Shabazz had adopted a principal model with Stuart as the Ford Foundation Grant Coordinator and a hired secretary.  City had a rotating coordinator (each staff member for a semester) and student management groups to run the details of the school... food, records, activities, policies, discipline, hiring staff...  The coordinator acted as liaison to downtown, but was seen as just one of a number of equals.   

There would be quarterly All-School meetings where parents, teachers, students and community members could express their concerns and create policy.  When the schools merged the Shabazz model was adopted due to demands of the Administration for a direct line of authority and a part-time principal was named to oversee the program.  Soon that developed into an on site coordinator and finally into the principal model we now have.

City School was organized around what we called "Tutorial Groups" which met for two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and one hour on Mondays.   These groups tried to establish identity and involvement within the total school.  Tutorials worked on social issues in the community, group dynamics, individual involvement, post HS planning and student and parent advising.  It was through these randomly selected groups that students were to find a small community with whom they could identify and would support them.

Shabazz's model was one of a school where students came to sample from a wide variety of activities and people, hoping to find others with the same interests.  When the school's merged, tutorials as such were dropped, but later the original need returned and advisor groups or interest groups were created.  These groups met for one class period per week.

City School had from the beginning a commitment to full time, fully contracted teachers, supplemented by a number of part time para-professionals, students from the University and members of the wider community.  Shabazz hired people on a course basis for certain periods of time.  When the schools were merged, the City School Model was adopted after some hard negotiating and philosophical wrangling.

City School had an organized commitment to learning in the community.   City School had a Community Coordinator, who developed community resources, internships, work experience programs and experiences outside the wall of the school.  Tutorials would go on camping trips together, classes would go to the places they were studying (Quebec for French, Boundary Waters for PE,  Chicago for Urban Studies, Everglades for Ecology and Environmental Studies, Minneapolis for Alternative School Outreach and for Energy Studies)  Shabazz's commitment to this kind of program was not as organized or as extensive.  Over the years the City School model was adopted in different forms.