How to find your zoned school, 2.0
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By Joyce Szuflita
You are not necessarily zoned to the elementary school that is closest to you. Almost everyone only has one zoned school. There are many zoned schools within a district, but you don’t have the same priority access to all of them. You are not guaranteed a seat in your zoned school at kindergarten. That is too strong a word, although the DoE will make every effort to place you in your zoned school and in most cases it is wildly likely that there will be a seat for you. Currently, because of Covid attrition and lower birth rates, all local schools are NOT over capacity and they have room for all zoned students and occasionally other families from outside of the zone.
The DoE’s website is here. I recommend that you use Google Chrome (seems to be the least glitchy search engine for this).
Most parents will start and end with the “Enrollment” tab, although there is a wealth of information buried in here in many different tabs. I particularly like “About Us”: “Insights and Reporting” and “School Planning”.
You will see the “find a school” tab at the top of the Home page.
Type your address (leave out apt. numbers)
search for all grades
search for your borough
At the top of your entry will be a box that says “Current Zoned Schools”. It will give you one elementary school and then instructions about middle school and high school. That first listing is your zoned elementary school. Most families will not have a zoned middle school, but if you do, that may be listed. Most of you will see something like, “Middle Schools: zoned to District _, No zoned school.” That means that you have district wide middle school choice.
The same may be true for High School. If you have a zoned middle or high school you can still apply to your district middle schools and citywide high schools when the time comes.
A list of many schools including high school and preks, etc. that are near your address will follow. You are not zoned for them.
You can find a map view, but it is wildly unsatisfying and currently not accurate. In my recent search, it showed all schools EXCEPT my zoned school. You can filter by elementary zone lines but they are currently not accurate. If you click on your zoned school, you are directed to a page with links to school data which can be helpful.
You can also call 311 which will just give you the same information from the website. The operators are just going on the same DoE website and putting your information in. You might as well do it yourself.
If you use the DoE Open Data website MAKE SURE that you are searching for the most current year. It is not currently accurate. Currently those maps are not accurate for some neighborhoods. Zone lines can change. When a zone line goes down the center of the street - usually one side will be in one zone. The other side will be in the other zone. If you live on a border street and you are unsure of your zone affiliation, call the school you think you are zoned for to confirm.
