<p>Additionally, the cut offs for National Achievement and National Hispanic Scholars are below those for NMFs. So, there is most definitely a reason to take the PSAT seriously if you might have a chance at one of those scholarships.</p>
<p>Extending my post above: I mean to say, some expensive prep schools might be what you have described but I want to make a point that not all of them are.</p>
<p>I am confused. Are these 40K/yr schools just in Manhattan or all of NYC? If you live in one borough are your kiddos allowed to attend a public school in another borough? </p>
<p>Also, unless there is an additional source of income you would need pre-tax $$$ of at least 55K/yr just to send one child to a 40K/yr private school.</p>
<p>I don’t know the names of fancy schools in Queens or Staten Island. They probably exist. We are not just talking Manhattan though. There are plenty of Manhattan kids who go to private school in Brooklyn, and visa versa.</p>
<p>Some schools allow kids from outside their boro, some do not. There are many city wide schools. In high school many many kids travel to other boros to go to school.</p>
<p>I lived in Manhattan and commuted to a private school in Brooklyn (technically downtown Brooklyn but near the heights). I did it with a full scholarship though.</p>
<p>I think the one sybbie mentions my steps all went to, if it is the one with the deceptively Catholic sounding name :)</p>
<p>The schools of which we all speak 
plus another two blocks away, are all in this price range but are not exactly the snob schools that people outside NY are envisioning when they hear the price tag. (although one was used to film Gossip Girl) Is it worth it? Truly there are a million circumstances that dictate people’s choices.</p>
<p>I live in NYC and I can tell you that many families, particularly ones who are pretty sure they won’t be moving out of the city, would be happy with the public schools through 8th grade, but put the kids in private anyway to ensure a seat for high school because the public high school application process in NYC is so monstrously hideous as to be an act of sadism.</p>
<p>Oh and for the poster earlier who asked, EVERYTHING about the NYC public schools has changed since the 1970s. Except the facilities. They are the same. Haven’t been maintained since then, either. Even in good areas, some schools operate at 200% of capacity and lack things like basic supplies. Every fall, parents are asked to send in hundreds of dollars’ worth of basic supplies like tissues, paper, red pens, hand sanitizer. You truly have no idea. This is why some schools fundraise staggering amounts of money to pay for even salaries, because those parents are committed to staying in the public school system, but they know that their kids would be ill-served without intervention.</p>
<p>
My daughter is an NYC public school teacher and loves it. She is truly called, but she will tell you that in many schools, there are so few kids who speak English in certain classes that it’s almost impossible to get any real learning done, so kids who actually do speak English do pretty much nothing. Which is why there are at least a couple of schools that basically operate in Mandarin.</p>
<p>It’s not as simple as crying racism because kids only get to grow up once and if their school years are squandered, they can’t be redone. Also, it’s very common here for high-achieving students to be magneted into lower-performing schools. Of course, the students don’t mix and the magneted kids get all sorts of perks, but that’s another story.</p>
<p>I had one who did the IB program in a public school. Perfect experience for her. My next one is going private for reasons specific to him. It’s very tough here. Very tough, and if you haven’t lived it recently, you can’t really understand.</p>
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<p>In my upper middle class Ohio school district, we have the same items on our list. In elementary anyway. </p>
<p>The overcapacity though, is not the norm where my kids are in school. That would be rough.</p>
<p>For many of these NYC parents, the supplies are a serious hardship to their budget.</p>
<p>My wife and I have raised two kids, a boy and a girl, in Manhattan and they attended a mix of public and private schools. I agree with both redpoints and zoosermoms view that it is challenging to navigate school in NY. The school choice philosophy that pits one public school against another to attract desirable students has a lot of negative consequences. A small one of these is that kids and parents can become extremely tense over the school application process at all entry points: pre-K, elementary, middle, and high school – college application seemed like a breeze in comparison. We could not have afforded it, but it is very easy to sympathize with the plan of placing a kid in one of the K-12 privates (some with pre-K) and forgetting about moving them again until college. </p>
<p>During my daughters freshman year of college, she was going through one of those too-much-work-how-am-I-gonna-make-it modes when she came to reading Othello in her survey Eng. Lit course. Ill never forget this exchange:</p>
<p>D: Oh well, I can just skim Othello since I already read it.</p>
<p>Me: Oh, you read it at now $40K a year super-duper prep school in 11th grade?</p>
<p>D: Uh, no </p>
<p>Me(surprised): Oh, you read it at magnet public middle school for smarty-pants kids in 8th grade?</p>
<p>D: Uh, no, actually I read it in 5th grade at public neighborhood Title I school.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the behemoth that comprises the NYC public school system has thousands of committed teachers, like my daughters 5th grade teacher, and, no doubt, zoosermoms daughter, who see to their students needs first and work around bureaucratic stupidity and deteriorating infrastructure. </p>
