Teachers at PS 142 encourage students to explore the city around them. One class visited the city’s Department of Buildings (see photo at left) as part of a field trip to learn how buildings are designed and constructed. Children make trips to the Essex Street Market, the subway, a municipal parking garage, an auto repair shop and a hospital emergency room.

“The goal is to make learning more fun for younger children,” a New York Times article said, adding that Principal Rhonda Levy “has made real life experiences the center of academic lessons, in hopes of improving reading and math skills by broadening children’s frames of reference.”

Academic lessons are woven into the field trips. For example, children calculated how much money their teacher would have to put in the Muni-Meter if she wanted to park for 40 minutes and the parking cost 50 cents for 10 minutes, the Times said.

The school, in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, serves mostly Hispanic, African-American and Asian students including many new immigrants. The school has hired aides who speak Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese to help.

PS 142 offers dance, instrumental music (in collaboration with the Third Street Music School) and acting (with Rosie’s Broadway Kids).

Reading test scores are below average for the city, in part because the school serves a large number of English Language Learners and children with special education needs. Budget cuts forced the school to eliminate its reading and math coaches, according to the school’s Comprehensive Education Plan.

Special education: The school is barrier free and offers a range of special education services, including occupational and physical therapy and self-contained and CTT classes. Special needs children are integrated as much as possible.

Admssions: District 1 choice. (Clara Hemphill, news reports and DOE statistics, February 2012)