The Nueva School, an internationally recognized, nonprofit, independent day school, has served gifted learners since 1967. Today, Nueva serves nearly 1000 students in grades PreK–12. Nueva is located in the neighboring towns of Hillsborough and San Mateo, equidistant between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, serving six counties throughout the Bay Area of Northern California.
A constructivist school, Nueva is known for its distinctive inquiry-based interdisciplinary studies, project-based learning, and pioneering work in social-emotional learning and design thinking. The Nueva community instills a passion for lifelong learning, fosters social and emotional acuity, and develops the imaginative mind. Our school has received the US Department of Education National Blue Ribbon Award, the US Department of Education National Green Ribbon Award, and the American Institute of Architects Award for School Design and Sustainability; has been recognized as an Apple Distinguished Program and appointed an Ashoka Changemaker School; co-founded the Common Ground Speaker Series; hosts the biennial Innovative Learning Conference, and was highlighted by the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author Thomas Friedman in his book That Used to Be Us in the chapter “Average Is Over.”
Nueva’s Upper School
True to Nueva’s founding principles, our Upper School offers opportunities for deep, rigorous learning that includes inquiry-based, interdisciplinary studies as well as mastery of traditional disciplines. We offer accelerated and extended experiences where gifted learners design, discover, reflect, and apply their ideas in practical and real-world contexts. The physical proximity and institutional connections to world-renowned universities, cultural organizations, high-tech companies, healthcare institutions, and the can-do spirit of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area offer a dynamic entrepreneurial community for collaborative partnerships.
We prepare our graduates to be leaders in their chosen fields, certain of what drives them, and ready to pioneer new paths to success. We have designed a high school that responds to the pressing social, emotional, and learning needs of today’s teens, preparing them to direct their college educations and to live well as responsible human beings and global citizens. Nueva students learn to address difficult challenges with optimism and resilience. Our community is a personal and curricular partnership, where students encourage each other as they, alongside their teachers, continually think, construct, create, and re-think the best ideas and opportunities to explore their own passions and connect deeply with themselves and others.
Nueva’s Upper School opened in August 2013 after many years of discussion and comprehensive study, demographic analysis, feedback from alumni, consultation with educational and industry thought-leaders, and visits to more than 50 model high schools across the country and around the world. A seminal point of validation came from Nueva's 2011 Presidents' Roundtable, during which university presidents and college deans from some of the country's most respected institutions convened at our Hillsborough campus to discuss the future of education and affirmed the need for a new high school model like ours to better prepare students for this new century. The opportunity of a lifetime, to reimagine high school, is now a reality. We welcomed our inaugural ninth-grade class of seventy-seven students in 2013. This year, we have a total of 436 students comprising four full-enrolled Upper School grades. Our extraordinary faculty models a spirit of deep inquiry and inspires students to be active and passionate learners. Teachers serve as mentors, guides and partners in the learning process, crafting and facilitating experiences through which students deepen their understanding and build transferable skills.