Liberty High School is housed in an old five-story building
located on busy 18th Street in the thriving Chelsea area of Manhattan
in the City of New York. It is a one-year ninth-grade-only program serving
immigrant youngsters of high school age, all of whom have arrived in New
York City recently. The purpose of the school is to help the immigrant
students bridge the barriers between the old and the new cultures and
to continue to receive education. Liberty High School offers an intensive
English as a Second Language program and the entire ninth-grade subject-area
courses in three bilingual (Chinese, Polish, and Spanish) programs. Besides
three periods of ESL every day, students attend ninth-grade Global Studies,
Math and Science classes to earn ninth-grade credits. After a year, the
school guidance services help transfer the students to regular high schools
according to each student's needs.
Liberty High School is characterized by its diverse student
population. The approximately five hundred students come from about thirty-five
countries all over the world. Students from China make up about 40 percent
of the student population. Next to the Chinese percentage-wise are the
Latinos and the Polish. All the immigrant students and their families
share problems in common: because of their lack of English proficiency,
they are faced with a series of challenges and difficulties. Believing
that education is the only avenue to success, they place their hopes in
Liberty High School. In order not to fall short of their expectations,
Liberty High School faculties have been doing all they can to customize
their instructions to meet the special needs of this student population.
The educational uses of local government records reflect one of their
efforts.
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