M.S. 301 Paul L. Dunbar

ELA at 17.7% and math at 16.8% run roughly a third of the district averages of 46% and 48%, and the overall score of 0.69/4 sits well below the district's 1.88/4. The longer trend is the more hopeful read: from 2016 to 2023, ELA rose from 6.3% to a peak of 25.8% and math climbed from 5.7% to 13.5%, with a single anomalous 3.1% math year in 2022 that looks like a data blip. The last two years show ELA sliding back to 17.7% even as math continues to inch up to 16.8%, so momentum is mixed. The grade-level breakdown is telling — 8th-graders post 24.6% in ELA and 20.7% in math, while 6th-graders are at 10% and 19% — meaning students who stay through the school generally make real gains.

Trust runs unusually high here. Teachers give the principal a 99% trust rating — essentially unanimous — and 91% rate their own instruction quality above the district average of 88%. Parents give the principal 93% trust and teachers 91%, both well above district norms, suggesting a school where families feel heard even when academics are hard. The discipline picture is one of the cleanest in the area: zero suspensions in both 2022-23 and 2023-24, against a district suspension rate near 0.6%. The shadow over all of this is attendance — 56.1% of students are chronically absent, meaning they miss 10% or more of the school year. There's a real gender split, with 63.5% of boys chronically absent versus 48.9% of girls, a gap that pulls down the whole school's outcomes. Day-to-day, this is probably a calm, warm place — but the attendance problem is the obstacle.

The student body mirrors its neighborhood closely — about 62% Hispanic and 36% Black, with economic need pegged at 93.9% (among the highest in the city). A third of students have IEPs, and the school provides ELL support. At 167 students total, this is a community where most families and adults know each other by name, and the 74% family survey response rate reflects unusually high engagement from a small parent body. One telling detail: PTA fundraising last year was $582 total, roughly $3 per student against a district average of about $17 — a measure of how thin family resources are, not how much parents care.

Morrisania is a predominantly renter, working-class stretch of the South Bronx. Median household income sits at about $33,000 and the poverty rate is 34.7%, both well below city norms. Homeownership is rare at under 9%, and only about 12% of households have children at home — a reminder that this is a neighborhood where young families can be stretched thin or transient. Fewer than 15% of adults have a bachelor's degree, a reflection of generations of disinvestment. Even so, the neighborhood is well served by transit and within reach of the rest of the city.

The 2 and 5 trains do most of the work here. Prospect Avenue is about a 7-minute walk, Jackson Avenue about 9 minutes, and Intervale Avenue about 11 minutes — all on foot, no transfers required.