By Joyce Szuflita
Brooklyn Prospect Charter School has several schools in District 15 and District 13.
Currently:
Downtown Elementary School in D13 K-5th grade
Clinton Hill Middle School in D13 6-8th grade
Windsor Terrace Middle School in D15 6-8th grade
Brooklyn Prospect High School in D15 9-12th grade
First, there will be a new Elementary School in D15 in the fall of 2020 - Windsor Terrace Elementary
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
Here is what you need to know about placement:
You will be ranking up to 12 choices on your MY SCHOOLS application through March 16, 2020. Don’t wait until the last min., the website often gets glitchy. Take screen shots of any trouble you have and of your final list, just in case you have difficulty. You can always fix it at the Family Welcome Center if you tell them of your troubles in a timely way.
The biggest misunderstanding about prek is that you will be attending at your zoned school. There are about 75,000 kids on a grade in NYC. There are around 30,000 prek seats in public schools. Those seats, depending on the neighborhood, will go first to siblings of zoned students and then occasionally to some zoned students. The other 40,000 seats will be in a variety of places; NYCEEC’s, Prek Centers, a few Un-zoned schools and a few Charter Schools.
by Joyce Szuflita
This is what is going to happen:
You are now ranking up to 12 choices on your MY SCHOOLS application. Don’t wait until the last min., the website often gets glitchy. Take screen shots of any trouble you have and of your final list, just in case you have difficulty. You can always fix it at the Family Welcome Center if you tell them of your troubles in a timely way
You don’t need to rank 12, but why not add a few thoughtful choices as insurance.
You don’t have to rank your zoned school, but you will still likely get placed there, because it is the school for which you have the highest priority.
You are not “guaranteed” a placement in your zoned school, although it is VERY likely.
By Joyce Szuflita
Where are the free preks in Brooklyn?
You can search on the DoE’s MY SCHOOLS platform (“browse” the directory at the bottom of the page), but it doesn’t show you zone lines which are important priorities for some programs. It will only show you schools within a mile of your house, unless you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the search and click the forward arrow. That shows you schools within two miles, but doesn’t include the previous search, so you can’t see schools in context.
Do you want a simple map that lays out the options in one place? Here is last year’s Prek Directory. I have edited and condensed it to fit in this blog.
Why don’t they publish this online? I can’t tell you. Call 311 and complain.
By Joyce Szuflita
Update 2023: This school never opened.
The Whittle School and Studios is opening in the fall of 2020, upstairs in the Macy’s building on Fulton Mall. Larry Weiss, former Head of School at Saint Ann’s and Brooklyn Friends, is going to be their Brooklyn Campus Executive Chairman.
Info events: Nov. 14 Brklyn and Nov. 21 Manhattan
More information all about admissions. They have early admissions as well as a regular timeline through Ravenna. They will eventually be early childhood through high school but they are only accepting applications Prek through Kindergarten at this point. Contact them for more information.
It is all just beautiful PR so far. We will all be curious to see how they develop.
Washington Post - deep background on Chris Whittle the founder
WSJ to follow shortly this week.
Updated 12/22
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.
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”.
The ability for families to search for UPK programs in the fall and early winter, solely by using the convoluted MY SCHOOLS browse is a problem for me. When you design the way people can access information in a complicated and specific path, people who don’t think in the same way and people with different devices will be disadvantaged. I have no doubt that the search will be useful to many eventually, but the lack of a simple static online map as an additional and extremely necessary resource is a joke. It also doesn’t cost you a dime.
READ TO THE END TO GET A THE LIST.
By Joyce Szuflita
First, as many of you know, the rezoning plan for Bococa including PS 15, 29, 32, 38, 58, 261 and 676 has been postponed to distribute information more deeply and engage the community in the planning. As far as we know the current zoned lines will be in place for 20/21 admission season. So all of you with 2015 bday kids applying for kindergarten - it will be business as usual.
