Growing Up Green Charter School II

ELA proficiency at 52.4% trails the district average of 62.8%, and math at 38.8% sits well below the district's 62.8%, putting the school roughly 10 points back in ELA and nearly 24 points back in math. The trend line, however, is clearly upward — ELA has rebounded from a 33.2% low in 2022, and math has nearly recovered toward pre-pandemic levels (41% in 2018). The grade-level breakdown is where the picture gets complicated: Grade 3 and Grade 4 students post strong results (69% and 68% math proficiency), but math proficiency plummets to 17.8% in Grade 5 and 20% in Grade 6 before partially recovering in Grade 7 and Grade 8 — meaning the school's gains are concentrated in the early grades.

Day-to-day, this school clearly has family buy-in — parent satisfaction is 92% and trust with the principal reaches 95% — and teachers report strong collegial trust (90%) and trust in school leadership (90%). The figure underneath all that engagement is harder to read: chronic absenteeism is 67.9%, meaning roughly two of every three students miss enough school to be flagged, a number that's elevated even by NYC's challenging post-pandemic baseline. Teacher-reported safety at 70% also lags the district average of 93% by more than 20 points, which is the kind of gap worth asking the school directly about during a tour.

The student body is 50% Black, 27% Hispanic, 15% Asian, and 3% white, with 20% of students identified as having IEPs and an economic need index of 65.3 indicating a predominantly low- to moderate-income enrollment. The surrounding neighborhood of Jamaica Hills-Briarwood has a median household income just under $84K and a homeownership rate near 40%, suggesting a stable working- and middle-class residential base that doesn't perfectly mirror the school's demographics — consistent with a charter drawing from across a wider catchment than its immediate block.

Jamaica Hills-Briarwood is a residential pocket in central Queens where roughly 44% of adults hold a bachelor's degree and about 23% of households include children. Median home values around $612K and a homeownership rate near 40% point to a neighborhood that mixes long-time owners with renters and turnover. Families with school-age kids are a clear but not dominant slice of the area, which tracks with a charter drawing students in by lottery from across the district.

The school sits beyond easy walking distance of the subway — Parsons Blvd on the F is the closest at about a nine-minute walk, with Sutphin Blvd (F) about 12 minutes away and Sutphin Blvd-Archer Av-JFK Airport (E, J, Z) roughly 18 minutes on foot, so most families likely arrive by car, school bus, or a longer walk plus a transfer.