<p>Living in NY is not for everyone; as a non-native Im still getting used to it after 30 years. My kids, however, are true natives. They are both good students and could have gone pretty much anywhere for college they both chose to stay in NY.</p>
<p>I think the public school system is the ideal and, when they work, they are the absolute best. But it’s often a lot to deal with and sometimes with the best of intentions they don’t work. The public high school acceptances will come out at the end of this month and, as usual, there will be 8-12,000 kids who don’t get a match at all. It’s exhausting.</p>
<p>And the new caveat this year is that if you get matched, and you do not like the school that you are matched to and want to apply in the supplemental round, you give up the seat you have (and you will not get it back). If you appeal your choice, you lose your current seat in the appeal process.</p>
<p>You may go into this with the mindset that the grass is greener on the other side just to get something worse than what you originally started out with.</p>
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It’s like they plot to make it ugly. My son’s guidance counsellor told the high school assembly that if a match isn’t made in the first round, the student is not guaranteed a seat in the home borough in the supplemental round. We know several families who applied very stupidly and I can see why the deputy chancellor says that the biggest obstacle to appropriate placement is parental expectations.</p>
<p>I tell you, I get on my knees and thank God every night that my son auditioned (music) into his dream school with a large scholarship. The public school options are just not right for him at this time.</p>
<p>It is an ugly process but I can also understand why it is being done this way as students and parents were gaming the system. </p>
<p>Holding on to the seat that they got in the initial round and applying to the supplemental round or appealing their choice and then holding on to seats at 2 schools and deciding on the first day of school where you are going to attend. </p>
<p>Or worse attending school at one school for a couple of days and then attending school number 2 for a couple of days before making a choice. It became a PITA scheduling, programming and budgeting purposes (as only one school can get paid for the student). </p>
<p>We still have a student on out roster today, who applied from private school. Never showed up, no one from enrollment can tell us what middle school she came from so that we can get proof that she is in another high school. </p>
<p>In the meantime we are being killed on her attendance because we cannot discharge her unless we know she is attending school someplace. Contacted the home address on record, no response to phone calls or letters. Sent the attendance teacher to the home and was told the family no longer lives at that residence with no forwarding information.</p>
<p>To add to this, for the benefit of those who don’t live in NYC, if you want to or need to transfer from your high school you are out of luck. You can put in an application fall of your freshman year (same insane process as you use in 8 th grade), but after that you can’t switch, except to a transfer school, which are generally for kids who have failed out of their first schools. Very hard for good students who may be in over their heads at Bard or Stuy. I could go on and on. People who don’t live here would not believe what we go through.</p>
<p>Sybbie, I take it you mean years ago. No one could do that kind of gaming now.</p>
<p>I’m glad all you fellow NYers chimed in. For a while I thought I was all alone and barely anyone believed me :)</p>
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<p>That was my experience. All grades K-8 except 4th, when we got a substitute and our teacher couldn’t return for health reasons so we had her all year. A sub is always a sub, she never did get any respect, or any control of our class. My mom still calls that “the wasted year”.</p>
<p>But every other teacher I had in NYC public school was amazing.</p>
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<p>No I mean that as recently as this past fall (it happened last year also). </p>
<p>You are right about the transfer process. It is horrible. Students submit applications December of freshman year, will receive results when we get back from winter break. If order for you to get a slot in another school essentially someone has to leave. </p>
<p>Your chances of getting a slot at a good non test/non audition school are few and far between as most of the screened programs make end up taking in less than 10 students for sophomore year). Your child can have a stellar first term in high school, but the school is looking at the scores, grades and disciplinary records from 8th grade. Even in the selection process it is going to be based on the needs of the school (if the school needs to increase its number of ICT students, more ELLs, etc). Also now with the concept of choice there are very few if any "zoned’ schools. </p>
<p>There are still zoned schools in Queens and I believe Staten Island, but there are no zoned schools in Manhattan (there are schools where priority is given if yu reside in certain school districts).</p>
<p>If you do not get to transfer freshman year, the only options you have for transfer is a safety transfer (with police report) a transportation hardship (where you must live 1 hour and 35 minutes actual travel time on the bus/train) or medical hardship (which must be approved by the medical director from the DOE). Even if you are granted a transfer through one of these processes, you really do not have a choice as to where you are going. You will be sent where there is an available seat.</p>