Riverdale Country School

Riverdale Country School is a pre-K through 12 private school in the Bronx. Their focus on lifelong learning extends beyond the student body to their employees. Faculty members can take yearlong sabbaticals after 10 years of tenure, and often, they use the time to pursue further education. All workers can apply for "passion grants," as when the food service staff explored world cuisines using a grant to visit area restaurants.

Riverdale has other ways to encourage employees to stay at the school. Jobs are restructured to suit workers’ changing needs. Two teachers who previously taught four classes a day were reassigned as environmental educators, and custodians transitioned to being security guards, for instance. And an employee who manages the maintenance crew was given a great incentive to stay at Riverdale: free tuition at the school for his two daughters.

The school has workers in their seventies and eighties, including their part-time fencing coach, who is 87, and an archivist who started off at the school as a physical education teacher and coach back in 1953.