My fiance and I have been living on the UWS for years and don't want to leave our neighborhood. We also want to start a family in the next couple years. Our zoned elementary school is PS 87, and I have heard great things about the actual quality of the school but horror stories about waitlists and the process of getting one's child in. Is it true that there is a waitlist of over 100 kids for PS... [more]
My fiance and I have been living on the UWS for years and don't want to leave our neighborhood. We also want to start a family in the next couple years. Our zoned elementary school is PS 87, and I have heard great things about the actual quality of the school but horror stories about waitlists and the process of getting one's child in. Is it true that there is a waitlist of over 100 kids for PS 87's kindergarten; what would happen if our kids did not get in off the waitlist by the start of the school year (would we have any say in which alternate school they get assigned to?); and how exactly does the waitlist work? I hear it's not first come first served (e.g., there is a sibling preference), and that a lot of people rent studios in our neighborhood just to get their kids into this school....isn't there a way to screen out people who do that? We want two kids and would rather move to the suburbs than pay $80k/year out of pocket for private school tuition, so not getting into a good PS would be a deal-breaker as far as our ability to continue living in the city.
Forgive my total ignorance on the subject, we're not parents yet and we both grew up in areas where there was no drama surrounding getting into the local public schools - our parents just signed us up and we went. TIA!
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Response by dan@digsrealtynyc.com
over 10 years ago
Posts: 114
Member since: May 2012
daisy37, I am a parent of 2 boys (not quite kindergarten age) and currently live in the PS 87 zone. This was a big concern of ours before we bought our apartment. As I understand it, PS 87 used to have the longest waitlist on the UWS, so a couple of years ago the DOE carved out a chunk of the PS 87 zone (west of Amsterdam) to create a new school zone for PS 452 and alleviate PS 87's overcrowding. This seems to have worked, and although there is still a waitlist at PS 87, it is a small waitlist, and the head of my older son's preschool tells me that this waitlist has regularly cleared since 452 was created. Of course, nothing is guaranteed. There are also a number of other non-private school options on the UWS that we have learned about in the last couple of years that are also appealing to many people.
Check with various parent's groups for the current scoop on this. I lived on the UWS and faced the same problem you're describing several years back. Getting into these schools was partially based on who you knew in the school. We were new comers and knew very few people in the area.
I was in the PS 87 zone, but there was a more restrictive catchment area. They were taking kids out of the zone over my kids giving some ridiculous reason. They were pushing us into 2 schools they were "upgrading", one next to Linclon Towers and one on W 89th St. My kids were accepted to PS 6 on the UES for the gifted and talented program and the offer was withdrawn because the W 89th St school was planning to offer a similar program.
We were so disgusted after seeing the public schools offered to us, that we enrolled our children in private schools. I attended public schools in the city and was shocked at how bad these schools were. Our children had absolutely no problem being accepted to multiple Tier 1 prep schools
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daisy37, I am a parent of 2 boys (not quite kindergarten age) and currently live in the PS 87 zone. This was a big concern of ours before we bought our apartment. As I understand it, PS 87 used to have the longest waitlist on the UWS, so a couple of years ago the DOE carved out a chunk of the PS 87 zone (west of Amsterdam) to create a new school zone for PS 452 and alleviate PS 87's overcrowding. This seems to have worked, and although there is still a waitlist at PS 87, it is a small waitlist, and the head of my older son's preschool tells me that this waitlist has regularly cleared since 452 was created. Of course, nothing is guaranteed. There are also a number of other non-private school options on the UWS that we have learned about in the last couple of years that are also appealing to many people.
Dan Gotlieb
Digs Realty Group
www.digsrealtynyc.com
Check with various parent's groups for the current scoop on this. I lived on the UWS and faced the same problem you're describing several years back. Getting into these schools was partially based on who you knew in the school. We were new comers and knew very few people in the area.
I was in the PS 87 zone, but there was a more restrictive catchment area. They were taking kids out of the zone over my kids giving some ridiculous reason. They were pushing us into 2 schools they were "upgrading", one next to Linclon Towers and one on W 89th St. My kids were accepted to PS 6 on the UES for the gifted and talented program and the offer was withdrawn because the W 89th St school was planning to offer a similar program.
We were so disgusted after seeing the public schools offered to us, that we enrolled our children in private schools. I attended public schools in the city and was shocked at how bad these schools were. Our children had absolutely no problem being accepted to multiple Tier 1 prep schools