Kindergarten Connect 2017 is officially open!
Experts offer tips for surviving NYC's kindergarten application season
By Amanda Mikelberg
Parents of 4-year-olds have more on their holiday-patterned plates than wrestling for the Hatchimals in the toy isles: It is now kindergarten application season in New York City.
The Department of Education’s online application system, Kindergarten Connect, is open from Wednesday through Jan. 13, with placements released in March. And while Requests for Testing (RFT) for the city's gifted and talented programs were due on Nov. 14, insiders say the window is still open for special requests for a test date in January.
“It’s unspeakably important to know all of your options,” Alina Adams, author of "Getting Into NYC Kindergarten," and a private coach for families in the process, told Metro.
She stressed that the law does not at all guarantee placement in a local school.
Much like the daunting high school application process, rankings of 12 choices must be submitted for each of the 70,000 kindergarten-age kids. Ignoring this process is taking a major risk of convenience and quality.
Applicants must research the DOE's kindergarten directory. Public kindergartens are not created equal — there are small schools and big ones, gifted and talented schools, magnet schools with attractive features, dual language programs, as well as traditional or progressive teaching approaches.
“Many parents don’t know that they may not be able to get into their zoned school, or that they are welcome and have a right to apply to unzoned schools.”
Read the entire article, here.
Or, if you'd prefer to hear everything you need to know about zoned, unzoned, district, magnet and dual language public schools - how to apply and how to get in, listen to the below podcast from 2015.
For a step by step guide that you can refer to over and over again as you go through the process, check out:
