For the first time since the school opened in 1965, P.S. 307 Daniel Hale Williams in Brooklyn could have a school zone that reaches beyond the children of Farragut Houses, the public housing complex outside the school's front doors.

The elementary school enrolls mostly low-income students of color and must contend with many of the educational issues that tend to follow poverty, including students reading behind grade level, low test scores and chronic absenteeism.

But P.S. 307 is, by most measures, a good school with strong community support. It has a focus on math and science. The administration created an "early childhood academy," which keeps pre-k students together with their teacher as they move up to kindergarten. And there is a strong emphasis in all grades on nurturing social-emotional skills and fostering collaboration.

The school is well-resourced thanks to a federal magnet grant and Title I money that comes with enrolling a majority of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. These funds allow the school to offer music instruction to every student, art classes and Mandarin language lessons. Class sizes are small, averaging 20 students. There are a host of after-school activities, including cheerleading, choir and rock band.

P.S. 307 has put an emphasis on creating an environment with caring, nurturing adults.

(Jennifer Hsu/WNYC)

But many families living in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill are reluctant to embrace the school, and some will likely reject it altogether. A city plan to redraw the school zone, to be voted on in January, would shift families in these neighborhoods from the oversized zone for P.S. 8 Robert Fulton, located in nearby Brooklyn Heights, to P.S. 307.

The plan heightened class differences between the two communities that fall distinctly along racial lines. Families living in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill are majority white. The median household income for those neighborhoods is $194,000, according to census data.

Many of the families who thought they would attend P.S. 8 are unhappy with the proposed change, citing school quality. Parents expressed worry that their children would not be challenged in a school with low test scores and an absentee problem.

"The parents that have those concerns, they don’t know much about the instruction of the school," said Katharina Goetz, a parent in Dumbo whose son is in pre-k at P.S. 307. "They don’t have kids at the school. Their friends don’t go to the school. Their peers don’t go to the school. So they don’t really have proper insight on this."

Pre-k students eat breakfast as a class. The younger grades of pre-k and kindergarten enroll more white students than the older grades.

(Jennifer Hsu/WNYC)

Goetz has strongly advocated for Dumbo families to see P.S. 307 as their neighborhood school, and to get to know the place. She runs the blog Brooklyn Bridge Parents, and frequently writes about the school.

But she thinks that people's perceptions, or how they judge their own comfort level with P.S. 307, are indeed influenced by race and class. 

"Nobody wants to be the only white rich kid," said Goetz, adding that she knows parents who have moved, or plan to move, because they won't send their children to the school.

Whether or not parents in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill see race as a stumbling block to their acceptance of P.S. 307, race is inevitably involved in the rezoning proposal. Redrawing the school zones would open the door to a more racially and socio-economically integrated P.S. 307, where just 5 percent of children enrolled last year were white.

But, ultimately, the school will only integrate if white parents see it as a good school, and choose it.