P.S. 186 Dr. Irving A Gladstone

Math has been the steady strength — 2025's 73.8% beats the district average of 71.2%, and fourth graders cleared 82%. ELA at 65% sits just shy of the district's 66.2%, but the real headline is trajectory: ELA jumped roughly 15 points from 49.7% in 2024 to 65% in 2025, with math climbing another 7+ points alongside it. After a bumpy middle stretch (math dipped to 43.5% in 2022), the school has clearly re-stabilized and now outperforms where it sat two years ago.

Day-to-day, the school reads calm and connected: 95% teacher-reported collegial trust, 98% teacher-reported safety (both above district), and parents who return the favor with 99% trust in the principal and 95% overall satisfaction, on a robust 756 family survey responses. The discipline ledger is essentially empty — a single suspension across the last three reported years, against a district average suspension rate near 0.3%. Attendance at 95% sits above the district, though the chronic absenteeism figure on file is worth asking the front office to walk you through.

P.S. 186's student body — 39% Asian, 31% White, 28% Hispanic, with very small Black and multiracial populations — mirrors its Bensonhurst setting, a neighborhood long shaped by Chinese, Italian, and Eastern European family networks. An economic need index of 72.2 signals that most students qualify for free or reduced lunch, even though the surrounding census tract's overall poverty rate sits at 17.4% and homeownership near 32%. With 1,006 students, this is one of the larger elementary schools in District 20.

Bensonhurst is a working- and middle-class stretch of southwestern Brooklyn where roughly a fifth of households include children and over 31% of adults hold a bachelor's degree. Home values near $1 million sit alongside median household incomes around $65,000, a familiar affordability squeeze for this part of Brooklyn. The D train is the thread that ties the neighborhood's commuters to the rest of the city.

Most families reach the school on foot from surrounding blocks; the nearest subway option is the D train at 79 St (about an 8-minute walk), with 18 Av (about a 9-minute walk) and 20 Av (about a 10-minute walk) as alternatives.