Soundview Academy for Culture and Scholarship

Soundview Academy for Culture and Scholarship has stable leadership, a Spanish dual language program and lots of arts and sports. All students have iPads, and the school has a video music production studio and a 3-D printer.

High-achieving students may take three Regents-level (high school courses) in algebra, Living Environment and US History, said William Frackelton, principal since the school's founding in 2009.

The dual language program is designed to make students into fluent readers, writers and speakers of English and Spanish.

Soundview has a strong arts program, offering musical theater, visual arts, and dance. Sports include basketball, baseball, step dancing, Double Dutch and hip hop.  

Soundview is part of the Bronx Plan, a 2019 city initiative designed to encourage teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools by giving them bonuses and decision-making power.

A downside: Attendance is poor. Frackelton said in a telephone interview that many students missed 40 or 50 days a year in elementary school; reducing absences to, say, 20 a year represents progress. Staff at Soundview go the extra mile to get children to come to school—sometimes even going to their homes to wake them up—but attendance remains a struggle.  

The school shares a building with IS 131.

Admissions: Neighborhood school open to students from District 8. Preference is given to those who visit the school or attend a middle school fair. (Clara Hemphill, phone interview, May 2019)