438-448 W 37th St #6D
New York, NY 10018

We were proud when our child was accepted into PPAS and were hopeful for their artistic development going in. Early on, we were impressed by the performances and the conservatory training. Then things started to go downhill.The culture of this school is one of unchecked drama. Students create social cliques and gossip rages with no programs in place to get ahead of it. All of this starts at the top— Leadership and staff are unequipped with curriculum or social emotional learning content to manage these behaviors. Students are admonished for participating in interpersonal and group drama (our child’s class was regularly called a “bad group”) while being given no support to manage their emotions, leading to maladaptive coping strategies. There are no safe spaces for young people to express their feelings. This also leads to overactive parenting as many families felt the need to step in, adding fuel to the fire.Academics are generally weak, with dated, non-inclusive curriculum taught by majority white teachers. Though some teachers are caring, they often seemed overwhelmed (the entire grade is 25 kids). Once a ten-page research paper was assigned over vacation and then was never graded, This kind of instability has a negative effect on morale. The school also struggles for funding so everything is on a shoestring which leaves the excellent stage work feeling threadbare.For us it came to a head with remote/hybrid learning, which was poorly handled. Daily assignments were taught on Khan Academy, students in school were being reprimanded about incidents occurring outside of school and in their Zoom classes, etc. Communication was also poor- when we emailed a teacher about our child’s anxiety/panic about taking dance class on Zoom, we received no reply. We finally made the decision to pull our child out and go to another middle school. The change was like night and day. When we communicated our decision the school shut us out entirely, not returning emails or seeking further feedback on what went wrong. Though the transfer was the exact right thing for our family, we are still sad about how much was missed academically and how much was learned about managing negative emotions in just two years. Considering what the school could be for young people with an interest and talent for the performing arts, it’s really too bad what it actually is.

My daughter has been attending this school for 2 years now. It is a great school with great music and art programs. My daughter had to have a safety transfer from a previous school so it has been a huge blessing not getting called weekly that something has happened to my child. The afterschool program is AMAZING as well! They have so many cool clubs to keep the kids entertained and involved like fashion and girl code. This is my daughter's last year of Elementary school so it will be bitter sweet for her to transition over to middle school. If you are looking for a great school for your child look no further.