A microschool in New York CityIn the tradition of 1787
The floor
is an A.
Every student here reaches A-level in every Regents subject — not because we admit prodigies, but because we teach children how learning actually works. The Regents are our starting line, not our finish.
A regular New York school day, plus one class the city doesn’t teach.
The Lineage “Free school” is the oldest name in New York education
1787
The African Free School opens
Forty students on Cliff Street. Its classrooms go on to produce the physician James McCune Smith, the orator Henry Highland Garnet, the Shakespearean Ira Aldridge.
1805
The Free School Society follows
New schools open for the children the city’s academies won’t take — free, rigorous, and public in spirit before “public school” was a phrase.
1853
The name retires
The free schools fold into the new Board of Education. The promise — an excellent education for every child — becomes the city’s to keep.
2026
The Free School of New York
One small school picks the promise back up — with two centuries of learning science the founders never had.
The Mental Arts Daily · 8:30 to 9:30 · mandatory
first period, every single morning —One class the city doesn’t teach.
Mental Arts is an hour on how knowing works. Not study tips — a discipline. Students learn theory of knowledge, real note-craft, and the memory techniques cognitive science has spent forty years proving out. Then they spend the rest of the school day applying them.
Theory of Knowledge— know
What counts as evidence, what makes an explanation good, and how to tell knowledge from vibes. Epistemology, taught at eye level.
The Craft of Notes— record
Notes that think back. Students learn to capture, structure, and interrogate ideas on paper until note-taking becomes thinking.
Trained Memory— keep
Retrieval practice, spaced repetition, memory palaces — the most replicated results in learning science, practiced daily until they are reflexes.
The General Method— apply
How to become proficient in anything: deliberate practice, self-testing, interleaving. The subject changes; the method doesn’t.
The Standard Our credo, in one table
Every student. Every subject. A‑level.
Our credo is not that every child arrives above average — it’s that mastery is a decision a school makes. New York State calls 65 passing. We don’t. A student isn’t finished with a subject until their work is A-level, in every Regents subject the state offers — and our own internal standards reach further still.
| Regents subject | The state’s bar | Our floor |
|---|---|---|
| English Language Arts | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Algebra I | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Geometry | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Algebra II | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Living Environment | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Earth & Space Sciences | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Chemistry | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Physics | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| Global History & Geography II | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
| U.S. History & Government | 65 · passing | A90 or better |
The School Day Monday through Friday
A regular New York school day. One different hour.
We are deliberately ordinary in shape: the subjects your child would take at any good city school, taught to the state’s standards and beyond. For now the day runs in live online classrooms — same hours, same teachers, cameras on. The difference is the first hour — and what it does to the rest.
- 8:00Arrival & breakfast
- 8:30Mental Artsthe hour that changes the other five
- 9:30Mathematics
- 10:45English
- 12:00Lunch & recess, out in the city
- 12:45Sciences
- 2:00History & civics
- 3:15Studio — arts, code, and PE rotation
- 4:00Dismissal
The Plan Where we are, plainly
Online first. Hybrid next. A schoolhouse within two years.
We are building this school in the open, and we’d rather tell you exactly where things stand than let a rendering of a building imply otherwise. There is no campus yet — by design. The teaching comes first; the real estate follows it.
Now
The charter
Our petition for a provisional charter from the New York State Board of Regents is in preparation with education counsel — curriculum guidelines, governance, attendance and testing policies, drafted and moving.
Fall ’26
First cohort, online
Live, small-group classrooms — twelve students, cameras on, questions constant. The full school day, synchronous, with Mental Arts every morning. Never self-paced videos.
2027
Hybrid days
Weekly in-person days around the city — labs, seminars, museums, PE in the parks. New York is the campus until we choose one.
By 2028
The schoolhouse
We choose a permanent site within two years — and every city and state approval a school building needs will be in hand before a single class meets there.
Materials Chosen the way you would choose for your own child
State-of-the-art books. No packets.
Most city classrooms run on packaged curricula — materials chosen for districts, not children. We choose every book and every tool on one criterion: the best available, full stop.
On our shelves
- Art of Problem Solving mathematics — the books the strongest young mathematicians actually use
- Whole novels and primary sources — never an excerpt in an anthology
- Spaced-repetition software tuned to each student’s own forgetting curve
- The best explanation on Earth for each topic, wherever it lives — a lecture, a lab, a proof from a 1910 textbook
Left behind
- Illustrative Mathematicsa curriculum written for the middle of a bell curve
- HMH Into Reading anthologieschildren deserve whole books
- Worksheet packetsbusywork isn’t practice
- Test prep as a subjectwe don’t prep for the Regents; we teach past them
Admissions Fall 2026
Now enrolling for Fall 2026.
Grades 6–9to start; a grade added each year
12 studentsper class, never more
Online firstlive classrooms now; a campus within two years
The Free School of New York is organizing as an independent nonpublic microschool; our provisional-charter petition to the New York State Board of Regents is in preparation. The program is built to New York State’s substantial-equivalency requirements from day one, and our students will sit the same Regents examinations as their public-school peers — we simply hold the school, not just the student, accountable for the results.
What if my child isn’t an A student now?
Almost none of our students will be, on day one. The credo isn’t a filter — it’s a promise about what happens after enrollment. Mental Arts exists precisely for the child who has never been shown how.
Do students take the Regents?
Yes — every subject the state offers, and our floor for every student is a 90. The exams are the state’s evidence; our standard is mastery.
Where do classes meet?
Online, live, for our first year — the full school day in small synchronous classrooms, never self-paced videos. In-person days around the city follow as we grow into hybrid, and we’ll choose a permanent campus within two years. See The Plan above for the honest timeline.
Is this a real school, legally?
We’re candid about this: we are pre-operational. New York nonpublic schools incorporate through a provisional charter from the Board of Regents, notify their district, and stand for substantial-equivalency review — our petition and policies are drafted and in motion with education counsel. Enrolling families get the full status picture, in writing, before any commitment.
“Free school” — is it free?
The name is an inheritance: New York’s first great schools, from the African Free School on, were called free schools. Our commitment in that tradition is that money should never keep a child out. Ask us about tuition and aid when you visit.
Come sit in on a morning.
The fastest way to understand the school is to watch Mental Arts happen, live. Request a visit and we’ll send your family a link to join one.