Silence in P.S. 191 School

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Forward

At the border of Crown Heights and Brownsville, in an impoverished corner of Brooklyn, stands the hulking, tan brick building that houses P.S. 191, the Paul Robeson School.

The school serves a student population that is remarkable in its disadvantage: 99% of its roughly 300 students in prekindergarten through fifth grade qualify for free or reduced-price lunches; some live at the homeless shelter next door.

But every morning at 8:30, half an hour after rambunctious kids come bouncing into the building in their blue school uniforms, this school becomes remarkable in a different way.

It gets quiet. For a full minute, there is only silence.

After a teacher and a handful of students announce the moment of silence over the loudspeaker system and offer something to think about for that day — a personal goal, or how to help someone else — each and every person at P.S. 191, from the littlest 4-year-old prekindergartener to the principal, pauses for 60 seconds.

P.S. 191 has been observing this morning ritual for the past three years, ever since Avraham Frank, a Hasidic Jew heeding the last Lubavitcher Rebbe‘s call for a daily moment of silence in public schools, walked in off the street and introduced the idea to the principal.

So far Frank, a white-bearded 59-year-old with a day job managing home attendants for New York City’s Human Resources Administration, has persuaded administrators at 13 public schools in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens to institute a moment of silence.

His goal, he said, is to get moments of silence into schools “all over the city.”

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