P186X Walter J. Damrosch School

Standardized proficiency data isn't the right lens here — for a District 75 school serving only students with IEPs, progress is measured primarily through individualized IEP goals rather than state tests. What the data does show is that average class size of 21.9 essentially matches the district average of 21.9, suggesting the school isn't being asked to do more with less in terms of staffing. Without multi-year proficiency trends to interpret, this is best read as a school whose academic story lives outside the proficiency framework.

Parents express unusually strong trust in both the principal (95%) and teachers (94%), and teachers report feeling safer here (90%) than teachers across the district on average (85%) — a meaningful gap in a neighborhood where parents and educators have reason to be cautious. Zero suspensions is the headline number: for a school of 654 students where every child has an IEP, that's a deliberate signal about how the school approaches behavior support. The 12% family survey response rate is on the low side, which means the strong trust numbers come from a self-selecting, more engaged slice of the parent body.

Hispanic students make up 53% and Black students 39% of the body — a mix that closely mirrors the surrounding Morrisania neighborhood, which is largely Black and Latino. The diversity index of 56% reflects the interplay between those two largest groups, plus a small Asian population and a few multiracial students. The defining feature here isn't ethnicity, though — it's that 100% of students have an IEP, which makes this a District 75 placement school, not a zoned neighborhood school open to all comers.

Morrisania is a working-class South Bronx neighborhood where about a third of residents live below the poverty line, median household income is just over $33,000, and only 9% of households own their homes. Around 15% of adults hold a bachelor's degree, and 11.5% of households include children, meaning families are a smaller share of the neighborhood than in many parts of the city. Median home values around $504,000 sit alongside very low incomes — a familiar Bronx pattern where housing costs far outpace what most residents earn.

The 2 and 5 trains serve three nearby stations — Freeman St is about a 7-minute walk, Simpson St about 12 minutes, and Intervale Av about 13 minutes on foot.