Horace Mann School's annual Homecoming, on Saturday, October 12, 2019, is expected to draw over 5,000 members of the HM community to the school's Bronx campus for athletic games, activities, and a barbecue for the students, families, HM friends, and alumni attending the festivities. Later, on Saturday night, over 400 HM alumni will attend class reunions in Manhattan. Themed "Back to the Bronx" the day will bring participants to HM's Alumni Field, Friedman Hall, the Jeffrey H. Loria Family Aquatic Center, and Four Acres to cheer on Lions teams in competitions scheduled throughout the day. Click to read more.

Horace Mann School alumni from across the decades have a new way to connect with their alma mater, and with one another. The HM Alumni Directory has migrated from the "HM Alumni App" that the school's Alumni and Development Office launched in January 2012, to a new platform that provides alums with numerous resources, including ways to find friends and classmates by location, profession, HM affiliations, and more. The new platform is available free of charge, and can be accessed on phones and other mobile devices, as well as via computer, making its use comfortable for a range of HM graduates from across the decades. The platform was introduced to the alumni community via email, and through a link posted on the HM website (https://www.horacemann.org/page.cfm?p=2286), on August 29, 2019. Over the Labor Day weekend that followed the launch, over 300 alumni had demonstrated their enthusiasm about the platform by signing up or requesting access. To date, over 500 alums have signed on. Click to read more.

Horace Mann School alum Chibuzo (Chichi) Ikwuazom, a former HM varsity volleyball team star who now plays at Columbia University, was named National Player of the Week for the week of September 24, 2019, by Sports Import/American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA). The honor marked the first time in the history of Columbia University's volleyball program that a player was recognized nationally.

The cloudless blue sky of September 3, 2019 spread over Horace Mann School's beautifully groomed Bronx campuses, as 1,603 new and returning Lower, Middle and Upper Division students began the 2019-2020 academic year. HM's faculty, staff members and administrators had been busy throughout the summer preparing the school, and their classroom curricula, for the new academic year, returning to campus in late August for a series of professional days. The past summer and weeks before school started saw HM's Maintenance Department engaged almost 24-7 to ready classrooms—and particularly, newly refurbished and reconstructed science classrooms and administrative offices in the Middle Division—for the students eagerly arriving to start their sixth-through-eighth-grade classes. Click to read more.

Members of Horace Mann's Public Safety Department, headed by Captain Michael McCaw, conducted an active shooter drill on August 5th. Campus was closed for the day so the drill could proceed, and in addition, our gun shot technology was tested with response teams. There were numerous scenarios involving gunshots; response and search missions; and first aid and tourniquet training was repeated for all members of the Public Safety Department.

The summer of 2019 marks the premiere of several highly-anticipated blockbuster films in theaters nationwide. Equally anticipated, at Horace Mann School, was the premiere of films made by students in HM's Summer Film Institute (HMSFI). Held on Thursday evening July 11, 2019, the screening featured six short films made by each student in this four-week-long intensive film program. Taught by HM Middle and Upper Division Film, Video and Photography teacher Jordan Rathus, this was HMSFI's second year. Rathus, a noted filmmaker, initiated the program in summer 2018, after her first year of teaching at HM. The class is offered free of charge to any HM student, from beginning to more advanced filmmaking knowledge. "It's for any student interested in trying their hands at telling stories from behind the lens," Rathus told an audience of HM teachers, administrators, parents, family members and friends who gathered at HM for a barbecue and film showing.