges.”

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What defines a good high school education and experience?

When in school, students are allowed to make mistakes. For as long as she’s been an educator, Emily Carton believes that real learning comes from risk-taking, but for students to take risks, they have to feel safe within their school environment first.

“You have to make sure students’ base needs are met,” said Carton. “Are you meeting those basic needs that are necessary before they can really be in a place where they’re comfortable taking risks, putting themselves outside their comfort zone and trying new things?

While students are allowed and even encouraged to try new things and make mistakes while learning, when school administration does it, the effects are costly.

Martins tried to create a school where students weren’t restricted by a rigid school structure, but to her daughter, a structure that consisted of a set schedule and student behavior expectations were the basic needs she was looking for throughout high school.

“I think that the concept of students having an opinion, a voice and [being able to] change the school for the better was good, but I think that structure is essential,” said her daughter Addie. “I think that having clearer boundaries, especially for teenagers…is definitely essential. No matter how loose your structure is.”

But as graduates from all these schools debate whether their unique education can be classified as a good one or not, they’re left to wonder: was their education worth it?

Similar to how Caplan views her experience at APH, Mundahl also believes that going to Emma Willard changed her life. By being a part of the school’s esteemed community through clubs and student leadership, Mundahl felt completely prepared for college life, even stepping into another leadership role as a resident assistant at New York University. She’s also kept a student-teacher relationship for life with Halfi, who, she says, is always there to hear Mundahl’s newest life updates and is proud to see how far her student has come.

Caplan can’t go back to APH to relive the high school experience that shaped her into being the leader she is today. At least, not in the way she might’ve expected when she graduated.

The Class of 2022 gathers around the Legacy Garden tree for the rock-placing ceremony before graduation. (Credit: @academypenguinhall on Instagram)

Every graduate at APH has placed a rock carved with their name and graduating year around a ceremonial tree in what was called the “Legacy Garden.” When I heard the news of the school closing, I went back to take my rock.

As I drove up the windy road to the old mansion that was once my high school, I saw the three familiar lawn signs that represented what was supposed to be our school legacy: “Educate, Enlighten, Empower.”

The school is now gone, but like me, Caplan doesn’t want to forget her experience. In her last act of school empowerment, Caplan took back her legacy too.

“I did go back and steal my stone after they closed down,” said Caplan. “And the best part was, there were already spots open. That meant other people took [their stones] too.”