When the AMPARK Neighborhood School opened Sept. 5, it marked the end of an exhaustive effort by Amalgamated parents to bring a school to their community.

“People have wanted this school for a long time,” says Principal Betty Lopez-Towey, explaining why, in its first year, AMPARK already has a thriving PTA. “I’m here until eight at night all the time because we have so many committees.”

Members of the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative Community (commonly called “the Amalgamated”) realized they needed a school of their own because, for years, they were losing “cooperating families” to neighborhoods where progressive schools, like Central Park East, were located, says Ken Solomon, an Amalgamated resident and integral part of the push for AMPARK.

They explored several options, but went nowhere with then-Region 1 Superintendent Irma Zardoya. “The final breakthrough came when we talked to Jeff Dinowitz,” Solomon says, explaining how the Bronx assemblyman arranged a meeting with the deputy mayor and put a call through to Zardoya.

“I don’t know what he said,” Solomon says, but whatever it was, “Irma then got in touch with us.”

Tucked in the center of the block on Hillman Avenue is the fruit of their labor. Located diagonally across the street from PS 95, a white stucco building that still advertises a community center in English and Hebrew is home to kindergartners and first-graders, for now. The small, alternative school will graduate to grade five in the coming years, adding grades as its students’ progress, Lopez-Towey says.

AMPARK draws its students from the broader PS 95 zone, which includes students who live on the west side of the Concourse in Bedford Park as well as Tracey Towers and Knox-Gates residents, and the Amalgamated community. The current make-up of the school is about half and half, Lopez-Towey says. Amalgamated Nursery School, a popular, private institution, serves as a “feeder school” for AMPARK, she says, which means that children from the nursery school and their siblings get first crack at enrollment.

“But we don’t ‘choose’ kids,” she adds. “We just want parents and children to know what we do, to be well informed about education at a progressive school, and then it’s first-come first-served.”

One specific goal of this progressive school, Lopez-Towey says over and over again, is to make lessons “age and developmentally appropriate.” By way of example, she adds, “This means you don’t bring textbooks into kindergarten.”

One parent, Sharis Ingram, whose 5-year-old, Kalindra, attends AMPARK, says that part of the school’s appeal comes from teachers thinking of themselves as “guides for children’s learning, rather than experts who have all the information.”

In the principal’s words, the staff is just “trying to bring to the table all we’ve learned, read about and experienced about how children learn best.”

Lopez-Towey points to the music teacher, who imparts pre-reading skills in the guise of a song.

“If you know the words, say them in your head,” he says, and the children mouth the lyrics silently and do the hand motions once through before singing out loud.

When children need a break, Lopez-Towey says, they can play with a sand labyrinth at the exploring table, spend a few minutes with the fish tank or she’ll take them upstairs to run around for a few minutes until they can focus again. “And the children know better than to take advantage of these things, because we’ve talked about what they mean,” she adds.

Five minutes later, she asks a little girl and boy who are taking a break, “Why aren’t you singing?”

“We’re in trouble,” the girl replies, explaining to Lopez-Towey why they’re there.

“Oh yes, you’re exploring,” Lopez-Towey says, as she whisks them back to their activity.

Ingram says AMPARK’s learning style is exactly what she wanted for Kalindra. And although it’s only January, Ingram is ready to call the school a success. “She wakes up every morning and asks if it’s a school day. And when I say it is, she says, ‘Yippy!’”

Ingram likes the choices her daughter gets to make in her education and that, in the school’s curriculum, her child’s development comes before test scores. Having been on the hiring committee, Ingram says she was sure Lopez-Towey was the right person for the job.

But other parents weren’t so sure.

“Some parents were worried their children weren’t going to really learn,” and that progressive meant “wild and chaotic,” Ingram says. “But if they sit down and have a conversation with Betty, I think anyone can see how very serious she is in terms of her expectations for children’s learning.”

Just as she wants children to be vested in their own education, Lopez-Towey and her staff invest themselves and their time. “You have to make a commitment to work in a school like this,” she says. The teachers attend conferences and workshops on their own, she says. They write detailed evaluations and notes home to parents each week.

“It’s not that hard,” she says, of AMPARK’s take on education. “What is hard, is when you’re in an environment where you can’t offer children what they need.”

Ed. note: For more information on AMPARK, call (718) 548-3451.