Crowds at PS 321 Making Parents Nervous
According to a Wall Street Journal article, the overcrowding problem at PS 321 has Park Slope parents worrying about both their children’s education and their property values. With 1,300 students on its roster right now, the school is at 117% of capacity. No zoned kindergartner has been turned away or put on a wait-list for…
According to a Wall Street Journal article, the overcrowding problem at PS 321 has Park Slope parents worrying about both their children’s education and their property values. With 1,300 students on its roster right now, the school is at 117% of capacity. No zoned kindergartner has been turned away or put on a wait-list for the school yet, but the possibility is growing for a lottery system or that the PS 321 area will be rezoned to funnel kids into different schools. (PS 133, for example, is expected to open on Baltic Street by September 2012.) According to Streeteasy.com, the PS 321 zone brings in $6 to $19 more per square foot than adjacent real estate zoned for other Park Slope schools. Even an unmarried Novo resident, without children, asserted, “I would certainly be fighting very vehemently anything that takes the building out of the zone.”
PS 321 Draws a Crowd, Sends a Chill [WSJ]
OMG, a whole article about the Miss Muffet problem!
I was so hoping the example lady in the article was Miss Muffet, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
OK, so if indeed the schools get rezoned and all these people who bought in the neighborhood don’t get into their school of choice — don’t you think Obama should give them some kind of government compensation for their loss?
petunia – thats the point – it is much more likely that the diversity of 321, is more due to the use of Grandma’s address (long time 321 resident) than it is due to people living in a rental for a few years and then moving to a larger house outside of 321 because they couldn’t afford 321, therefore a rezoning (shrinking the borders) will likely lead to LESS diversity than a change in the rule that once your in the school you get to stay even if you move out of the zone.
all right, just one more.
rf – I said the school is diverse relative to its neighborhood. I’m already familiar with the statistics posted. What are the statistics of area code 11215, from 3rd ave. to PPW, 5th st. to Union? That’s the comparison I was making.
Statistics for 321 from DOE website:
Ethnicity
American Indian 2 0.14%
Asian / Pac. Isl 88 6.29%
Hispanic 120 8.58%
Black 140 10.01%
White 920 65.76%
Not Reported 129 9.22%
Citywide statistics:
Ethnicity
American Indian 3,943 0.39%
Asian / Pac. Isl 144,779 14.21%
Hispanic 374,975 36.80%
Black 277,331 27.22%
White 137,670 13.51%
Not Reported 80,313 7.88%
http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/15/K321/AboutUs/Statistics/register.htm
fsrq – most of the people who’ve lived in the same house/apt for many years have already aged out of K-5 schools (there are exceptions of course, like families w/ more than one generation under the roof).
More often, grandma’s house is used as the child’s address when the child and parents actually live elsewhere. And if you’re wealthy enough to afford a big-enough house in the 321 zone and don’t care so much about diversity and exposing your kid to a lot of different people and lifestyles, there’s always private school…
(that’s too much commenting on one thread for me – whew. I’m done now!)
The weird thing is that these articles about overcrowding just make people want to live in this zone even more, I think.
You’d think it might have the opposite affect but Americans being Americans just ignore the overcrowding part and just WANT IN!
And here we are…
it would also take away most of the diversity, economic and otherwise, as only families who can afford to trade-up from their 321-zoned starter apartment or rental to a bigger one in the zone could still attend school.
Maybe – although the school is only K-5 and its not like the rent is cheap, so how much diversity does the rule really bring (especially since alot of the diversity comes from people whose families have lived in the same house/apt for decades and may get moved out of the school in a redistricting – 3rd ave families for example)
But the bigger question is – SO WHAT….diversity is nice but in my mind it is a very distant 2nd to a quality education in the 3Rs – and if overcrowding prevents the latter than you got to deal with the overcrowding.
“Part of the problem is that the school allows students to continue attending there even after the family moves OUT of the school zone. Take away this rule and it would alleviate much of the crowding.”
haha really? that’s pretty retarded. if you don’t live in a district you shouldn’t go to school there. seems like common sense.
“Part of the problem is that the school allows students to continue attending there even after the family moves OUT of the school zone. Take away this rule and it would alleviate much of the crowding.”
It would also take away most of the diversity, economic and otherwise, as only families who can afford to trade-up from their 321-zoned starter apartment or rental to a bigger one in the zone could still attend school. For the neighborhood it’s in, the school is still pretty diverse (not as much as it was in the past, admittedly, but more than the blocks in the 321 zone would suggest).