Leadership High School

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Leadership High School is a small public charter high school located in San Francisco offering a college preparatory program. Leadership High School was founded by Dr. Mark Kushner in 1997. Dr. Kushner served as principal from 1997 until his position changed to Executive Director and Founder in 2001.

Dr. Kushner now serves as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Leadership Public Schools (LPS). Though LPS shares a name similar to that of Leadership High School and are often confused with each other, they are completely separate entities.

Dr. Kushner was succeeded by Mr. Gregory Peters, who now serves as co-principal with Ms. Elizabeth Rood.

The mission of Leadership High School is to serve San Francisco and its diverse students by providing a rigorous education with personal attention and developing effective community leaders. Their vision includes working to close the achievement gap for all students as they strive to demonstrate mastery of four School Wide Outcomes: communication, critical thinking, personal responsibility and social responsibility.

On January 1, 2007 Leadership High School relocated from its location at 300 Seneca Avenue (the old San Miguel Elementary School building) to 400 Mansell Street, where it is housed on the first floor of Phillip & Sala Burton High School. Despite strong opposition and appeals to the SFUSD, the decision is considered final. The decision was made as the school's old site was unsafe from earthquakes and not ADA compliant. This is the second move in the school's ten year history. Leadership relocated to 300 Seneca Avenue from 536 Mission Street, where it was housed on the campus of Golden Gate University. [1]

Although rumors have been circulating inside Leadership High School reporting that there will be another move in the near future, there is no documentation of this.

[edit] Curriculum

The school requires students to show how they have mastered the School Wide Outcomes by requiring a portfolio to be created every year and by having students present it. The portfolio normally coincides with several other projects for different classes, which normally becomes strenuous for the students because of its "do or fail" policy.

Having mandatory assignments creates several different ramifications.
Understanding the SWO's (School Wide Outcomes) are the main point of projects.
Not choosing to do the projects would be a tempting choice for students if these projects were not required.
The downside of this would be that the due dates for these projects all fall close together.
Everything done up to that point can be considered useless if the student was to fail the project as they would not be able to complete the grade level or graduate.
Receiving the highest grade possible in the portfolio and another project is the goal of the senior class because that is the requirement to complete their last year in the school.