Red Hook

Very high quality, small school, with incredibly caring teachers and staff. A family vibe. This is a zoned school. I highly recommend it for anyone in the PS 15 zone.

I am a former student as BASIS. While I have a multitude of warm memories concerning my time there, there are many fundamental issues with what this school adversities versus what it provides. When it comes to its science education, I believe BASIS does an excellent job not only preparing but pushing students in chemistry, physics and biology. However, during my time at BASIS, I was in an accelerated math course advertised as being Pre Calc A and B. I am now in public school taking IB HL math, the equivalent of calculus, and the course I was given was effectively a glorified algebra 2 course. The material fostered no wider understanding on the math content, as it presented it rapidly yet extremely disjointedly. I felt like I could preform the math “steps” but had no idea what I was doing. Similar rules applied for History and English, and the writing standards at the school are incredibly low. No critical thinking was ever asked of us, just “ACE” paragraphs, or practically summarizing information. This does not hold up when it comes to higher level academic writing and is not at all college preparatory. Basically, they tell you you’re doing advanced courses while not fully letting you absorb or digest any material to create understanding. Lastly, the children at BASIS are incredibly unruly, disruptive and often extremely heinous to teachers and staff. Many times, class would effectively be canceled because the teacher simply could not get the students under control. I have never been subjected to or simply overheard more hate speech than I did at BASIS, with students constantly pushing extremely misogynistic, homophobic and racist narratives. During my last year at BASIS, the tensions between male and female students (of which there were SIGNIFICANTLY less of) ran so high that teachers were effectively picking sides or letting the chaos simply fester. The administrators were of little use and were often incredibly disorganized. Overall, there were some lovely teachers who I recall with the utmost respect. But a lot of the courses are more accelerated than they are actually challenging, which is hardly useful for the students.