Well-off parents in brownstone Brooklyn are finding there is a wait list for anything to do with children, from schools to camps to extracurriculars such as free swimming lessons, according to the Times.

If waiting in line in the predawn of a January morning for science camp registration sounds crazy, you do not have a New York City child born after 2004. For those children and their parents, especially in the neighborhoods of brownstone Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan and the Upper West Side, not getting into activities, classes, sports teams — and even local schools — has become a way of life. If every generation must have its own designation, call theirs Generation Waiting List.

While the leafier enclaves of Brooklyn are the focus of the story, also mentioned is a single mom who lives in Flatbush who could not get her child into an after school program because she had to work during the enrollment period (she is a nanny). Pictured above, crowds at the table for Carmelo the Science Fellow at Atlantic Antic. Do you think the wait lists for enrichment programs and schooling affect those at the top more than others, particularly in the more gentrified areas of Brooklyn, or has this always been the case for everyone in New York City, and now that the affluent are choosing to stay and have children here, they — and the Times — are discovering it?
For City Parents, a Waiting List for Nearly Everything [NY Times]
Photo by Auster Agency


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. This article about parents waiting in line to enroll their children in science camp has been written every year. My kids had Carmelo as their science teacher for free. My kids are now in college and high school and Carmelo filled up quickly back then when they were elementary school so this isn’t a new development. Anyway, we adore Carmelo and my kids are still in contact with him. He is an incredibly gifted teacher.

  2. Um…having come to NYC (straight to Bklyn, baby!) in ’98, I guess I count as a gentrifier. I, however, have never considered Carmelo’s classes a ‘status symbol.’ My kid goes there bc she drinks in everything he says, which is cool w me bc I end up learning things I never knew. (For instance, if you see a water sitting on dirt, it’s actually clay. Who knew?)

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