Any changes will be made in the fall/winter of 2020 and take effect for kids entering the schools in fall of 2021. Any students currently attending the school at that time in K-5th grade will be unaffected by the rezoning and can remain in the school even if their home zoning status changes.
The District has announced that there will be a new rezoning effort made in Sunset Park
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
Tours and open houses are booking now. Go to schools’ individual websites for info. There is a mania for naming schools things that often has nothing to do with what is going on in the school. Don’t judge too quickly by the name. Also, all of these schools have to cover the same curriculum and they only have three years to do it. They will often only talk about the stuff that makes them different. MOST of what they do will be THE SAME. It is different deal at high school where the schools can wrap up the basics required for a NYS diploma in a couple of years and you spend significant time doing AP’s, IB’s, College Now classes, electives or pre-career classes. Middle schools are more the same than they are different!
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.
by Joyce Szuflita
If you are looking for Prek information now and not finding it, your problem is that you are being too proactive.
Touring season for public school doesn't usually start until late Oct. The application for prek may not open until Feb. and application deadline may be in March. We don't know yet because the DoE only works in the present tense and that is too far away.
Touring the public school options will likely go through March.
Touring the NYCEEC's (preschools, Head Starts, daycares that have done the paperwork to run a UPK location) are something that will probably end in Dec/Jan.
The DoE is also moving away for their very thorough printed directories (saving trees is a good thing) to their glitchy on-line search functions (which is not such a good thing). I find the search parameters very confusing and unsatisfying. Search on a laptop if you can, use Google Chrome.
To get on the DoE’s email blasts, go here.
To scan the information currently available go here.
To browse the glitchy search function go here. Scan down to the very bottom of the page and follow the prompts.
I searched a random address and it gives me a narrow grouping around a mile radius, but I can't expand the radius. It doesn't make distinction by district, where there is priority for public schools and prek centers according to zone and/or district. When I screened for the subway line, it left off very important options. The fact is that I know the schools exist and had to click many different parameters to actively find schools that I knew I was looking for. If you are not in this position, you would miss important options. If I didn't know they existed I might never have found them
When you click on the program (by the star at the bottom of the listing). It doesn't give you any information about admissions priorities - which I know the different kinds of schools have. You have to dig into the Quality Snapshot to see how many seats are available, to give you an idea about whether you have a chance of getting in or not. Enrollment, if you are reading, these are some of my concerns.
I am hoping that when we get closer to application time, that more information will be available.
By Joyce Szuflita
There are many unanswered questions, but finally the rumors about where Arts & Letters is probably relocating can be answered! They are likely moving and merging with PS 305. I have lots of questions about how prospective families will be considered, like, will it now be an exclusively zoned school rather than non zoned? Will it be some kind of hybrid? Will there be additional seats for K or MS? Inquiring minds want to know! I think this sounds like a great solution. A merge helps A&L find a new permanent home and it help bring thoughtful attention and popular muscle to 305, a local school that is drastically under-enrolled. It also helps PS 20 where A&L was formerly co-located. They now have room to come into their own.
Here is the parent blast from the Principals involved about it:
By Joyce Szuflita
Got to the Fair at about 10:30, and breezed right into the gym. It was pretty civilized. Relatively easy access. Not wildly noisy. It was hot, but thanks to the fan that I got at Stephen T. Mather, I stayed cool (and learned all about their craftsmanship and historical preservation program)! Many of the schools that I was looking for attended -although there are always some that don’t make it- which sucks. I was happily surprised that many of the schools that I talked to had start times around 8:45!
By Joyce Szuflita
This is blog is not about education. This is a personal message that is all tied up with memory and family. The house that my mother and grandmother were born in (which we do not own anymore), has been for sale for quite a while and I am hoping that someone who will care for it will buy it. It is a 300 year old Dutch stone house close to Kingston (closer to Stone Ridge and Hurley) on land with a creek and a small pretty waterfall. The price is very low for a house of this quality because the sale is complicated and the house needs work. We don’t want the bank to take it or for it to stand unoccupied and degraded. There was a lot of love there.
