Public School Madness

In the past few week public schools and charter schools have conducted their lotteries and offers have been extended to students for the 2018-19 school year. This was our first exposure to this insane process (our daughter will be entering kindergarten next year) and I wonder if it is even sustainable.

Currently there are WAY too many kids vs. the number of seats available in desirable schools (we are in District 13 which covers a wide area of BK Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, a bit of Bed Stuy and Park Slope), for example at least 3 of the 12 schools we put on our application (12 is max, charter schools are separate applications) had over 800 kids vying for 30 or so seats! With the massive number of new apartments coming on the market in the next few years (25k is a number I have read?) are there plans to build new schools and/or inject money and resources to improve struggling schools?

The current system is clearly broken and something needs to be done.

randolph

in General Discussion 7 years and 1 month ago

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randolph | 7 years and 1 month ago

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> @EJR
> School Construction Authority.
Interesting, thanks I will check that out.

EJR | 7 years and 1 month ago

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The city agency responsible for constructing new schools is the School Construction Authority. Their website should have details of new schools in progress and scheduled. Anecdotally, there is a new D15 school near me which serves as both the new PS 130 upper school, alleviating crowding at that school, as well as MS839, a new middle school in the same building. Also near me is the new D22 K-8 school, PS889/MS890.