PS 100 is located in a predominantly Russian immigrant community, just a stone's throw from the elevated train tracks. Housed in an old, five-story building with cramped classrooms, the school has had to make clever use of the building's quirky features to keep class size under control. The building's large bathroom lounges, like the kind found in old theaters, have been converted into offices and rooms for support services. The staff lounge is housed in a space once used as a custodian's apartment back when coal needed to be shoveled around the clock to heat the building. Nevertheless, the school is clean and cheerful. The hallways are painted in colorful hues and lined with bulletin boards filled with children's artwork and good writing such as a display of fourth grader's essays entitled "If I moved west in a covered wagon." PS 100 is on the list of 209 schools that the chancellor exempted from the citywide uniform curriculum.

The 2004-2005 school year was a period of transition for the PS 100. Katherine Maloney was appointed Interim Acting Principal in August 2004, the same time that the school began making the transition away from the use of traditional readers in favor of the balanced literacy method of teaching, which mixes "whole language" instruction (learning words by the context in which they are used) with "phonics" (sounding out words). The transition has been less tumultuous for PS 100 than for other schools, because for years this school had infused elements of balanced literacy into the curriculum such as classroom libraries and small group reading and writing instruction.

In an effort to increase diversity and attract students citywide to a school with a good record of academic performance, PS 100 was recently tapped for a federal grant to become a magnet school for the media arts and communications. Though children living in the school's catchment area will still be entitled to register at PS 100, the school began accepting children from outside the zone in September 2005.

Special education: PS 370, which is part of District 75, the citywide district for children with severe disabilities, occupies space on the top floor of the building. Several children from PS 370 are mainstreamed into PS 100 classrooms an arrangement which Maloney described as "wonderful." (This school is featured in New York City's Best Public Elementary Schools. Laura Zingmond, July, 2005)