public kindergarten application and moving after the application deadline

By Joyce Szuflita
I find that families get very agitated about missing the kindergarten application, particularly if they are moving. (By the way, we don’t have information on when the deadline in 2022 is yet).
Here are a couple of facts:

• Everyone has a zoned school.

• You have the right to attend kindergarten and whether you make the k application deadline or not, you will have a k placement very very very likely in your zoned school.

Think of the kindergarten application as a kind of census that the City takes of five year olds. The DoE hopes that every five year old in the City should fill out an application. It is the first time they know how many k kids are out there and what zones have the potential to be over or under capacity. The application is easy after you register for an account on the application platform MY SCHOOLS. The DoE will make every effort to put you in your zoned school, unless you don’t like your zoned school and then they have a protocol in place for you to apply to up to 12 programs in your order of preference, so that they can try and place you in a school that you prefer. It is your most robust chance to get a seat at a school outside of your zone, but depending on the schools involved it may or may not be likely.

There are sibling priorities, and geographic priorities associated with zones and districts and you can read a lot about the algorithm and priorities on the City’s website as well as in other blogs on this website.

Where you live affects the school you are zoned for and perhaps other surrounding schools for which you might have a district priority. If you are moving after the application deadline, the City expects you to fill it out according to your current NYC address and notify them later about your new address. That is not a problem. If you know your new address and are moving very shortly after the application, then go ahead and use the new address, but generally the DoE doesn’t like future, prospective information. It can make things complicated.

You do not fill out a new application after the deadline. You just contact your new zoned school, let them know about your new status and they will arrange a time for you to pre-register. The big fear for families is that there will not be seats in their zoned school, but that fear is GREATLY exaggerated. Of the 65,000 kindergarteners last year, only 70 applied for zoned schools that were overcapacity and had difficulty in getting a placement in their schools at the time of the initial placements. My guess is that many, if not all of them, actually got a seat in their zoned schools by the beginning of kindergarten as things sorted out in the spring. If you are worried about overcapacity in your zoned school before a move, keep in touch with the Parent Coordinator at the future school. They WILL NOT save a seat for you or leverage a placement, but they can give you information about the schools history of accepting zoned families in the spring and summer as well as information about registering for the school when you have your proofs of address.

District 15 re-zoning: update 12/2020

By Joyce Szuflita
The PAR Team recommended that the vote for rezoning be moved to late winter or spring. With the deadline for fall 2021 kindergarten coming up on Jan. 19, 2021, the recommendation is that any re-zoning plan go into effect for the 2022-23 school year.

The map for the re-zoning will be publicized in the new year, in line with vote.

One aspect of the possible proposal is to transition PS 676 to a middle school.

That’s all she wrote for now.

the latest on the D15 rezoning

By Joyce Szuflita
First, this map, which you can see in detail in the presentation materials is NOT final. It is very much a work in progress and may have little to no bearing on the final proposal. There are two proposals being floated; rezoning with set asides for accommodating economic diversity, and a non-zoned ‘sub-district’ plan. There is also still room for other options. The timeline is also in question.

To make this work for kindergarteners who have to apply to programs by mid Jan. the DoE has to really get moving. After they present a final plan there needs to be a little over a month of public discussion before the D15 CEC will vote to approve or not. There has been talk of a possible temporary plan (PS 32 will have capacity for an additional 436 seats in their new addition beginning in the 2020-21 school year). There has also been talk of continuing the community outreach and debate about the best way to accomplish the goals and put off the rezoning until next year.

I stayed for the break out discussions and my group was solidly advocating for the unzoned subdistrict plan because of their passionate support of the need for diversity. I think the discussions in the room were very wide ranging. You can read Chalkbeat’s very good article on the meeting here.

misunderstanding how the K application works

By Joyce Szuflita
I have been getting a lot of emails and two questions have come up continually.
1. I put my zoned school first on my application and my friend who is also zoned put it third. We are in an overcapacity school and she got the placement and I didn't. Why did that happen?

This is a great example of how the algorithm works and more generally, why you should list schools in the order that you like them. Putting a school first doesn't give you special priority to that program. Your priority comes from being zoned, not how you ranked the schools. In this scenario: The school was over capacity. All zoned families are equal. There are more families than seats at the zoned school, so the computer randomly ranks families within the zoned priority (essentially a lottery among them that has nothing to do with their application's ranking). The family that ranked the school first was unlucky in the computer's ranking and didn't get a placement. The family that put the school third, didn't get a place at the two schools that they put first and second, but when the computer went to place them at their third choice (their zoned school) they were high in the lottery and got a seat. This is how the algorithm is meant to run.
RANK SCHOOLS IN THE ORDER THAT YOU LIKE THEM. This will be on my grave.

2. I put 7 other schools on my list besides my zoned school. Why wasn't I placed at any of them?
It is good to put a solid number of choices as an alternative, but if those schools are super popular zoned programs that never take anyone from out of zone, they will be very, very unlikely to be able to offer you a seat from out side of zone/within district priority at least in the initial offer (and probably never). if you just listed 4 super popular zoned schools and three super popular un-zoned schools, you just applied to Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Brown and bought 3 Powerball tickets. Miracles can happen and no one expects to be turned away from their zoned school (which is awful!) but having a minor safety in there somewhere (a school that might take you from out of zone sometimes) is never a bad idea.

These families will still be on the wait lists for any school that they ranked higher than the school that they were placed in. If they were placed in a school that they didn't list- they will be wait listed for ALL the schools. Miracles happen and as the lists move, they may get an offer from one of these, or even better, an offer back at their zoned school. Best of luck to everyone.