An Integration Push Meets Long-Standing Efforts to Improve Brooklyn’s P.S. 676, Bringing Hope and Fresh Worries
July 19, 2019
By: Christina Veiga
Source: Chalkbeat
When it came time to enroll her grandson in school, Esther Fesale put his name in the lottery for a nearby charter. But as the summer wound down without a call or letter, Fesale figured she should get to know her grandson’s other option: P.S. 676 the Red Hook Neighborhood School, assigned to him based on the family’s address.
The buzz about P.S. 676, hemmed in by industrial yards topped with rusty barbed wire, was not encouraging. The red-brick building had housed another school, long shuttered for poor performance, and had struggled to shed its reputation for unruly hallways.
Fesale visited anyway and was pleased to discover a cheery welcome from the assistant principal and a pre-K teacher whom she described as “amazing.” She enrolled her grandson and, four years later, Fesale is one of the school’s biggest boosters — yet she finds it’s still often a tough sell to neighborhood parents. “Some negative feedback seems to be in their head, blocking what can be,” Fesale said. “I’ll be like, ‘This is what we’re trying to get you guys to come out and see! It’s not that anymore.”