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Really? Where did you get that idea? Staten Island is accessible to all boroughs. Not easily for some, but it is part of the actual city of New York. Parts of Brooklyn are more or less accesible to some other parts of the city than others.</p>
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<p>You will not see a school rating of 1, 2, 3 as the ratings are alphabetical. Even then all A school’s are not the same.</p>
<p>[Progress</a> Report - School Accountability Tools - New York City Department of Education](<a href=“http://schools.nyc.gov/Accountability/tools/report/default.htm]Progress”>School Quality)</p>
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<p>Speaking as another longtime NYC resident:</p>
<p>This really depends on the neighborhood and responsiveness of the teachers/admins. Some non-G&T schools or regular zoned public schools are good/great. </p>
<p>However, that is not always the case as was the case in my old former working-class NYC neighborhood’s local public schools along with the issues of bullying and crime. Situation’s so bad many parents sent their kids to private or Catholic schools not only for academic reason…but also to keep their kids as safe as possible. </p>
<p>While the latter weren’t 100% safe, it was a night and day contrast safer than the local public schools…especially the zoned HS. </p>
<p>And there’s still plenty of NYC area high schools with serious safety/other issues like Murray Bergtram or their K-8 equivalents where fightings and bullying has made the news…and their graduation rate is double what my old neighborhood’s zoned HS was before the DOE closed them down a few years back. </p>
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<p>Only if DOE and local admins are much more responsive to student safety and bullying issues. </p>
<p>IME and those of most parents sending kids to regular NYC public schools where this is a serious issue, good luck getting much of a response unless you’re well-connected to someone at the DOE, politician, etc. </p>
<p>Otherwise, that’s putting too much of a burden on the family and especially the student concerned considering he/she’s a minor.</p>
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In your experience of, what, 25 years ago? Parents get a response, are you familiar with parent coordinators? Cobrat, you are so far removed from the actual experience of public schools that your opinion is not at the top of the relevance list.</p>
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<p>What I mean by response is the bullying issue dealt with in a way which solves the issue, not polite written responses/meetings that ultimately due little more than make it seem the DOE is doing something when it doesn’t. </p>
<p>And it’s not 25 years ago…the issues of bullying, violence, and more at NYC public schools like Murray Bergtram is a recent and ongoing phenomenon.</p>
<p>cobrat, this may shock you, but there is bullying and violence even in non-public schools. It happens everywhere, unfortunately.</p>
<p>Responding to points in this thread…</p>
<p>To be truthful, I was annoyed by mathmom’s “dodged a bullet” by moving to suburbia comment. In case she missed all the news articles, there have been numerous cheating scandals in the suburbs of NYC over the years. Cheating is not something that only happens in the City. (And for the record, IMO the UWS is a LOT less diverse than my own neighborhood.) And,no matter how diverse the suburb, it won’t have all the resources the City has and teen life in them will still emphasize different things than City life for teens. </p>
<p>As I said before, we were lucky and benefited from great G&T/public magnet type schools. </p>
<p>I think the OP did an excellent job summarizing this thread! I do agree with Zooser’s caveat in post 31 though.</p>
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<p>Agreed. If the OP were buying a house in Westchester and asked about the differences among Rye, Yonkers, Tuckahoe and Mt. Vernon schools, I doubt people would say the school systems don’t matter. They are relevant, not only if a couple is planning to have children, but also because they affect real estate prices. </p>
<p>Hunter is a great school. Yes, there are “political” issues. They are racial. While 15 years ago, Hunter was about 15% black and Hispanic, the % is now down below 5%. Like Stuy, it’s become heavily Asian. Hunter used to have a sort of affirmative action program. Apparently, that’s been discontinued. (You had to register as socioeconomically disadvantaged before you took the test. 15% of the class was reserved for the disadvantaged. They didn’t just take your word for it and a number of factors were considered. Everyone took the test. Then they were graded. The list of those who passed was compared with the list of disadvantaged. The kids who were disadvantaged who passed on their own merits were included in the 15%. Then the top scorers in the disadvantaged group who had not made it were admitted until the class as a whole was 15% disadvantaged. Years before that, Hunter had a special summer program for kids who were disadvantaged and came close to passing. Most of them had to go to summer school in math. If a kid didn’t enroll in the summer school, (s)he was not admitted. If (s)he did and passed the program, (s)he was.) Partly as a result, the % of Hunterites who qualify for reduced price or free lunches is now 10%; it used to be a LOT higher. </p>
<p>One problem that nobody wants to talk about is that African-American principals discourage their kids from applying.Why? Taking those kids out of neighborhood schools hurts the 8th grade results, which are crucial to school rankings. Hunter is now accepting applications directly from students and their families. Until recently, your principal had to recommend you–and a lot of the African-American principals and AVPs discouraged kids. Here’s hoping the new system increases the number of African-American and Hispanic kids who sign up to take the test. Another “problem” is that there has been a big increase in the number of URMs who go to prep schools/boarding schools through programs like A Better Chance and Prep for Prep. One of the young women in my neighborhood got into Stuy…and turned it down for Deerfield Academy. </p>
<p>The NAACP is now suing to change the admissions procedures for Stuy and the other high schools that use the same test. It’s infuriating. Yes, there’s too much test prep. Still, the problem is that too many African-American families don’t emphasize academics. When Crews (who was African-American) was schools chancellor, he created a special summer program for kids to prepare for the sci high tests. Very few African-American kids signed up and even fewer attended for the entire summer. </p>
