APRIL 2007 UPDATE: PS 150 offers a Spanish/English dual language program, which prepares students to be proficient in both languages. Students enter the program in kindergarten and are taught in English and Spanish on alternating days. Prospective parents should meet with the guidance counselor.

2002 REVIEW: PS 150 is a gigantic, sprawling school that serves the children of new immigrants from Ecuador, Mexico, and Kosovo, as well as children of middle-class professionals who live in the pleasant townhouses of Sunnyside Community Gardens. Test scores put PS 150 in the top 15% of schools citywide a remarkable achievement given the large number of children learning English as a Second Language. It has a district-wide gifted program and an unusual bilingual special education "inclusion" program for Spanish-speaking children. The huge, red-brick building has a sparkling new early childhood wing, decorated in primary colors. Children sit and read or plant flowers in an attractive gazebo in the front yard. Parents take English lessons and learn skills, such as how to get a library card, at the "family center" in the school's old cafeteria.

PS 150's kindergarten classes are housed in cramped quarters upstairs from a billiard parlor on Queens Boulevard. There is no outdoor play area kindergartners watch videos instead of going outside for recess. The main building has a playground. It's an orderly, well-run school with a strong art program, a roller-blading physical education teacher, and a dance teacher who was once a professional clown. Teachers study the Writing Process with Lucy Calkins at Teachers College, and children learn to read with fun-to-read picture books and literature rather than textbooks. Teaching styles and philosophies vary. One 6th-grade classroom had huge inflatable chairs, lots of children's work displayed and no sign of desks. The children were outside in the yard, wielding shovels and planting bulbs around the gazebo. In another 6th-grade room, the atmosphere was traditional: The teacher was up at the blackboard putting up math problems, the kids seated quietly in rows. PS 150 is among 209 schools that the chancellor exempted from the citywide uniform curriculum mandated in 2003.

Within the gifted program, teachers have different approaches as well: One was a strict taskmaster who required 2 hours of homework a night, while another was a relaxed sort who encouraged children to follow their own interests. Students are screened for the gifted program in kindergarten, based on teacher recommendation. Graduates of the gifted program are automatically admitted to the Academy middle school at PS 122. There is no room for children from outside the zone, except in the gifted program. (This school is featured in New York City's Best Public Elementary Schools. Pamela Wheaton, 2002)

School with very nice teachers and really bad principal. She makes teachers life miserable. She wants to be herself number one at any price. Everybody wants to leave. I don't like that!!