John Jay School
We are planning to move to Park Slope. We have been looking at real estate there for a few months now – but only on the weekends. We have seen properties around the old John Jay High School that we were interested in, however we are not sure how noisy/crazy it is when school gets…
We are planning to move to Park Slope. We have been looking at real estate there for a few months now – but only on the weekends. We have seen properties around the old John Jay High School that we were interested in, however we are not sure how noisy/crazy it is when school gets out. By reading posts and searching on-line, the descriptions run from just noisy kids to daily fist fights on the sidewalks and it is hard to determine what is reality and what is exaggeration.
We are going to try and get over there during the school hours, but it is hard getting time off from work to do so.
Our main concerns are resale values around the school and over all safety. Noisy kids aren’t an issue…
If anyone who lives near the school could please give a description of what the reality is – we would really appreciate it.
Thank you
i work at the school and i live in the neighborhood. i am passionate about my school and my neighborhood. it saddens me to know what a bad reputation 10 years ago is still doing to our school. i wish i could erase everything that has been printed about “john jay” (i refuse to call my school that anymore – it is the secondary school for law, journalism and research) and i wish more park slopers would understand our schools population more.
i do want to thank everyone who wrote here – i was really expecting a bunch of BS written about dismissal time. i’m so happy that people really told it like it is. our school does not serve the park slope community. we serve, for the most part, kids for low-income backgrounds from sunset park, bed stuy, red hook, flatbush and east new york. yes, some are rude sometimes (but so are some park slopers!), yes, they are LOUD (believe me, i need to decompress after a day in the school in a quiet, dark room! but they are teens!) and yes, they take over the sidewalks… but they are teenagers no matter their background.
we work really hard to do a good job in our school. the neighborhood isn’t always so nice about our students. bad history, i guess. regardless, i don’t think your property value is going to sink. hell, i’m going to have to leave this area very soon (and prob. nyc) after 11 years because there’s nothing here for me to purchase as an educator. nyc will be losing a damn good educator, too!
you will still have a very, very, very expensive house and, if bloomberg and klein get there way the nice john jay building will be filled with well-behaved, sweet, non-fighting, non-loud charter school students. prob. from the neighborhood and all will be happy.
To give you my two cents, we live a few buildings away from a school and the noise is almost non-existent.
It used to be much, much worse when John Jay was just “one” high school, which was basically used as a dumping ground for miscreants. There is now decent police presence [both school cops and NYPD]in and around the school at closing time; students are herded out and they dissipate pretty quickly … no big tagging or littering problems or anything else like that. And they’re heavily discouraged from hanging out anywhere near the school by local merchants and residents.
Thanks all for your input. As noted – we are going visit during the school hours. However, we felt that it wouldn’t truly be enough time to establish what it is like during school times with the limited time we can take off work to do this, and wanted to augment it with views from folks in the area.
Purchasing is a big investment I can’t afford to take lightly – I love the neighborhood and want to be there – but don’t want to make a mistake.
I am guessing that based on the last 3 comments – this is really not any different than your typical city high school. I had just seen comments and posts in the past on this and other message boards where it seemed like a bad idea to purchase near this particular high school.
Thanks again!
i live across the street from john jay. it is really noisy for about 15 minutes at 3:00 on school days. that’s about it. i am home all day with a baby and he doesn’t even seem to notice the noise even when napping. there is the occasional fight and the usual squealing and yelling but other than that no big deal. it helps that there are cops there at 3 to disperse the crowds…
considering it has been there for years i really don’t think it will do anything to resale values. we didn’t even think about it when we bought the place and i’m sure many others won’t as well.
good luck!
There is a police presence – they are stationed outside the school on each of the four corners of 7th Avenue, with a car or two on 4th and 5th Streets, the two side streets which flank the school. Also there are random officers stationed along 7th Avenue from the school down to the 9th Street F station – usually one outside/around Barnes & Noble and the bus stop there, and one down around Smiling Pizza at 9th Street, where the subway entrance is.
I tend to avoid 7th Avenue between 2 and 3:30 on weekdays because of the John Jay kids – noisy, all over the sidewalks, not respectful of other pedestrians’ space. There are certainly not daily fistfights, but if you’ve ever seen one where the combatants are rolling around the middle of 7th Avenue and groups of kids are screaming, taking pictures with their mobile phones, and egging them on from the sidewalks, it’s an ugly, ugly scene.
Would it keep me from buying in the area? Me personally, yes if the property was right by the school – that would rule out 4th Street and 5th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. Otherwise, no.
Don’t go this week. School doesn’t start again until Wednesday and traditionally attendance is very low for the rest of the week. Next week would be a much better gauge. That being said, I find the students there to be annoying, loud, obnoxious, but non-threatening. I think dismissal is a little worse than most schools because there is enough happening in the neighborhood that students like hanging out, as opposed to a lot of schools where there’s not much there to attract kids, so they dissipate faster.
Given the lack of police officers posted there at dismissal, I can’t see daily fist fights. That’s not the neighborhood that would let that happening without insisting on a police presence, which I’ve never seen.
when I bought in PS I trolled the streets at various times for weeks, hence the snark.
How close are you? And since you don’t seem to be there in the afternoon it should not make a difference? I don’t think safety of the property (or your person) is an issue at all, JJHS was a bit squirrelly 10 years ago, and maybe I still wouldn prefer another school for my son, but it’s OK.
People here are right; you have to make the time to visit the actual property you’re considering during the hours this school lets out. There’s no general consensus you can get from others who may live nearby – the noise can change with even a little more distance, or in one direction vs another.