Can NYC’s first public Montessori school help keep families in the system? Officials hope so.

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Principal Carol Mongiello greeted her students on Thursday morning, crouching under a rainbow balloon archway to dispense plastic sunglasses. The moment carried more weight than a typical first day.

Mongiello is spinning up the city’s first Montessori-inspired public school, one of nine new schools across the city opening this fall. Officials hope these programs will help attract families to a public school system that has seen enrollment plunge by 9% over the past five years. Several families said they leapt at the chance to send their kids to an alternative model and were less likely to consider private school, though the program has yet to fill all its kindergarten seats.

The Downtown Brooklyn school, known as P.S. 482 Albee Square Montessori Public School, embraces tenets of the Montessori philosophy in which students across grade levels attend class together. The day is structured around uninterrupted two to three hour work blocks where children can choose what to work on, from practical life skills to math and geography. (The school is launching with prekindergarten and kindergarten and will eventually expand to the fifth grade.)

With the guidance of a teacher, students self-select activities and materials that appeal to them and are at their developmental level, Mongiello explained. “Children really excel in this way.”

Multiple parents said they found the school during a search for private Montessori programs and were intrigued to learn of a public option.

“Montessori schools are extremely expensive — or a little bit too expensive for me,” said East Flatbush mom Andrea Phillips, who “literally just happened upon” the new school during an online search.

Phillips was thrilled that her 4-year-old son, Ian, won a spot for pre-K. Ian is a self-starter and largely taught himself shapes, colors, and numbers, and he has a lot of energy. Phillips figured a school where he would “be freer to maybe explore what was going on in his mind would be a better situation for him.”

Though he hadn’t previously attended preschool or day care, Ian didn’t seem too anxious about the first day.

“I want to go to school!” he declared shortly before parading into the building with his classmates, some of whom were clutching stuffed animals.

P.S. 482 isn’t the only new school in the neighborhood promising a different approach. A few blocks away, students filtered into P.S. 456, modeled on the Brooklyn New School, which promises lots of project-based learning.

Zacmari Zamostina, who lives on the border of Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, said she is willing to brave a long commute to send her daughter to a school with a bilingual Spanish program that aims to serve students from a range of backgrounds.

“We want her to get taste of what the world is like,” Zamostina said. “We didn’t want to stay within the neighborhood.” She was also impressed with the school’s commitment to involving parents and is excited to meet other caregivers, as the family’s social circle shrank during the pandemic.

Parents at both P.S. 456 and P.S. 482, the Montessori program, said the new schools appealed to them partly because they seem like they may have more autonomy to chart their own path.

“Having something that defies the massive industry of education and is focused more on kids and less on the system is ideal for me,” said Clinton Hill dad Nick Vranizan, whose son Nico is starting prekindergarten at P.S. 482. “Something like this would certainly keep us from shopping around” for private schools, he added.

Vranizan, who carted his son to school in a wagon, said he was happy to find a school within walking distance of their home. Last year, Nico had to travel about 40 minutes to Williamsburg for 3-K, as the family wasn’t offered a nearby spot.

Still, the new Montessori is a bit of an experiment with no track record or reputation to draw on.

“It’s exciting that it’s a new school but it’s also a little concerning,” said Bedford-Stuyesant dad Raymond Antonio. “It’s gonna be a lot of trial-and-error.”

And the school won’t be entirely free of Education Department edicts, as teachers will use parts of the city’s newly mandated reading program. “We’re incorporating elements of it into our curriculum to make sure that it’s aligned to the Montessori method,” Mongiello said.

Some parents said they were already impressed with Mongiello, who has experience building a school culture from the ground up and navigating the challenges that come with starting a school from scratch. She launched an elementary school on Staten Island more than a decade ago before taking a role in the Education Department’s central offices.

Though part of the program’s mission is to attract more families to the system, Mongiello noted there are still openings in kindergarten — the school has roughly 70 students but room for 86.

Asked how she felt shortly after arrival, the school leader said she was still processing the moment but a sense of anxiety was far from her mind.

“I always will build up myself to high expectations,” Mongiello said. “I haven’t had time to even stop to think about how I feel, because I am really working around the clock to get this up and running.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org .