<p>Another “problem” with Hunter, Stuy, Townsend Harris, and all the other outstanding NYC public high schools is that it’s very easy to measure the size of the fish. It’s probably true that the kids in the bottom quarter of their classes end up with worse college admissions results than they would have if they’d stayed at the neighborhood public schools and been the <em>stars</em>. They still received a better education, but there are parents who are bitter about the results.</p>
<p>Finally, the sports programs at Hunter, Stuy, etc. are often weaker than neighborhood schools. An African-American male I know turned down Brooklyn Tech for a neighborhood school with a better baseball team. He really IS an unusually good player. He’s hoping for an athletic scholarship to college…and he probably has at least a 50/50 chance of getting one. He didn’t think he’d have the same options if he played for Tech. (I’ve no idea whether he’s right about it.) </p>
<p>Anyway, yes, the NYC system is byzantine. Still, I’d rather be a working class family with a smart kid living in NYC than in the kind of suburbs working class families can afford.</p>
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<p>True, but such issues tend to be dealt with much more forthrightly in other public school and private school districts. </p>
<p>This issue is one major reason why many above-average academic performers…even now are hell-bent on attending Hunter Elementary/HS, G & T programs, or the NYC SHS. There’s much less tolerance for that BS in those places…something much closer to private schools IME and those of friends/colleagues who attended.</p>
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This.</p>
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You don’t know that at all. </p>
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No. Emphatically no. There is equal tolerance for DIFFERENT BS. You truly have no idea what you are talking about.</p>
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<p>Actually, I do know…students who are violent or rowdy to the point of threatening violence are almost always suspended or expelled. </p>
<p>Policy’s clearly written and carried out in most private/parochial schools, some proactive public school districts, and magnets like Hunter/SHS where the rules allow for such suspensions/expulsions. </p>
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<p>I was never subjected to knifings requiring several stitches unlike neighbors who attended my local zoned HS. Moreover, the recent violence, bullying, and rowdiness at Murray Bergtram and schools with similar issues was unheard of in Hunter or the SHS.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. Knew of many classmates in the bottom half/quarter who ended up at nice schools like UWisc-Madison, Oberlin(including yours truly), NYU-CAS, etc with HS GPAs which’ll normally shut them out of such schools.</p>
<p>It happens that I know a lot about Brooklyn Tech, and many teams did extremely well this year. It’s not for everyone, for sure, but it has every conceivable Public School Athletic Team and many/most of them are very competitive.</p>
<p>But this high school stuff is even further into the future than the education of the yet-unborn grandchild of the OP. Hunter College High School has about 200 students per grade and I believe that half of the seats are taken by students from the related elementary school. So we can call it a crapshoot: the HYPSM of publcly funded schools in NYC.</p>
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But what you don’t know is how those things are handled in other schools and you don’t know what you don’t know about the schools you think you know.</p>
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You are not seriously implying that you think there is no bullying at Stuyvesant.</p>
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Yes they are and kids com from all boroughs, even Staten Island, to attend such an excellent school.</p>
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<p>I don’t know if this is still the case. A couple of parents with kids in Hunter College HS said this was no longer the case. Can anyone else verify this?</p>
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<p>Not for everyone. </p>
<p>Knew many Stuy classmates who came from Hunter HS because they wanted a more STEM focus and a different atmosphere.</p>
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25 years ago, right? Very little in terms of NYC high schools has remained the same. Which does make the point that some posters were making. However, preschool isn’t that far away at all after a baby is born.</p>
<p>Even if there isn’t automatic admission from Hunter College Elementary School (admission to Manhattan residents only) to Hunter College High School, with a total enrollment of 200 7th graders, it’s a crapshoot.</p>
<p>This is from the review on insideschools.org:
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<p>Generally insideschools.org reports changes since the last full review (May 2011) and there is no such report.</p>
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<p>Nope, still happens to this day as a few recent Stuy graduates were Hunter students before going over to Stuy. </p>
<p>If one wants to use HYPSMC as an analogy, Hunter HS is perceived as leaning much more towards HY whereas Stuy, Bx Science, and B-tech are perceived as leaning more towards MC and the more STEM parts of S & P. </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t subscribe to this…but many parents/students applying or transferring from one to the other seemingly do.</p>
<p>insideschools report on HCHS:
[Hunter</a> College High School - insideschools.org](<a href=“http://insideschools.org/middle/browse/school/1402]Hunter”>http://insideschools.org/middle/browse/school/1402)</p>
<p>We can’t scare the OP away. You can find normal schools without many bullying issues in parts of Brooklyn. This can be done! PS 8, PS 29, Park Slope Schools, etc. I know there are nice schools in Manhattan, PS 9? Others I know of, don’t remember the number, in Tribeca. Yes, areas where people with some amount of money live, which will also include those without too much money.</p>
<p>The NYC schools which are not of the specialized (capitalized and not) variety run the gamut and to leave the impression that they are all hotbeds of violence and bullying is very unfair and untrue. Most schools are perfectly fine and the DOE takes bullying very seriously when it happens at specialized and non-specialized schools.</p>
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<p>A reason why I posted earlier that whether a local public school in NYC is good depends greatly on neighborhood and individual school…and parents need to investigate closely to verify this factor for their child(ren)'s sake.</p>