Zoned Kids End Up on Waitlist for Kindergarten at 321

If you’ve seen the original episode of Shit Park Slope Parents Say or, like, own kids and live in Park Slope, you know that the one and only drawback everybody acknowledges about otherwise perfect P.S. 321 is its overcrowding.

As someone who came by her 321 zoning honestly – that is, moving to the “right” side of President St in 1992 (yeah, that’s right, bitches), two years before I met my now husband/baby daddy, and 8 years before I procreated, I’m PISSED.* Do you know that there was only one decent restaurant in the whole neighborhood then? Huh? Huh?

As is well known, 321 has a history of families faking their way in to a school they’re not zoned for, using grandparents’ addresses, pretending they live at a dry-cleaners, or paying someone else’s electric bill for 3 months. 

But this year, looks like things have really gone too far, with some new online registration system, which allowed the unwashed, unzoned to fake it in even more easily, leaving 30 zoned kids on the waiting list for kindergarten in their rightful school, according to DNAinfo.

Now parents who received “offers” will have to bring their child to school to register in person with a whole mess of proof of residence, and Principal Liz Phillips expects a bunch of big fat liars to be exposed in the process.

This is all a little ho-hum to me; in fact, the strangest thing about the story reported is this:

Brooklyn schools expert Joyce Szuflita, of NYC School Help, said she, too, was surprised to see a waitlist at P.S. 321 after the rezoning that was intended to shrink the incoming class, and particularly as the number of zoned schools with waitlists dropped by nearly half across the city this year.

"I am mystified by the drastic rise in applications for in-zone families at 321 and the subsequent waitlist," she said. 

Um, Joyce? Aren’t you a “Brooklyn schools expert”? THIS IS THE 321 OF SONG AND STORY, Joyce! Frankly, I’m mystified that you’re mystified. Go back and watch Shit Park Slope Parents Say!

*I’m actually not that pissed, truthfully, because my younger kid has only 1 year left at the school, and it never really seemed that crowded somehow to me, anyway. Not my problem, losers.