Anonymous wrote:What did you think of VCS?

We didn't get to the point of visiting - I was a little casual in saying "liked better" there; we had to cull down the list, we weren't applying to any K-8's for our older kid and so we ended up eliminating any downtown K-8's because we thought (correctly, as it turns out) that she'd most likely end up somewhere uptown and we didn't want to commit to years of annoying commutes for one or both of them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you so much! This is incredibly helpful! I’m also curious, are there any all-boys schools that fall into that category?

No problem!

I'm not as well-informed on those - my daughter was interested in single-sex (though she ended up at a co-ed) but my son was not - but I think Allen-Stevenson, St. Bernard's, and Buckley are the three lower-tier ones in the UES at least, though none of them have high schools.

Also, for commute reasons we didn't look much at Brooklyn so there could be some options I'm missing there, I may have missed a few other coed ones also - we applied to all the ones I mentioned, but rechecking my spreadsheet, some other co-eds in that category we looked at but decided not to apply to are UNIS, Dwight, Basis, BWL, Steiner, City & Country, VCS, and Leman. (we liked a couple of the ones on my first list better than those and assumed - correctly - we'd get into at least one of them)

What did you think of VCS?

Anyone having experience with Basis Manhattan? I’ve heard that they have openings for almost every grade

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Second, when choosing a public school, if you can be very flexible about location, be sure to ask a lot of questions about resources. There are some schools where the PA's raise a lot of money to provide assistant teachers (some schools have one full day in each classroom), extra art, language, music, etc. These schools operate more like a private school. Having the full time assistant teacher makes a big difference as they can break down to smaller groups, and the assistant teacher can help with a lot of menial tasks so the teacher can focus more on teaching.

Sorry, just to clarify on this point: we have a pretty well funded PTA and a lot of other classes in the school did have assistant teachers, they just didn't quite have the budget to put one in every class and we drew the short straw. (perhaps because this teacher had a good track record with test scores etc and they thought she could handle it)

Frankly I'd have preferred they eliminate dance classes - also paid for by the PTA - and used that money to give every class an assistant teacher, but it's not up to me

Totally agree - Assistant teachers are more important than dance. Dance is great but it is more of a nice to have than a need to have. Sounds like you are almost done at the school (unless you also have a younger child) but perhaps you should join the PA and influence the decision!

I'm not sure of the breakdown of which schools have different levels of assistant teachers. Anything is good but some have more than others. This is something I would do homework on if I were choosing a school. There are also different levels of assistant teachers but in my experience most are in grad school for education or something similar, so usually truly can add value - worst case they at least can help the teachers with basic tasks which is better than nothing.

Anonymous wrote:Second, when choosing a public school, if you can be very flexible about location, be sure to ask a lot of questions about resources. There are some schools where the PA's raise a lot of money to provide assistant teachers (some schools have one full day in each classroom), extra art, language, music, etc. These schools operate more like a private school. Having the full time assistant teacher makes a big difference as they can break down to smaller groups, and the assistant teacher can help with a lot of menial tasks so the teacher can focus more on teaching.

Sorry, just to clarify on this point: we have a pretty well funded PTA and a lot of other classes in the school did have assistant teachers, they just didn't quite have the budget to put one in every class and we drew the short straw. (perhaps because this teacher had a good track record with test scores etc and they thought she could handle it)

Frankly I'd have preferred they eliminate dance classes - also paid for by the PTA - and used that money to give every class an assistant teacher, but it's not up to me

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And the bad years weren't awful.

Want to echo this in particular; my youngest just finished 4th grade in a 32-kid class with no teaching assistant and a grouchy overworked classroom teacher, and yet nevertheless it was a *huge* year for him academically because the demands of the new ELA curriculum - weekly writing assignments and tons and tons of reading comprehension practice - pushed him to level up in that even if he wasn't getting much personalized attention on it in class; he went from having us beg and plead to churn out a lousy little weekly one paragraph reading response at the start of the year to Doing Creative Writing For Fun On His Own Time at the end of the year.

