Hood River New School brings a new vision and mission for middle school education to the Gorge that includes:

• Multi-age environment for all academic and extracurricular activities, encouraging limitless learning

• Interdisciplinary model of learning

• Community-focused learning experiences, including community service, to empower students and foster connection with our community

• Three-year looping educational model, in which students remain with their core teacher for all their academic years, allowing the student-teacher relationship to grow and blossom

• Positive and supportive long-term relationships between students and teachers, as well as teachers and families, strengthened by the academic looping model

• Credentialed teachers with 15+ years of experience teaching blended, interdisciplinary models at the middle school level

• A nonprofit organization governed by a board of directors to provide oversight and transparency

New School employs a classic academic looping model in our core classroom structure to amplify and strengthen our student/family-teacher and classmate relationships. Students will be assigned one of our core class teachers as they enter the New School community and will stay with that class and teacher throughout their time with New School.

The primary benefit of looping is the depth of relationship between student and teacher that is fostered through this model. Teachers are given the ability to learn where each of their students excels and where they may need additional support, helping them meet their individual potential throughout their middle school years. With the start of each school year, they are able to enjoy the benefit of previous insight in their returning students, allowing them to focus additional effort on new additions to their classroom.

Likewise, the natural hesitancy some children may have with a new adult in their lives does not need to be repeated annually, allowing the beginning of the school year to be more productive as students are able to settle quickly into a familiar and comfortable learning environment.

We also see benefits for our New School families as these strong classroom relationships translate and extend into our larger New School community. Increased comfort with their student’s teacher allows the family to be a more active partner in their child’s education.

New School currently has 56 students enrolled for 2025-2026. We continue to assess our capacity for sustainable and conscientious growth. We’re thrilled to be adding a third core classroom and expanding the capacity to 60 students this year!

At New School, we use rubrics for grading. Rubrics are multidimensional sets of scoring guidelines that can be used to provide consistency in evaluating student work. They spell out scoring criteria so that multiple teachers, using the same rubric for a student's essay, for example, would arrive at the same score or grade.

Students (and parents) have access to and are guided through all rubrics at the outset of every assignment for which they are used.

Translation to a letter or numerical overall grade is simple but not something we choose to do for our “grade” reporting purposes. Students receive end-of-trimester narrative reports that give a complete picture of academic, social, and emotional growth and learning.

IEPs are so varied, these will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, we are able to accommodate students with ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, and limited auditory needs. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to begin a dialogue regarding your student’s particular needs.

Hood River New School proudly uses Our Whole Lives (OWL) to provide a comprehensive sexuality curriculum for our 8th grade students. We have multiple certified and experienced OWL instructors, including Claire Gilchrist, Lisa Kosglow, and Claire Toledo. Two teachers teach OWL each winter trimester.

Created to empower students to make informed and responsible decisions in their relationships, sexual health, and behaviors, OWL employs a holistic approach, providing accurate and developmentally appropriate information. OWL recognizes and respects participants’ diversity and provides clear messaging on self-worth, sexual health, responsibility, justice, and inclusivity.

Learn more about OWL

New School attracts students from across the Columbia Gorge area. In order to ease the morning and afternoon commute, we make every effort to assist families with carpool possibilities.

Thanks to generous support from our community, we have been able to purchase three passenger vans for school field trips and daily activities. We continue to asses the transportation needs of our student body and staff and anticipate growing our transportation options as needed.

We are registered with the State of Oregon as a domestic nonprofit and were granted a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in February 2022. The effective date of exemption was March 17, 2021. Donors can deduct contributions they made or make to Hood River New School under IRC Section 170.