About CVES
Concourse Village Elementary School (CVES) is a traditional Pre-K through 5th grade public school in the South Bronx. We were founded in September 2013 by Alexa Sorden, a Director of Student Achievement, literacy coach and former classroom teacher. As a phase-in school, our goal was to end the cycle of academic underachievement that led to the closing of the two previous schools housed at our location.
Years later, we have a well-established reputation as one of the highest achieving schools in New York City, with some of the top state ELA and math scores in all of New York state. Among the recognitions our school has received are the National Blue Ribbon in 2018, the Best Urban School Award from NCUST in 2020, and the Ryan Transformational Leadership Award for Ms. Sorden in 2017. We have also been featured in Edutopia as a ‘School That Works’, in Inside Schools as a ‘Staff Pick’, and as a case study by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Additionally, we have been featured in several publications, including the New York Times and Washington Post.
CVES is a diverse community of about 300 scholars, educators and school staff. Our community consists of Latinx, African/African-American/Black and a growing number of Middle-Eastern students and educators. Many of our families have recently immigrated to the United States, so we have a wonderful linguistic diversity of over 10 home languages. Ten percent of our student population are English language learners (ELL) and twenty percent are Students with Disabilities (SWD). All of our scholars enjoy the benefits of our inclusive instructional environment that features inclusion classes at all grade levels for ELLs and SWDs.
At CVES, our culture is defined by joy: Scholars are greeted by their educators at the classroom door, enter to joyful music, and recite together our Scholars’ Creed of Excellence. Throughout the day our scholars engage in our rigorous, culturally responsive/sustaining curriculum, as designed in house by CVES educators. We utilize a range of instructional approaches, including project/problem based learning, workshop model, flipped blended learning and station rotation. We employ small class sizes (14:1 student teacher ratio) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to ensure that all scholars have access to our high quality curriculum. Our scholars also take classes in Visual Arts, Physical Education, Music and Coding. We offer scholars extracurricular activities such as Theater and Magazine Club, as additional outlets for their personal expression and creativity. Our technology-rich environment includes one-to-one devices, interactive whiteboards in all classrooms, and a wide variety of digital education tools.
We continue in our mission to provide each and every scholar with a safe and nurturing environment where they are cognitively engaged by our rigorous curriculum and whole-heartedly guided by our core values of INTEGRITY, PERSEVERANCE, OPTIMISM, WILLINGNESS, EMPATHY and RESPECT. As a Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) school, we promote the emotional and social well-being of all members of our community. Our educators, scholars, their families, and our community partners, as a COMMUNITY OF ONE, work every day to develop scholars’ critical thinking and academic skills, with the goal of fostering confident, well-rounded children who will grow up to be self-fulfilled, socially responsible adults who positively impact the world. We want all of our scholars to know that WE EACH HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
