IT may cost parents in excess of a million dollars per child annually, but the American International School of Kingston (AISK) promises to deliver, in return, the most globally marketable students coming out of high school.

“Our students, as Jamaicans and visitors to Jamaica, are not only going to stay in Kingston,” said AISK head of school Brian Horvath, noting “What we are trying to do is guarantee that the students, when they graduate from our school, are the best prepared.”

Horvath and AISK senior staff members were guests at the Observer’s weekly Monday Exchange meeting with reporters and editors.

AISK is a 17-year-old top private school located on College Green Avenue in St Andrew, facilitating students from the kindergarten level up to grade 12.

With tuition fees ranging from US$12,000 ($1 million) to US$14,000 ($1.2 million) per school year, the institution attracts mostly children of the upper echelons of Jamaican society who can afford the relatively expensive charge. Half of the 310-member student body is made up of children of expatriates, mostly foreign diplomats. The other students are primarily the offspring of leading Jamaican corporate executives and entrepreneurs, among them, ICD Group CEO Peter Melhado, Musson Group chairman Paul B Scott and KFC franchise holder Mark Myers.

The school offers the International Baccalaureate – a leading diploma programme in international education – and what Horvath calls “an American international style of curriculum” which consists of content and personal development, including teaching children to learn to public speak, argue and debate, and build consensus.

“These are the type of things that we want our students to do,” Horvath said.

The upshot is that 100 per cent of AISK graduates go off to post secondary education institutions, of which are mostly top-tier schools, says Scott Genzer, AISK principal of middle and high schools. Last year, he said the school attracted over US$2.2 million in scholarships among its graduating class of 17 students.

“We regularly put students up into the top-tier education institutions in the United States and around the world,” said Genzer, noting that this includes American Ivy League institutions.

“So, when you talk about ‘bang for your buck’, that is one of the main products, we get high results and high college placement,” he outlined.

Class sizes range between 12 to 18 students per class at AISK, where use of the Internet is completely fused into academic exercises. Indeed, all students are equipped with laptops and, coming September, will be with iPads.

“We are absolutely convinced that to not bring the Internet into the classrooms is a tragedy,” Horvath reasoned.

“For this next generation coming up, the Internet and what is available there, is an absolute necessity, and we want it available to kids every minute of every day while on campus,” said the AISK head of school, acknowledging that this, however, requires prudent management of how students browse the web.

AISK boasts that it hires the cream of the global teaching fraternity to deliver this high quality education to students. Local educators account for 50 per cent of the AISK teaching faculty, with the rest recruited from US, England, Canada, Cuba and Trinidad & Tobago.

“We want the best teachers and we pay a lot for them,” Horvath told journalists.

“We start in Jamaica and look for fabulous teachers and administrators… if we are not satisfied with what is in the community, we will go outside of Jamaica to find the best teachers.”

Horvath said salaries paid to AISK teachers are comparable to those paid to teachers at private schools in the US. While there is no official data on remuneration for private school educators in the US, the country’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that the mean annual wage paid to public secondary school teachers is nearly US$56,000 ($4.9 million).

One local educator at AISK is Anna Wallace, principal of the elementary school.

“The elementary school at AISK is truly a special place to be, small enough to have a very family-oriented type of school community,” said Wallace, whose role doubles as a parent of an AISK student.

“This small class is very important to what we do at AISK; its written in our policy that we keep small class sizes and that affords students the opportunity to see more of the teachers,” she explained.

AISK also boasts that it is the only school in Kingston which offers boarding facilities.

Tuition and enrolment fees pay for the cost of running the school, with 60 to 70 per cent of operating expenses accounting for teachers’ salaries.

The school will soon launch an endowment fund, the responsibility of which has been assigned to Nicola Melhado, AISK director of special projects, and wife to Peter.