 The 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 . 
