Brooklyn Latin School is a world unto itself on the top floor of PS 147 in East Williamsburg. The school, which opened in September 2006 with a small 9th grade class, is quiet and, as Headmaster Jason Griffiths pointed out, "literally dripping with Latin." The classical quotations decorating the walls bear him out.

A secluded setting is fitting for an institution modeled on the venerable Boston Latin, a highly selective public school that has been in a class all its own since it was founded in 1635 as the first public school in America. Boston Latin is famous for its history (Benjamin Franklin is just one of a parade of illustrious students), the tough exam students must take for admission, its academic rigor, its emphasis on the classicsand the high number of graduates who go on to elite colleges and universities.

The school was a natural model when the city Department of Education decided to create a new selective school and assigned the task to Replications, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that identifies successful schools and tries to clone them. The idea also appealed to Griffiths, who first heard it described when he was a participant in New Leaders for New Schools, an organization that trains principals. "I couldn't design a better school for my philosophy," said Griffiths, who was attracted to the idea of education that combines academic rigor with classical liberal arts and opportunities for enrichment and fun.

Griffiths spent most of the spring of 2006 shadowing the headmaster at Boston Latin to learn about the school's culture and programs, and he has transplanted much of what he saw to Brooklyn, including the school colors, purple and white, and the Latin title "magister" for teachers. The school is also adopting Boston Latin's practice of requiring declamations; each marking period, students must memorize passages and recite them in both English and Latin, to practice public speaking skills.

When we visited Brooklyn Latin just after it opened, many basic items, including classroom libraries, bulletin boards, and even an adequate number of chairs were missing. That's because the school focused on instruction first, to prepare teachers to offer a challenging curriculum to bright students who nonetheless had widely varying middle school experiences, Griffiths said.

In their first year, students take a full courseload of Latin, Spanish, ancient history, English, physics, math, and art history. Once a week in their humanities classes, students participate in Socratic seminars in which they learn by communicating according to formal rules of discussion. Eventually, teachers will remove themselves from these conversations, according to Griffiths. Students told us they looked forward to the sessions as a time when they were free to express their opinions.

Recruiting excellent teachers was no problem, Griffiths said, because the school's concept was attractive to many. All faculty members had previous teaching experience, but Griffiths believes in ongoing training; on Wednesdays, the school day ends at 12:45 p.m. so teachers can participate in professional development sessions. Griffiths said he has "conversations about teaching for at least three hours a day," and while we were visiting, he made time to offer suggestions to a teacher whose lesson had left a few students mystified. During teacher training, students either take a break or participate in a club, including one that schedules visits to museums around the city.

In the classes we saw, teachers were adept at managing group work, walking throughout the classrooms and stepping in to assist students who needed help. In an English class, for example, where students were tackling questions about the book Angela's Ashes, their teacher was able to guide discussion without revealing where to look in the text for answers.

Teachers also seemed able and willing to draw connections between the subjects. The Latin teacher said he frequently tries to include formal instruction about English grammar in his lessons, as we saw when, during a lesson on the possessive-showing genitive case, he also talked about the use of apostrophes. Griffiths said teachers will plan lessons together more formally as the school grows.

Brooklyn Latin will add one grade a year until it is a full 9th to 12th grade program, but already in its first year, the school has clearly developed a close-knit group of students. When we visited, several kids told us that their favorite feature of the school was their friends, even though few had known each other just six weeks earlier. Students will have a "real say" in what goes on at the school, even interviewing prospective teachers, Griffiths said.

Students wear a formal uniform and are expected to complete about three hours of homework every night, according to Griffiths, although kids we spoke to said it often added up to more than that. "Sometimes it seems like teachers think they are the only ones giving us homework," said one student. "It's not that we mind doing homework; it's just that so much is just a bummer." Griffiths said while the level of homework is intentional, the school also wants to be sure that every student gets involved with at least one of the school's extracurricular activities, which include yoga, culture, community service, and drama clubs. To expand its athletic program, however, the school will have to find a way to grapple with the lack of a gym in the PS 147 building.

In their junior and senior years, students will get to choose a few courses within major disciplines. The school plans to offer either Advanced Placement classes or the International Baccalaureate program, which can lead to a diploma widely accepted by universities outside the United States, Griffiths said. It's also a "pie in the sky" goal of his to send all students to Italy before they graduate to see up close what they have spent four years studying.

Addressing concerns that the school's neighborhood is not safe, Griffiths said that the area is rapidly gentrifying and that someone from the school monitors the sidewalk in the three blocks between the school and the subway stop at the beginning and end of the day. The school's first class of studentswho were admitted based on their test scores and middle school gradeswas "diverse in every sense of the word," Griffiths said, and while there is some concern that adoption of the specialized high school exam for admission will make the school less diverse, Griffiths said that Brooklyn Latin is "recruiting vigorously" in the borough and has elicited interest throughout the city.

Admission: Students will be admitted based on their performance on the Specialized High School Admission Test beginning in 2006. (Philissa Cramer, October 2006. This school is profiled New York City's Best Public High Schools.)