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.

What online website should I use to learn about public schools?

By Joyce Szuflita
Inside Schools. Period. We are so lucky to have them. They are a NYC institution. They “get” us. They are nuanced, they are thoughtful, they are looking past the numbers, which can lie (or at least mislead).

Please STOP reading the grades and rankings on Great Schools. Although, feel free to read the blog. And also, please no more Niche or their ilk (they are all you have for Independent Schools, I’m afraid, but not any more accurate or insightful than for public school ratings with even less data). When families ask me, “what is the difference between a ‘9’ and a ‘6’?” I know they are using Great Schools. The answer is, “‘3’.” And yet, these are reputable websites that are doing their best to grade and/or rank schools with data that is crunched by big data people, but when we are talking about real professionals and families in communities that big data doesn’t understand, there are serious blind spots.

I don’t normally have occasion to look at the array of Great Schools grades laid out on the local map, but this week I chanced across one and I spit milk out of my nose. It bore little to no resemblance to the schools that I know. It was wildly cockeyed in both directions. If you are looking to move to the suburbs, you don’t have anything else to go by, and as inaccurate as it is, that is all you have…but in Brooklyn where you have the deep study of the New School for NY City Affairs and the professionalism and insight of education journalists who have studied every school in the City for over two decades - why would you go anywhere else? Because it doesn’t distill school quality to one number or letter? Because it doesn’t put them all in a line? Different people want different things. Different children need different things. Two different institutions can both be “good” AND different. When you try and cram the world into a line, you get a crazy line that is as unfair as it is inaccurate.

I know that I am telling you to turn away from information in a time when there is so little out there for you. That info is not always completely weird and off center. All I am asking is that you don’t make it your first or biggest resource. You should use your own eyeballs (through a virtual tour or open house, please God) in combination with the data and culture interpreted through Inside Schools, with a possible ‘grain of salt’ cross reference with Great Schools. Remember, there are a wide range of thoughtful schools that could serve your child. School (when it is in session) is 6 hours within 24, and 180 days within 365. Your child’s successful outcome may have as much to do with your good nutrition, making sure they get enough sleep at night, your reading to them every night, your modeling good habits, your thoughtful expectations and enrichment, your using big words, your turning your phone off and making eye contact with them, your expressing your own passions and hard work and respect for others, as weighing the difference between a “9” and a “6”.

Good luck, and remember that Inside Schools is an underfunded not-for-profit. In these last hours of the year, please send them a check, as I will.