Glad to hear your kids got into the good schools but I still can't wrap my Midwestern mind around high school kids taking the subway to school and back, just seems so bizzaro. How long is their "Commute" each morning?
It's a little less than 30 minutes each, and they go in opposite directions. Schools give every student a free metro card that they can use only during the week for certain hours, and some kids way out in Queens even take the LIRR. One daughter meets friends from up the line on the same train car every day, god help the poor souls dealing with the noise and smell from those kids. For reference, their school in California would have been a 20-25 minute walk.
Assuming they didn't test into the super smart kid schools because their dad is emaw what is the local high school they would of gone to like? Would it be walking distance or do they actual yellow school buses that pick up kids?
it's a total crapshoot. there actually aren't that many zoned high schools - for example in Manhattan there are no zoned high schools. Students rank their 12 favorite schools and get assigned by grades or lottery or other factors I don't fully understand. And there's also the test-in schools, which are another animal. What we did was get an Airbnb in a part of Brooklyn with a decent zoned school to guarantee that and try for better ones. Without a zoned school the city enrollment offices looks at spots available and kind of assigns you one. One kid had a couple of choices before the test, the other only had the zoned school.
If we'd been in that zoned school, it was about a 30 minute walk from the Airbnb, but we probably would have permanently moved to another neighborhood. AFAIK public schools don't have any buses, kids just all commute on the city bus or subway.
