School of Environmental Studies

School of Environmental Studies or SES is a high school for 11th and 12th grades set up by the state of Minnesota, when the MN Zoo was founded.  It is on the grounds of the zoo and has 200 students in each grade, set up in houses of 100 each.  Students are from surrounding communities.  Students are admitted after submitting essays, along the lines of “why would you want to come to this school?”, and “what does the environment mean to you?”.
Many of the classes are team-taught and inter disciplinary.  The school does not have sports teams or other extracurricular activities, but these are done through the “home school” that they would normally be at.  The students are generally achieving at a higher level than the average student in neighboring very good high schools.