Tribeca's P.S. 150 Celebrates National Blue Ribbon School Recognition

School spirit ran high during a celebration at P.S. 150 last week, honoring the Tribeca school for its designation as a Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.

As part of the celebration, the children, dressed in special celebratory blue tee shirts, sat for a photo in the formation of the ribbon award. 

Just last year, the small, one-class-per-grade school was almost merged into a larger school in Chelsea, but an uproar by parents put an end to the move. The school, in Independence Plaza, was the only Manhattan school––and one out of 18 in the state––to receive the national honor, recognizing its high-achieving students.

“It’s a great morale booster all around,” Jenny Bonnet, the school’s principal, said after receiving the news. “[It] makes us just want to do even better, to keep pursuing everything we’ve done in the past to achieve something like this.”

Parents and students, along with Community School District 2’s new superintendent, Bonnie Laboy, gathered on the plaza outside the school, cheering as Bonnet read a congratulatory letter from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“You have all done a remarkable job in achieving high test scores which demonstrate that you are learning to the best of your ability,” Cuomo wrote.  “You can take great pride in having studied hard and gained valuable learning skills that will be important as you continue on through school and into your careers.”

The DOE nominated the school last fall based on the high scores of its third through fifth grades in the 2012/2013 academic year, Bonnet said. She added that the school’s new math curriculum, its content studies (interdisciplinary and in-depth learning of a particular topic), and its strong emphasis on music and art may have helped place it in the running for the award.

“In my heart, I know that P.S. 150 is an amazing school,” a fifth grader named Sophia read in a short speech at the celebration. “And now that we have gotten a Blue Ribbon award, I am overjoyed that others can know that we are an amazing school.”