Our History

Gantry View School continues the work of Queens Paideia School, which was founded in 2009 by a group of educators and parents who shared the concern that traditional classrooms, with their high student-teacher ratios and limited methodology, cannot accommodate the needs or consider the true potential of most children. Gantry View School is a destination for parents who seek academic rigor, emphasis on the “whole child,” and greater involvement in their children’s education.

How It Started

The educators and other professionals who formed Gantry View were motivated by a desire to bring academic rigor and an emphasis on the “whole child” to Long Island City. These values already permeated the Bunny Hill preschools, founded in Brooklyn in 2014 and LIC in 2018, by GVS Director Leah Tong. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy and approach, Bunny Hill offers preschoolers—infants to UPK—individualized attention and multi-sensory experiences. 

Gantry View’s founders learned about the remarkable work happening at Queens Paideia School in Court Square. Since 2009, QPS had been identifying and implementing learning modalities that could reach a broader range of K-8th grade learners while addressing their individual needs. It achieved this through its 6:1 ratio and core belief that true learning happens with consistent observation and feedback. It articulated the interactions between skill-building, content knowledge, and application, as well as the benefits of independent and collaborative learning, project-based learning, and community outreach and environmental preservation. All of this made QPS the go-to school for parents who sought deep learning for their children rather than progress stoked by grades and other extrinsic factors. 

In spring 2020, Tong initiated a conversation with QPS founders Dr. Francis Mechner and Karyn Slutsky to explore the idea of creating a new school in LIC that would embrace our shared passion for educational theory and current research pertaining to how children learn best. These exchanges engendered warmth and mutual regard, which, when expanded to include QPS’s formidable team of Learning Managers, ultimately led to the formation of Gantry View.

This collaborative effort brings together the experience and knowledge of Queens Paideia’s staff with our administrative know-how and ambitions for a larger school to serve the needs of LIC and its surrounding neighborhoods. Gantry View is built on a solid theoretical foundation and with a current sensibility that will speak to our area’s parents.