About Us

Thanks for stopping by to check out our website! Our school is a pretty amazing place, and we hope that you learn about it through our student-led journalism. We are one of the only original “alternative schools” from the 1970s. Community High School is a small, public, alternative high school located in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a rainbow zebra as our mascot! 

To give you a better feel for the way our school runs, we don’t have bells, students call teachers by their first names and we have an open campus. We don’t have any AP classes, so students take classes at local universities. Classes are multi-level, so we have freshmen sitting next to seniors.

Students are encouraged to develop and teach their own courses through our unique CR (community resource) program. We don’t have any sports, but we do have two swing sets out front, a field where students play frisbee and a half-court with games of 3v3. We have a Halloween dance as of fall 2023 instead of a homecoming dance, and no prom queen and no king.

Our website looks and feels different because we are not a traditional high school, and our high school doesn’t have the traditional rituals common to schools across the country. We don’t have an “Intro to Journalism” course, and there is no application process to join; anyone who wants to be in the class can sign up at registration. Some students join for a semester, and others stay for their entire high school career, contributing art, photography, writing, design, guidance and way more. 

Our other publications include The Communicator Magazine, which we release multiple times a year, and our social media publication, which is communicatorchs on Instagram. In our journalism classes, students also work together to create The Midnight Sun, our yearbook, which we strive to cover each student in. Finally, we have our Yearly VOICE Literary and Arts Book that covers art, poetry and a wide variety of writing, open to all of CHS. Overall, we have The Communicator’s website, Instagram and magazine, VOICE Literary and Arts and The Midnight Sun. 

We want our website to be full of student life, but we do not try to cover only things that are happening in our building. Since Ann Arbor’s local paper has diminished, we have taken on a larger role and responsibility in covering events that matter to our greater Ann Arbor community. The Communicator strives to give students a space to explore issues deeply reported about them inside and beyond our school walls. 

Want to get in touch?  We can be reached at chscommunicator@gmail.com.

Want to send us snail mail?

Community High School

c/o The Communicator

401 N. Division St.

Ann Arbor, MI  48104