Nysmith School for the Gifted

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Nysmith
Youth is a tiny window of expensive opportunity
School type	Private
Grades	Kindergarten - 8th grade
Location	Herndon, Virginia
Website	http://www.nysmith.com/

Nysmith School is a preparatory school located in Herndon, Virginia that teaches from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. It was founded in 1983 by Carol Nysmith, and is now principally run by Kenneth Nysmith, her son. It is commonly known that Nysmith's main goal is to send as many graduating students to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the local magnet school, as possible. Lately, Nysmith has come under fire for being run more and more like business, and less and less like a school.

1 Tuition
2 Admissions
3 Facility
4 External link

[edit] Tuition

Tuition at Nysmith is expensive, even for Northern Virginia, which has many schools made for those who are more financially gifted. Tuition is as follows:

Preschool 8:30 - 2:30 $16,750*

K - 3rd Grades 8:30 - 3:00 $21,810*

4th - 8th Grades 8:30 - 3:00 $24,640*

PM Extended Care 3:00 - 6:30 $4,830

AM/PM Extended Care 7:00 - 6:30 $5,750

Tuition does not include the required $250 classroom technology/enrichment assessment fee.

[edit] Admissions

Although the intellectual requirements of Nysmith have dropped a significant amount in the past 5 years, Nysmith bases its admissions process around the intelligence of the said student. Unlike many other private schools in the area, which focus on the personality of the student and social standing of the parents, intelligence is the only factor that they use in their screening process. This makes for a much more intellectual student base. Nysmith policy does not have any restrictions on students coming in at higher grades, but very rarely is their an open spot in any grade higher that the sixth. Most students come into the school between pre-kindergarten and 3rd grade. However simple the process is to get into Nysmith, it is mush harder to get out. In example, when a student wishes to transfer into a GT school past grade 3, the school needs to see the students grades, the courses the student took, and other specifications along those lines. When a parent tries to get these papers from the school, the administration changes their attitude towards the parent entirely. Before, the Parent was a paying customer, but now that they wish to take their business elsewhere, they are the enemy. On Several occasions, the administration has flat out refused to give these type of papers, until the parent pays for next years tuition, which of course, defeats the purpose of transferring to another school.

[edit] Facility

Nysmith School is a beautiful facility, just inside Herndon. The schools location has changed several times since its founding, as it tried to take on more and more grade levels. The current location was first opened in 2000, and has been a major selling point for Nysmith. There is a stage complete with theater lights and microphones, two gyms, one of which has special "rubber-safe" technology to keep children from hurting themselves (the P.E. teachers at the school seem to believe that the rubber tiles do nothing, and were a waist of money), plasma screen televisions in the hallways, which run a nonstop slide show of pictures taken at the schools different events, 4 media labs, each equipped with top of the line computers and graphics software, 4 basketball courts, 3 soccer fields, a baseball field, a giant picnic Gazebo, and the Coup de Grace: the new "Silver Pod" with cathedral ceilings specially designed to allow light in to create a soft learning environment.