Building photo
Lower and middle school students run through the field on the Hillsborough Campus
Upper School students are empowered to speak their minds in the classroom
Middle School boys rush the basketball court
Three Nueva students collaborate on a whiteboard math problem.
Students actively listen to Humanities teacher Matt Berman
The Middle School students perform Guys and Dolls

Nueva is an independent PreK-12 school where gifted learners discover and develop their passions, and learn to make choices that positively and profoundly impact the world.

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Diane Rosenberg

Head of School

“We want our students to become engaged global citizens. That requires imagination, flexibility, resilience, the ability to get along with others, and a sense of humor. These are the compassionate creators and leaders who will build our future.”

Nueva News

Nueva Fifth Graders Meet Their Inspiration

Over the last year, the students of Nueva’s current fifth grade class have been on a mission to make a difference. Inspired by an episode of the Netflix series, The Kindness Diaries by Leon Logothetis, they sought to help children without access to clean water.

Last year as fourth graders in Matt Berman’s class, the students discovered there were no books for kids their age on the Greco-Persian Wars (part of their study of ancient Greece), so they wrote one of their own, published it on Amazon, and it quickly became the top-selling book in the Children's History category for two months.

Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King Jr.'s speechwriter, embraces Jonathan Greenberg during the upper school assembly.

Clarence B. Jones, the former personal counsel, advisor, draft speech writer, and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr., visited the Nueva Upper School campus on Tuesday, January 15 – what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 90th birthday – to share his life experience and inspire students and faculty. Dr. Jones assisted Dr. King in drafting the “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and his iconic “I Have a Dream,” speech of 1963.

Hour of Code aims to broaden participation across gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

As part of the worldwide Computer Science Education Week,* the Hour of Code – deemed by Nueva Interim I-Lab Director Angi Chau as a “Celebration of Coding” ­– aims to broaden participation across gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups to show that computer science can be fun, creative, and accessible for all ages regardless of background.

Halloween at Nueva Celebrates Creativity

Halloween is always a festive celebration at Nueva, and this year was no exception. With campus parades featuring unique, handmade costumes, and themed choice activities throughout the day, students, faculty, and families enjoyed what several students called "the best day of the year!"

The five 2018 Nueva Cup winners pose for a picture at Green Hills Country Club

On Monday, October 8, the eleventh annual Nueva Cup Golf Tournament was held at Green Hills Country Club in Millbrae. The weather conditions were ideal as nearly 60 parents, alumni, alumni parents, relatives, students, teachers, and friends of Nueva enjoyed a day of camaraderie, fun, and friendly competition benefitting the Nueva School.

Alumni Lee Holtzman poses with a lemur

“My years at Nueva were the best three years of my intellectual life,” upper school teacher and eighth-grade class of 2001 alum Lee Holtzman said. “Ever since I left Nueva, it was always the biggest part of me. Which is odd because I was only here for three years.” After only one week at the school, Lee identified the need for Nueva to expand from a PreK–8 school to PreK–12. “The end of my first week at Nueva (I started in sixth grade, so I was eleven), I went into the Head of School’s office, sat down, and said ‘You need to start a high school, because I need to go there!’”

Judee Brasesco and her two grandsons

Judee Brasesco has the unique perspective of seeing how Nueva shaped two generations of students in her family. When she learned about the Nueva School in the 1970s, she had two school-aged children, Jill Brasesco Thomsen (’77 sixth-grade graduate) and J.D. Brasesco (’80 sixth-grade graduate). Last spring, Judee’s oldest grandsons, Scott Brasesco ’18 and Chip Thomsen ’18, graduated from Nueva, and her youngest grandson, Jack B., is now an eleventh grader at Nueva.