By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke

The Brooklyn School of Inquiry held an open house in 2009 at the Brooklyn Historical Society because its own building was not ready yet.

“We moved into our building two days before school started,” said Principal Donna Taylor. “I brought a picture of the school building to show parents what it would look like.”

Since then, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry in Bensonhurst has had to cap the number of open houses because of a surplus of interested applicants. The school currently goes from kindergarten through 2nd grade but will eventually go through 8th grade. Two kindergarten classes will be added each year until the school reaches capacity.

As one of five citywide schools for children who qualify for the Gifted and Talented program, and the only one in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn School of Inquiry only accepts applic ations from students who score in the 97th percentile or higher in the Department of Education’s Gifted and Talented testing process. Even so, the interest from those qualified students exceeded expectations.

“I was surprised by the huge demand, and by how quickly we became a destination,” said Taylor.

Taylor left a 20-year career in book publishing to work in education. After teaching for several years, Taylor attended the Department of Education’s Leadership Academy, which trains principals.

At the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, emphasis is placed on incorporating art into the school day. In addition to visual arts classes, all students study violin by the Suzuki method. The school also has an optional homework policy. Students are given activities that can be done at home, but are not mandatory.

“We use the inquiry model so that students are interested in learning, rather than teacher-directed learning,” said Taylor. “There is no correlation between high academic achievement and homework.”

Interest in the school has helped make it a success, but Taylor cautions against judging the outcome too soon.

“It is such a happy occasion when the mission and vision of a school is so aligned with what parents want for their kids,” said Taylor. “Still, until we reach capacity, it remains to be seen how it all bears out.”

By Patrick Wall

In their first weeks at P.S. 267, the kindergarteners learned how to sketch structures, then make them out of blocks. They found that building something new might be exciting, but it’s not easy.

Medea McEvoy, principal of P.S. 267, or the East Side Elementary, is learning the same lesson. “Opening a school, you can get a lot of support and a lot of advice,” McEvoy said, “but it’s still very challenging.”

The school opened with three kindergarten classes this year, and will add another grade level each year until it offers kindergarten through 5th grade. It currently shares a building with P.S. 158 on York Avenue, between East 77th and 78th streets, and is expected to move to its permanent home on East 63rd Street in 2012. Its students were pulled from the waiting lists of overcrowded schools in the area.

McEvoy, who taught at P.S. 6 in the Upper East Side for 10 years, said that choosing the new school’s teachers was one of her most difficult duties. “The most important people in the school are the teachers,” McEvoy said, “who are in front of the children every day.”

She spent five months sorting through over a thousand resumés to select the school’s three full-time teachers. But, McEvoy said, “It was worth the search.” The educators she found all have previous teaching experience, as well as such diverse interests as yoga, scuba diving and ballroom dancing.

Learning at P.S. 267 is project-based and tied to the real world. During their months-long study of trees, students will visit John Jay Park several times to collect acorns, leaves and twigs to be sorted out back at school. Next week, an architect will show the children real blueprints. Then they’ll go visit the actual building.

“Kids at this age really need to have hands-on experiences,” said teacher Ariel Ricciardi. “You see a huge difference in kids when you let them explore.”

Because funding is based on enrollment, P.S. 267 is starting off with limited resources. Parents have been making up the difference by planning fundraisers through the PTA and volunteering on special projects. One parent is designing the school logo, while another is building the school’s website.

Starting a new school is exhausting, but it’s thrilling too, McEvoy said. Even when the job calls for opening dozens of milk cartons and fork wrappers every day at lunch.

“That’s the joy of spending each and every day with so many four- and five-year-olds,” McEvoy said.

By Gavin Aronsen

When the former P.S. 151 shut its doors on a nearby corner in 2001, parents had no option but to crowd their children into schools in surrounding neighborhoods.

The new P.S. 151—aka Yorkville Community School—began reversing the exodus when it opened in September last year, after the city’s Department of Education leased a former Catholic school building on East 91st Street and renovated it that summer.

A teacher helps a student with his classwork at P.S. 151. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Under the leadership of Principal Samantha Kaplan, the cash-strapped school now teaches 179 kindergarteners and 1st graders on the building’s first four floors. The fifth floor is under construction for 2nd graders next year, and there are plans to add another grade each year after up to 5th grade.

“I had to write a proposal about what my vision for the school would be if I had the opportunity to open it,” Kaplan said. “My proposal was based on creating a school that was centered around the community, and using the community to develop our curriculum. That was our starting point.”

After getting the job, Kaplan said her first move “was to develop partnerships with community-based organizations to provide enrichment opportunities.”

Without enough money to hire gym or music instructors, the school has relied on funding secured by City Councilmembers Daniel Garodnick and Jessica Lappin, who both represent the Upper East Side, to afford outreach to community-based and other organizations.

The fitness club Asphalt Green now helps keep P.S. 151’s kids in shape, and the non-profit Arts Connection runs a music and movement program, to name just two examples. The school is actively seeking new grants as it continues to grow.

An integrated curriculum model, in which math and writing fuse with a common social studies theme, drive the school’s lesson plans.

“I think it’s really exciting that the curriculum is so engaging, because it’s all child-based,” Kaplan explained. “ Everything we do is based off how they respond, and the teachers are flexible and willing to look at the work they’ve done and are willing to change it.”

First-grade teacher Tara Torre came to P.S. 151 for this reason.

“I thought it would be a great opportunity to start from the ground up and watch something really develop,” she said. “And it has been. Creating the curriculum has been an amazing experience.”

She also embraces the theme of community on which Kaplan founded the school.

“It really helps the kids with building a sense of knowledge about the world around them,” Torre said.