Joyce Szuflita is the mother of 22 year old twins who have just graduated college. She discovered when she was looking for nursery schools twenty years ago that the search process that her friends feared and loathed was something that she was completely fascinated by. After navigating the school search for a few years, she decided to hang out her shingle. She helps families in northwest Brooklyn who are doing the school search, nursery through high school, public and private. Here is our Q&A with her for families looking into Pre-K and Kindergarten.
What are the key factors of making the right school choice for one’s family? You can’t predict the future and you can’t engineer perfection. As a wise parent, you collect the information you can; the data (which can be misleading), other family’s experiences (they can be wildly different), and using your own eyes. Watch InsideSchools What to Look For on a School Tour. Find a place where your child will be safe and engaged, surrounded by educators of integrity. This, in connection with reading each day, enough sleep and mindfulness at home, will yield a happy, challenged lifelong learner.
Your feedback for parents looking into Universal Pre-K: Think about public Pre-K as a lovely single year gift that the city has given to the families of four year olds. The hope from many parents is that it can be a strategic move to entry into Kindergarten and I find that is rarely the case. As a benefit, it can be an opportunity to give a ‘try out’ to a school outside of zone. There are many lovely Pre-Ks in schools that have not become popular for Kindergarten and older. There is no better way to experience a school than to send your child there every day for Pre-K, join the PTA, talk to the older parents and teachers and get to know the culture from the inside.
Your feedback for parents regarding public Kindergarten: There are many public options outside of your zoned school for kindergarten, but they may be outside of your neighborhood and you may not hear that you have gotten a seat until late in the spring or even into the fall. The process is convoluted and to many, unnecessarily complicated. You can see it as a nightmare or an opportunity. The range of options is pretty staggering. You might not get what you want, “but if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need”. I don’t always use the Rolling Stones as life models, but in this case, they are the last word.
Tips for parents in Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO: I recommend that all families actually tour their zoned school and judge for themselves before they look outside the neighborhood. The three ‘schools of choice’ that District 13 families have priority for are Brooklyn New School, Arts and Letters and PS 133. Parents will be able to list up to 12 choices on their application for Kindergarten (not including charter schools or gifted and talented programs), so you can rank other zoned schools in and out of the neighborhood if you like. Families can apply to charter schools separately apart from the regular DoE’s application. You can apply to as many charter school lotteries as you like and you don’t have to rank them.
Your two cents on the rezoning proposal of PS 8 and PS 307: Change is unpleasant, and having your expectations dashed no matter which school you were zoned for is worse. It is not going to be easy, but I hope that the community can find common ground. If they can, all of the children and educators will benefit.
Joyce speaks publicly about the process at all levels. She has an email newsletter that comes out in the beginning of every month in which she lists school openings and tours, calendars and articles. She also consults privately with families around their own circumstances anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours. You can contact her here.
Upcoming talk: Intro to Public School: Prek and Kindergarten coming up, Feb. 11 at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music
