Students at CIVICA are not held to a “minimum standard”. We have a conservative dress code. Students will arrive at school ready to learn, wearing the school uniform, the particular color they wear represents which track they are studying. They will recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the school Honor Code every morning. They will treat themselves and others with respect and demonstrate the values associated with Loyalty like Trust, Transparency, Honesty, and Integrity. Every day will be like a job interview and students will be expected to do their best. They will shake hands regularly with staff and each other. They will look people in the eye while speaking and learn to engage in thoughtful conversation.
We believe that intrusive and ubiquitous access to electronic social media is not appropriate for the learning environment. Therefore, students will also not be allowed to possess or use cellphones or other social networking devices in school. Electronics will be used judiciously in the classroom. There will also be no one-to-one technology program. Chromebooks will be available for the benefit of curriculum delivery, differentiated instruction, and assessment.
We also believe that students in high school are especially vulnerable to straying from their core beliefs as they gain more independence. We take it as our responsibility to educate the students in our care from 7:30 in the morning until 2:30 in the afternoon, every day. We will not have high school students taking ‘off-blocks’ or building schedules that bring them to school at 10:00 am and leaving at 1:30 pm. If a high school student is not present in school during school hours it will be because they are completing an internship, work experience, other service-learning, or attending courses at Aims Community College.
We choose to hold ourselves and our students accountable for our commitment to creating a character-driven school. However, measuring character qualities or a student’s ‘character quotient’ is a difficult task that could require assessment instruments that we feel are not appropriate for a learning environment. Instead, we will focus students on demonstrating particular character qualities throughout their time at CIVICA. The pinnacle of these demonstrations will be a service-learning or community-service project completed by students before the end of each school year. The difficulty of and expectations for these experiences will vary by age and grade of the student. Younger students will be responsible for classroom-level projects, older students for school-level, and still older students for community-impacting service projects.
 (1).png "Parent Night 03/22/2023")