A 5th-grade boy at PS 1 in Chinatown struggled in school for years. Academics were an issue. So was attendance.

“We’re not talking missing five or six days of school,” says his teacher, Jack Lee. “We’re talking 60 days — a third of the school year.”

But since the boy has become one of the featured dancers in the school’s American Ballet Theatre Make a Ballet program, Lee has seen more of him.

“He wants to dance,” Lee says. “It’s one thing he’s able to do where he’s successful, so he wants to be here.”

“Dancing keeps me calm,” agrees the student, who will perform alongside 25 of his classmates for an audience of 3,600 at the Metropolitan Opera House in May.

The school’s connection with American Ballet Theatre is one of many partnerships PS 1 has forged with local community organizations to give students more access to the arts, as well as social-emotional and academic support.

Since becoming a UFT Community Learning School in 2014, PS 1 has been able to deepen those connections and launch new ones, all in the name of supporting students and families inside and outside the classroom.

“The Community Learning Schools model is essential in a school community like this,” says 2nd-grade teacher Maria Willis, who has been at PS 1 for more than 30 years. “When our kids have academic needs, teachers know how to handle them. But the needs of our kids and families tend to be non-academic — everything from teaching parents how to help their kids with homework to where to buy bathing suits for our swim program. For that, we need outside resources.”

Those resources include everything from family workshops on healthy eating run by the nearby Charles B. Wang Community Health Center to free ESL classes for parents, who work with volunteer tutors (many of them retired teachers) from the nonprofit International Center.

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Miller Photography

On a recent Tuesday, a dozen parents, most of them Chinese, intently scribbled vocabulary words in their notebooks as they discussed words you might use when bringing a child to the doctor.

“When I first came, I didn’t understand anything,” says Santiago Garcia, the father of a 1st-grader and a pre-K student at PS 1. “I want to learn English. It’s very important for me.”

Of PS 1’s 400 students, 30 percent are English language learners. The school’s dual language programs serve speakers of Cantonese, Mandarin, Toishan, Fujianese and Spanish. After-school programs — including a running club, a soccer team and a talent show — and Saturday tutoring sessions run by the neighborhood nonprofit organization APEX for Youth have turned PS 1 into a community hub.

Thanks to its participation in the Community Learning Schools Initiative, PS 1 has access to more resources to bring its community partners on board with its vision for the school. APEX, which has provided a free tutoring and basketball program on Saturdays at PS 1 for more than 20 years, has been able to expand its program to the lower grades. The addition of a full-time Community Learning Schools resource coordinator has helped the wheels of the school’s many partnerships stay in motion. A school aide, Ann Yau, who is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, acts as a critical liaison between staff and parents.

Also new this year is the addition of a full-time social worker, Dorene Ng, as part of a Community Learning Schools pilot program. Ng’s time is dedicated to counseling at-risk students — those without disabilities who would not otherwise receive counseling. Her connection with developmental specialists at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center also has helped open doors for parents who need to request psychiatric evaluations for their children but who don’t have the resources to travel to Department of Education psychiatrists.

“We have a growing population of students who need more nurturing and emotional support,” says Christine Wong, a special education teacher who is also acting as the school’s resource coordinator for the remainder of the school year. “And if students aren’t emotionally stable, there’s no way for them to meet the academic demands of the classroom.”

The school’s educators are eager to see where the Community Learning Schools vision will take them.

“This has always been a family-centered school, a neighborhood school,” says Mafan Gong, a 5th-grade teacher. “But seeing the Community Learning Schools model play out, the one word that comes to mind is opportunity — for both kids and teachers — to establish greater well-being beyond the classroom.”