Your Neighborhood School

Your neighborhood school is your first option to consider. The school your

More on GreatSchools.net What Your Should Know About School Transfers in New York Charter Schools Offer an Array of Choices A Sampling of Charter Schools in New York Related Links Inside Schools offers a wealth of resources to help parents choose a public school in New York City. In New York City, neighborhood schools are called zoned schools. Use the NYC Department of Education's school and zone finder to find out what school is zoned for a particular address.

district assigns your child to is generally determined by where you live. Your neighborhood school offers the advantage of proximity to your home, and a community of parents and students who reside nearby. You'll want to evaluate the school to make sure the academic program, size of the school and quality of education meet your child's needs before choosing this option.

School Transfer

Students in New York schools may transfer to another school within their district (or outside their district, if necessary) to meet their special education needs.

Some districts allow intradistrict transfer for a variety of other reasons. The district decides whether or not it will allow intradistrict transfer and what criteria may be used to judge applications.

Districts receive no additional funding for accepting students from other districts, and they may choose to do so or not. They may determine what criteria to use when evaluating requests, as long as those criteria are fair and equal.

Charter Schools

As publicly funded schools, charter schools are free and open to all students, but preference in admission is given to children of the same district. Charter schools may admit students from other districts if there is room for them.

They are essentially similar to traditional public schools, but the leadership has more freedom to experiment. They control their own staffing, curriculum, organization and budget, but are still held accountable to the same standards as public schools.

Magnet Schools

Magnet schools draw students from a wider geographical area with a specially focused curriculum. They may exist as separate schools or a public school may have a magnet program. Magnets are public schools, but they often do not have room to accept all applicants. If there are more applicants than available spaces, spaces are allocated either selectively or randomly, depending on the district. Contact your district to explore your magnet school options.

Private Schools

Districts still provide some services to students of private schools. They provide transportation to school in some cases. Districts must provide services such as instruction to home-bound students (students who must stay at home due to injury or illness, for example) and language instruction to students who speak limited English. Districts also provide for school health care in private schools and for free or reduced-price lunches in nonprofit private schools.

Families of students pay tuition or receive scholarships to attend private schools. The teachers, principal, board of directors, and sometimes parents and students decide upon the curriculum, teaching methodology and enrollment requirements.

Homeschooling

Parents may also teach their children at home instead of sending them to a public or private school. New York law requires that homeschooled students be provided an education equivalent to the education they would get at public school, meaning the education must meet the compulsory education requirements. They must also attend school for 180 days per school year. Home-schooled students must take annual norm-referenced achievement tests, such as the Stanford 9. If the child does not score well enough, his parents will have to submit a remediation plan to the school board.

November 2005