Accreditation & Affiliations
City High School embarked on an accelerated route to accreditation immediately upon opening in 2004; after a rigorous 3-year process, City High School successfully received accreditation in 2007 through the North Central Accreditation Association.
City High School’s founders were very much inspired by the philosophy of the Coalition of Essential Schools and its founder Theodore Sizer. City High School has been a member school of the Coalition since the school’s inception.
City High School is committed to high quality, job-embedded professional development for its staff. All teachers participate in collaborative learning communities called Critical Friends Groups (CFGs). A number of the City High School staff are nationally trained facilitators through the CFG program that originated at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in the mid-1990s and is now led by the School Reform Initiative.
City High School is a public charter high school, chartered by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools in 2003; like all public schools in Arizona, we are accountable to the Arizona Department of Education. We are a member of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, a professional organization that helps to link, strengthen, and promote charter schools throughout the state.
City High School is closely partnered with Paulo Freire Freedom School, a charter middle school located on University Avenue at the Historic Y building. The founding directors of Paulo Freire Freedom School (PFFS) are looking forward to creating a second PFFS middle school; the new PFFS-Downtown will open in August 2013 with a pilot class of 7th graders and be housed at City High School. The school will be a full-immersion STEM school centered around hands-on, project-based learning experiences rooted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – with a particular focus on the theme of sustainability.
City High School’s diverse student body comes to us from a variety of schools and districts from throughout the Tucson area; however, we have had a concentration of students come to City High School from a select group of elementary and middle schools over the years. While each of the schools listed below has its own particular mission and philosophy, we appreciate the commonalities they share with City High School and encourage others to learn more about them.
- Highland Free School (K-5)
- Khalsa Montessori School (pre-K-8)
- Montessori Schoolhouse (pre-K-6)
- Satori School (pre-K-8)
- Wildcat School (K-8)