That is great to hear. Two additional things to note - first, I think that kids who just finished roughly grades 4-6 or 4-7 were most impacted by not being in the classroom during covid, so the challenges with them are greatest and. So a lot of complaining (not by you - by others) about kids currently struggling in elementary schools are compounded by that.

Second, when choosing a public school, if you can be very flexible about location, be sure to ask a lot of questions about resources. There are some schools where the PA's raise a lot of money to provide assistant teachers (some schools have one full day in each classroom), extra art, language, music, etc. These schools operate more like a private school. Having the full time assistant teacher makes a big difference as they can break down to smaller groups, and the assistant teacher can help with a lot of menial tasks so the teacher can focus more on teaching.

I would personally rather send my kid to a school like this than "settle" for spending $70k on a private school you are not excited about, particularly because exmitting out of that private school will not be easy. The analysis depends in part on how much money you have and also exactly what private school you are considering. But this advice really applies even if you have infinite wealth.

Anonymous wrote:And the bad years weren't awful.

Want to echo this in particular; my youngest just finished 4th grade in a 32-kid class with no teaching assistant and a grouchy overworked classroom teacher, and yet nevertheless it was a *huge* year for him academically because the demands of the new ELA curriculum - weekly writing assignments and tons and tons of reading comprehension practice - pushed him to level up in that even if he wasn't getting much personalized attention on it in class; he went from having us beg and plead to churn out a lousy little weekly one paragraph reading response at the start of the year to Doing Creative Writing For Fun On His Own Time at the end of the year.

Anonymous wrote:I see people recommending public. Our experience has been very mixed and teacher dependent. If you get a good old school teacher it can be fine. Some districts are more academic focused than others. The standards are very low and without a real GT program (thanks DiBlasio) our kid is often bored and reading books while waiting for the rest of the class to catch up. Lots of focus on equity and not academics. I expect that to get worse when Mamdani wins.

Where do you live? We have had some ups and downs but generally more good than bad. My older child who is very academic and is now at a very competitive HS had very good experiences five of six years of elementary. Younger child who is less academic and is now in middle school had good experiences four of six. And the bad years weren't awful. Historically a really good GenEd (think top schools on the UES and UWS) was just as good (or even better) than G&T. Now the whole system is wacko. No guarantee you will have great teachers at private either. Especially in elementary you often get kids who are there because they are rich/connected and not because they are smart and/or engaged.

Does *not* match

“Equity and not academics” this does match our experience, or that of anyone else we know at a public elementary; maybe a handful of schools are doing that but they should be pretty easy to avoid.

Also if you want to turn this discussion into an attack on Mamdani there’s a whole other thread for that.

I see people recommending public. Our experience has been very mixed and teacher dependent. If you get a good old school teacher it can be fine. Some districts are more academic focused than others. The standards are very low and without a real GT program (thanks DiBlasio) our kid is often bored and reading books while waiting for the rest of the class to catch up. Lots of focus on equity and not academics. I expect that to get worse when Mamdani wins.

Consider Hackley (in Westchester but they have a bus for nyc)... 2nd grade is an entry year. You could go there until DS is old enough for entry years in the NYC privates.

We aren't at LREI, but my impression is that at private schools in general everybody is calming down and retrenching a bit, both on "wokeness" and on Israel - the version of that in the Trump II area is grimmer and less performative, emotions are cooling and we can discuss things a bit more rationally.

But at any rate, all of this stuff is pretty fast-moving, and I wouldn't use it as a reason to pick one school over another except inasmuch as it's a demonstration of the administration's ability (or inability) to resolve conflicts.

Anonymous wrote:(I should add here that most of the schools I listed are perfectly nice, which is why we applied to them - I've heard all sorts of lovely things about Calhoun from faculty at other private schools, Speyer has some really cool ideas like a rigorous elementary chess curriculum, LREI in addition to the amazing location has a really fantastic arts concentration program in middle school...)

I’m less sensitive about this than many others but LREI really has been awful about Israel stuff. It is a decent school but I wouldn’t send a highly academic kid there.