The Urban Assembly School for Collaborative Healthcare

Urban Assembly School for Collaborative Healthcare helps prepare students to become emergency medical technicians (EMTs), x-ray technicians or administrators in health information billing and coding, among other jobs. 

Eleventh and 12th graders spend a portion of their day in internships. The school runs on a trimester schedule to allow students extra time to catch up on credits if they are behind, to do internships and take early college courses, according to the school website.

Principal Candace Hugee took the helm in 2016. Teacher satisfaction, trust and order have improved under her leadership, even as the numbers of students with special needs and those learning English has grown. Teachers overwhelmingly say the principal communicates a strong vision, according to school surveys. 

Founded in 2014, the tiny school attracts almost twice as many females as males. It hosts gender-based support clubs in addition to small co-ed advisory groups three times a week. Attendance is a work-in-progress; chronically absent students keep in close contact with an assigned staff member, according to the Comprehensive Educational Plan (CEP).

Parents are invited to tutoring sessions so they can become familiar with what their children are learning and to pick up tips on how to help support them at home. 

UA School for Collaborative Healthcare is one of more than 20 schools created and run by the nonprofit Urban Assembly. 

The school is housed in the former Franklin K. Lane High School on the Brooklyn-Queens border. The building houses four other small schools: Cypress Hills Collegiate, Multicultural High School, the Academy of Innovative Technology and Brooklyn Lab. All students must pass through a metal detector.

Admissions: The school has had room for all who applied in recent years. (Lydie Raschka, web reports, December 2018)