ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON SCHOOL

A middle schooler who has struggled emotionally, socially, or with school fit elsewhere, and whose family is looking for an intensive therapeutic environment where academic college preparation continues alongside serious emotional support.

• A 3.9-to-1 student-teacher ratio — among the lowest of any private school in the city and closer to a therapeutic milieu than a typical classroom.
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is not an add-on here; it is the organizing framework for how the school teaches, disciplines, and supports students.
• Rolling admissions, which gives families in crisis a path to enrollment without waiting for the September cycle.
• With only 71 students total across three grades, the community is intimate to a degree that almost no other school in New York can match.
• A genuine college-prep curriculum (liberal arts plus visual and performing arts) layered on top of therapeutic support, so academics are not sacrificed.

• This is fundamentally a therapeutic school, not an academically competitive one; families looking for a rigorous traditional middle school should look elsewhere.
• The very small enrollment means a narrow peer group — for a 6th grader that is 20-some classmates, and that pool shrinks further as kids progress.
• Tuition runs roughly $49,000 with no published range, so financial flexibility will depend on what is negotiated case by case.
• Rolling admissions is a lifeline for families in acute need but can mean classmates are arriving and departing throughout the year.
• The model is a strong fit only for students whose needs align with the DBT framework; it is not a general-purpose progressive alternative to public school.