The Brooklyn Free School is a private, ungraded, democratic free school in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, founded in 2004. Students range in age from 4 to 18 years old. The school follows the noncoercive philosophy of the 1960s/70s free school movement schools, which encourages self-directed learning and protects child freedom of activity. There are no grades, no tests, and classes are non-compulsory. As of 2015, the school enrolls 80 students and has about 24 graduates.The school was the first free school in New York City since 1975. It started in a rented portion of a Park Slope Methodist church, but moved to a brownstone in Fort Greene. Students participate in the design of classes and in the school's governance, which is done at a weekly Democratic Meeting. Staff and students all have equal votes. The school is funded through sliding-scale tuition, grants, and donations. In 2012, Lucas Kavner of The Huffington Post called the Brooklyn Free School "arguably New York's most radical center of learning".HistoryThe Brooklyn Free School was founded in 2004 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and began its first academic session later that year. Its director, Alan Berger, had been an assistant principal at a Manhattan high school before he left to found the alternative school. He had read about a free school in Woodstock, New York, and was "grabbed... to the core". Berger published his idea for the school in the October 2003 issue of the park Slope Food Co-op newsletter. About 170 people showed interest, and a group held biweekly planning sessions until the school opened in the 16th Street Brooklyn First Free Methodist Church's bottom two floors in 2004. The original class was thirty students with three teachers. It was the first free school in New York City since the Park Slope Fifteenth Street School closed in 1975. By November 2012, the school had moved to a four-floor brownstone in Fort Greene. The school had 42 pupils by November 2006, 60 by 2012, and 80 by 2015. As of 2015, Lily Mercogliano is the school's director.
