7th Grade Was Our Hardest Year Yet! #NYC @NYCSchools

It was grueling. It was the all important year.

Why? Because, in NYC, your choice for high schools runs the length of the five boroughs. Yes, the entire city is what you get to choose from. So the competition for the good seats is stiff.

There is no zoned school.

We have an application where we list up to 12 choices of schools that we think will be a fit for our son. We have to tour most of them. And he may end up over an hour away in the Bronx, or Brooklyn (except daddy Mitch will not let that happen!).

The information for the applications to NYC high schools comes from the students 7th grade work. Every lateness, every absence, every class grade, every common core test score in ELA and Math. Now do you understand why I was on his back all year?

He had no lateness’s. He had well under ten absences (that is the threshold).  His final grades individually all ranged from 91-100, with his overall average over 95.

The Common Core test scores come out in late August so we do not know what our high school options are until we see those.

And I had hired two tutors to get him through the testing, spending thousands of dollars to support him. He needed to have his best school year ever. Cause next year doesn’t matter, it will be too late, high school admissions do not need anything from the 8th grade.

This was his eighth year of Hebrew School. This was the year he graduated from Hebrew School. And this was the year of his Bar Mitzvah which was about ten days ago. So he had that extra work and studying happening as well all throughout this year. How did we survive?

We are so proud of all of his hard work. We loved this years teachers who were quite supportive. We are so lucky to have the public schools we have had so far!

And to think years ago I did not think it was safe to go to NYC public schools, now we see it is a great education! We are grateful.