PS199 school rezoned

Spend $2 million on your apartment and send your kids to public school with the kids from the projects across the street? Only in NYC.

only in New York can someone who bought a 2M condo be considered "upper middle class" .. then again, they might just be 'pretending' to be rich... they might have used a 10 Neg ARM :)

These parents will talk to you until they are blue in the face about how "gifted" and "exceptional" their children are, and of course how dedicated they are as parents. Their kids should shine through like diamonds in the rough, but of course we know it is more that they just don't want their kids to be surrounded by poor minorities.

Its not about being with minority sutdents. Its about the quality of the school. As the artical states:

"This past school year, more than 90 percent of kids at PS 199 scored proficiently on pivotal state reading and math tests.

At PS 191, by comparison, just 52 percent of kids met state standards in reading and 70 percent met the standards in math."

There are also a few blocks in the 199 catchment being moved to PS 87. Those parents aren't complaining much because PS 87 is a good school.

What they are missing though is that their kids and their involvement can help raise the standards considerably. Many people I know experienced this first hand in Prospect Heights and with the less desirable schools in Park Slope.

Divvie, I agree. But I also wouldn't want to be a parent of the first kindergarteners to get zoned out. Raising the standards of the school will take time. Its a lot easier to be for diversity in schools and helping disadvantaged schools when its not your kid that will be part of the experiment. I'm lucky in that my school catchment is fine. I sympathize with those who will be forced to now chose between moving, getting into private school, or sending their children to a sub par school. If many of them take either of the first two options, their won't be enough families changing schools to raise the bar.

"Their kids should shine through like diamonds in the rough"

One of the best things somebody ever said to me about high-quality schools was this "you pay for your peers, not your teachers." I could not agree more. Like it or not, kids are highly influenced by their peers (although less so in elementary schools). If your kid's friends at school don't take academics seriously, it's harder to get your kid to. Yes, you can spend more time with them to encourage them, you can give them advice, etc. - but if all of their friends aren't getting the same message at home it cal be an uphill battle. Again, less true at the elementary school level, but true nonetheless.

Couldn't agree more. PS191 desperately needs community involvement. Many of these top schools today - 199/87/321 were mediocre just over a decade ago.