History

In June 1998, during the earliest days of planning for The School at Columbia University, it was clear that several years would pass before a school was launched and ready to serve the Columbia faculty. Gardner Dunnan, then assistant to the provost for special projects, suggested to then provost Jonathan R. Cole that the Office of the Provost could in the interim offer a search service to help University employees find appropriate schools for their children in the city at no cost to them. On a Friday morning in October 1998, a simple brochure was placed in all University mailboxes, and by noon that day there were nine inquiries about the service. By the end of that first year, the School Search Service had provided guidance to 92 client families. When the proposal to create The School at Columbia was presented to the trustees of the University, it included thirty case studies from faculty families who had worked with the School Search Service during that year. In approving the creation of the school, trustees commented that any three of the case studies would convince any trustee of the importance of this project to the continuing excellence of the University.

When the school opened in September 2003, the number of clients for the School Search Service declined significantly. However, each year several dozen families use the service, usually for preschool placement or for school searches for grades higher than those offered at the school, which opened with grades K–4 in the first year.

The School at Columbia was so overwhelmingly popular with the Columbia faculty that, in the second year of operations, school administrators realized there would not be enough room for all faculty children who applied to the school for year three. To address this problem, Provost Alan Brinkley appointed a University task force on admissions, whose major recommendation in April 2005 was the enlargement and enhancement of the School Search Service. (View Alan Brinkley's Letter). To achieve this goal, Anne Burns, who had served as principal at the school in the 2004–2005 school year, was appointed interim head of school, and Gardner Dunnan was promoted to associate provost for special projects and charged with expanding the School Search Service. The office of the School Search Service was moved to Lion's Gate at 516 West 112th Street, and Mr. Dunnan was assisted by a departmental administrator, Penny Nadel, and a school placement counselor, Orli Bander.

In May of 2007 Carol Hoffman was brought to Columbia University as Associate Provost and Director of Work Life.  The School Search Service is now under this umbrella and is called the School and Child Care Search Service reflecting its broadened scope.

In June of 2007, Gardner Dunnan retired from Columbia University and Judith Sheridan joined the School and Child Care Search Service as Director, and counselor for Independent Schools.

Mission

The School and Child Care Search Service provides written materials and personal guidance to parents exploring early child care and educational opportunities within public, parochial, independent, boarding and special needs schools. In addition, supplemental advice is available to employees whose children are applying to college.

It is important for families to find the most comfortable setting for early child care in an environment which will provide the services needed so parents can feel confident their child is well attended to while they are working.

We believe that school choice is an important family decision that should be controlled by the parents for younger children, but should involve the child in the middle-school process and even more so in the high-school process. In selecting a high school, parents should seriously consider their child's opinions, but ultimately they should make the decision.

Because the right match is a very personal matter, we want to be a resource to families while leaving the responsibility for applying and making the final decision in the hands of the families.

However, in practice the very best choice for one child could be the very worst choice for another. The process of searching and decision-making is complicated; the challenge is to find the right match between your child and the day care/ school setting.

Call on us for any information or guidance that you need, but be confident that this is still your family's decision and not something to be determined by a third party, even one with the benevolent intentions of the School and Child Care Search Service.