By Joyce Szuflita
Those of you who live in the part of Brooklyn Heights located in D15, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook, you need to be aware of this now (zones 261, 29, 38, 58, 32 15 and 676). I don’t want to hear -and I will- about how you were surprised by the rezoning plan in the fall and how fast this went down. It is way more transparent than I have seen with previous rezoning, with much more attempt at public engagement. Engage now! When you drag your feet, it is not their fault. There have been three public meetings so far (since April) and there will be several more, gathering parent feedback as well as informing the neighborhood. If you aren’t participating or staying aware, I don’t want to hear complaining.
Whether you are there or not, one of these things is going to go down. It would be better if you had a say. You may not get what you want, but you may get what you need - Mick Jagger
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
It is hard to really embrace this thought, and even harder to convince your child about it, but there is no other path.
Hard work should ‘pay off’, but there are plenty of times when it doesn’t. There are lots of people who don’t deserve things that get them. Life isn’t fair. If you are expecting a pat on the head and a key to the city for going the extra mile, you will often be disappointed.
The only true thing is that hard work- the satisfaction, knowledge and character that comes from it, is its own reward. The prize is the knowledge that you accomplished something meaningful, that is actively making you a more informed, more skilled, better person. It is almost impossible not to wish for the glittering prize (the admiration, the acknowledgement, the envy), but in the end, it often disappoints.
If you hold out the carrot of a plum placement as reward for a job well done, there is plenty of reason for kids to stop trying at the first disappointment.
By Joyce Szuflita
I LOVE Devorah Heitner! Here is an email that I got from her:
I've witnessed this far too many times: parents and educators trying to keep kids in line with threats about college admissions. This is totally misguided.
Here are a few good reasons not to do this:
1) It isn't true: 99% percent of the dumb things kids do wouldn't rise to the attention of admissions officers: silly selfies, bad words in group texts, being annoying, inappropriate, or over-disclosing. We may wish for our kids to eschew these behaviors, but we are lying if we say they will keep them out of college.
2) It isn't so important: Getting into a highly selective college is no guarantee of a great life/career. Attending a less selective college, trade school or community college could be part of a path to a great life/career.
3) It is not the point: We should teach our kids not cheat in school, not to be unkind on social media, and not to make cruel jokes--because we want them to be an ethical person, a trustworthy friend etc.
It's Not Just About College Admissions is in Washington Post's On Parenting section today.
By Joyce Szuflita
This letter was sent to me by my good buddy Allison Shillingford. Allison is an African American mom who lives in Brooklyn. She runs a not for profit called, Navigate the Maze:
Navigate the Maze to Achievement, Inc. (NTMA) is a non-profit, educational enrichment program that prepares black students in Brooklyn for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) and supports the students socially and academically while in high school.
In 2019, out of the 5,488 black students who took the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) to attend New York City specialized high schools, only 190 of the students received offers. In one of the worst years for black enrollment in specialized high schools, an emerging non-profit in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, demonstrates that black students are capable of passing the SHSAT. Navigate the Maze to Achievement (NTMA) had 20 students take the SHSAT, and seven received offers. About 3.96% of Black students citywide passed the SHSAT, while 35% of NTMA students passed. To put this into perspective, 1 in every 27 black students who received an offer to a specialized high school is an NTMA student.
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
I have been sitting in my tiny office spinning with rage about the lazy conversations that I hear around school quality. Let me say right up front this blog is NOT about equity. I think schools are better when they are filled with diverse learners and students of every race and class. Period.
This is about something else: how people talk about the elite schools that everyone is focused on. I think that the underlying premise is false and until we understand the schools with a clear eye - WE CAN’T SOLVE THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM of “school quality” which is poverty.
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” - Leo Rosten, Emerson or Thomas Carlyle, whoever…they were right.
helping families search for Brooklyn preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, NYC high schools
