The Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management

The Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management (UASEM) prepares students for a broad range of emergency management careers, including response and recovery, human services and emergency technology and communications. The school wants to ensure students graduate with strong communications skills and the ability to problem solve, along with practical experience in the field. UASEM is a CTE ( career and technical education ) school, designed to ensure that students have direct career pathways as an alternative to college.

Opened with a freshman class in 2013, UASEM has grown its list of Avanced Placement (AP) courses to include English literature and composition, environmental science, psychology and U.S. history. Every aspect of learning at the school integrates emergency management. Teachers develop their own Common Core-based curricula, and are encouraged to incorporate emergency management into all subject areas. Emergency management is also a stand-alone class. In this class students study personal and community preparedness as well as agency, business and government responses to emergencies.

UASEM has a partnership coordinator who organizes enrichment activities such as internships and volunteer work for students. For one project, students surveyed 1,200 New York City residents about personal preparedness. After collecting and analyzing this data, students sent results to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to use for future disaster planning. All 11th-grade students are required to do internships with organizations such as the Red Cross, FEMA, or the New York Police Department. One great feature of the school is a classroom designed to simulate different parts of a real emergency operations center.

Principal Rodolfo Elizondo and Assistant Principal Rob Magliarowere were math teachers at the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice before founding UASEM. Although they do not have an emergency management background, many teachers and support staff do. For example, one of the school's special education teachers is a volunteer firefighter.

UASEM is located in the basement of the Murry Bergtraum building, which also houses the Manhattan Early College School for Advertising and The Makers Academy. A downside: None of the rooms have windows, but students do move around the building throughout the day, to the cafeteria on the second floor and the gyms on the fifth and sixth. Students can play campus PSAL sports, which include baseball, basketball, bowling, track, volleyball, softball and soccer.

Instead of parent-teacher nights, UASEM hosts student-led conferences, where every student presents a portfolio of work to parents. UASEM also holds a pot luck parent night the day before the Thanksgiving break.

SPECIAL EDUCATION: UASEM offers ICT team-teaching classes and SETSS (special education teacher support services). The school has four special education teachers and the emergency management teacher is also certified.

ADMISSIONS: The Educational Option formula seeks a range of low-, middle- and high-performing students. UASEM students come from all over New York, and some choose the school after experiencing some kind of emergency in their homes or communities. (Ella Colley, March 2015; updated 2018)