Learner Led/Title I Night at FDNSC Thursday 11/7 5:30-7:00 pm

Why Choose Francine Delany?

We have a small, tight-knit community.

All teachers know all students by name. We have a 1:7 student-teacher ratio. This allows teachers to provide individualized instruction and meet each student where they are academically, socially, and emotionally. 

Our curriculum focuses on our social justice mission.

We believe in preserving the inherent worth and human dignity of every person. We weave the Learning For Justice (Formally Teaching Tolerance) Social Justice Standards into our daily curriculum. These standards provide a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level.

We focus on authentic reading and writing.

We read “real” books. We write authentic pieces and try to find ways to share our published pieces with a broader audience. We allow for students to have a choice in their book and writing topic selection. 

We do problem-centered math.

We emphasize understanding and meaning over memorization and rote learning. 

We focus on our classroom communities.

We build in time for teachers to facilitate discussions and lessons on how we treat each other and what we want our classroom community to feel like, sound, like, and look like. Students are empowered to help brainstorm classroom agreements and participate in group decision-making. 

We have extensive classroom libraries

These libraries include a diverse collection of fiction, non-fiction, novels, graphic novels, and biographies. This helps create a culture of understanding and provides powerful tools for teaching about social justice. We strive for our libraries to provide windows of opportunity for students to learn about other cultures, people, and places. Our libraries also provide mirrors to students through books where they see characters like themselves, their families, and their culture being valued in the world. This helps build a strong sense of belonging.

Francine Delany is located in the city of Asheville.

Our location allows students to get active in the community through service learning projects like working at Manna Food Bank as well as 12 Baskets. We also invite community leaders, activists, and experts into our classrooms to collaborate and teach students about various topics. 

We are a Teacher-Powered school.

Teachers share the responsibility of all the duties of running the school. Our teachers are at the table for all decisions. 

Students in K-4th grade participate in daily specialist classes

These classes include art, music, movement/dance, and P.E as well as FEAST cooking and gardening. Students in 5th-8th grade are offered a comprehensive list of elective classes to choose from 3 times a year including yoga, stem classes, African drumming, cooking, mandalas, ceramics, movement and dance, ukulele, singing, and more. 

We value play and kids getting outside.

All students in 3rd-8th grade get a 30 min recess as well as movement breaks throughout the day. Students in K-2nd often have 2 recess blocks and get up to 1 hour of outdoor play each day.