Since 2012, The Friends of P.S. 217 has acted with one primary purpose ~ to fund the expansion and enhancement of educational and artistic opportunities for the students of P.S. 217, inside and outside the classroom.

Our Mission

Our mission is simple - we’re here for the students. But specifically, we focus on the following four areas:

To fund the expansion and enhancement of educational opportunities for the students at P.S. 217.
To solicit funding for the above objective from friends, neighbors, parents, elected officials and P.S. 217 graduates.
To compete for grants as appropriate for Friends activities.
To work cooperatively with the P.S. 217 administration and Parents Association to effectively achieve the above goals.

FO 217 strives to donate at least $25,000/year towards after school programs.
In the 2017-2018 school year, we provided funds to launch a fall session of our after school program, which was rebranded "Discovery Zone". The program had nine clubs in its pilot year, and we funded the expansion to 18 clubs in the 2018-2019 year.
Our support of the after school programs has expanded year over year. We helped to fund a total of 484 students in 2018-2019 school year.
In the spring of 2021, we launched the first virtual after school effort with 3 vendors, offering music, karate, and chess to grades K-5.
We host “Spring Concerts in the Garden” to benefit both our students and our surrounding community with a variety of musical genres - it’s fun, and musically educational!

We have supported 12 full-scale musical productions since our inception, including the last production (pre-pandemic), Seussical (June 1st 2019).
In the fall of 2018 we hosted PS 217's legislative breakfast, which ensured we continue to have strong ties to our community leaders. This connection helped garner the support from the community-at-large during the Participatory Budgeting process. From this, we garnered the award of $200,000 for a new sound system in our auditorium, in support all the academic and artistic endeavors of our children!
In the 2022-2023 academic year, we brought KokoNYC to the Discovery Zone after school program. Kids are building robots, buildings, and anything they can dream up with found objects!