New headquarters
Our current facilities have served their purpose during the school’s growth and consolidation stage, but are inadequate for our future, which includes launching the afternoon school for low-income students.
Current sports facilities are limited, we have insufficient classrooms, and the laboratories and workshops are not adequate for our curriculum.
Both our Board of Directors and our Board of Trustees have been working on the relocation project for five years.
The school will be in the heart of the Santa Fe district of Mexico City. It will be an ideal location for our current families, as well as for our future afternoon students.
Fielding International, a prestigious design and architecture firm with extensive experience in the design of schools and universities in the U.S. and abroad, has developed a state-of-the-art project for us.
Evening school
The west side of Mexico City is an area of high economic and social inequality. Since its inception, our school has been committed to supporting inclusion and closing the wealth gap within Mexican society. We can think of no better way to accomplish this than providing underprivileged children the exact same education as those who are well-off. In our view, it’s not a lack of access to education that restricts social mobility, but a lack of access to quality education. It is this quality gap that we aim to close through our evening school.
The municipality of Álvaro Obregón has a population of 749,982 inhabitants, of which 53,903 are children between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. There are currently nine public institutions of higher secondary education in this municipality, with the capacity to serve around 9,000 students per year. This results in a deficit of 44,903 children, or more than 83% of the young population, without access to an education close to their communities.
Our afternoon school will offer education in grades 7 through 12 on the same campus, the same curriculum and substantially the same teachers as the morning school. Our goal is to serve 150 students at the end of the project’s first stage. Morning and afternoon schools will be merged senior year, so that all NSM students will integrate and graduate with the exact same degree.
We believe it is our responsibility to not only help Mexicans in vulnerable situations, but to also integrate and counteract the division and discord that plagues our country.
Fortunately, we are not starting from scratch.
Our sister school, Colegio Monteverde, which has a similar model and caters to girls, has been successfully running an afternoon school for over 26 years, from first to twelfth grades. It has 300 students and estimates to indirectly have benefited around 1,100 people per school year.
Cedros School, another boys school in southern Mexico City, has also been operating an afternoon high school for boys for 15 years. Cedros’ afternoon school currently has 150 students. Some of its students live in the Santa Fe district and spend more than two hours a day commuting to school. More than 97% of its graduates continue their higher education studies, with three generations of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees.
Both these schools, including their respective boards of trustees and management teams, have generously shared their knowledge and experience so that we may replicate and, where necessary, adjust their model. Their support and guidance will be of great help in the implementation and operation of this important project.
In close coordination with Monteverde School, we hope to benefit entire families through our respective evening programs and a joint school for parents.