Neighborhood School

Neighborhood School's academic story is one of improvement that hasn't caught the district yet. ELA proficiency rose from 28.6% in 2016 to 44.1% in 2018 — a meaningful jump, but still well below the District 1 average of about 52%. Math proficiency was last reported at 29.4% in 2016, also trailing the district average of roughly 47%. The trend is clearly up on the ELA side, though the gap to peers like East Village Community School and Shuang Wen (which scores 87/100 in our peer set) is still real.

The day-to-day feel, judging by family and teacher survey responses, is unusually trusting and calm. Parent satisfaction sits at 87% (right at the district average of 88%), parent-teacher trust is 95%, and parent-principal trust is 91% — meaning families feel genuinely heard by both teachers and leadership. Teacher-reported safety is 100%, and the school has logged zero suspensions for three consecutive years (2021-22 through 2023-24), which is exceptional. The catch is attendance: while the 90.4% attendance rate edges out the district average of 88.9%, a striking 63.9% of students are chronically absent — meaning a relatively small core of students is showing up consistently while many others miss enough school to count as chronically absent. That's a real number worth weighing. Also worth noting: only 7 teachers responded to the staff survey, so the teacher-side percentages should be read as directional rather than definitive.

This is a genuinely mixed student body in a famously mixed neighborhood. The enrollment breaks down roughly 39% White, 36% Hispanic, 10% multiracial, 9% Black, and 7% Asian, with a diversity index of 77%. About 24% of students have IEPs, and the economic need index is 47.8 — meaning roughly half of students qualify for economic assistance, which tracks with the East Village's mix of longtime working-class residents and higher-income newcomers. The PTA's fundraising ($401 per student, well above the district average of $272) speaks to organized, resourced family involvement.

The East Village is one of Manhattan's more economically polarized zip codes: median household income is around $87,728 and 59.5% of adults have a bachelor's degree or higher, yet 24.7% of residents live below the poverty line. Critically for a school, only 6.6% of neighborhood households include children — one of the lowest family-density rates in the city. That means the school's actual student body is drawn from a much wider area than the immediate blocks, even though the school carries the "neighborhood" name.

Families reach the school primarily via the F train at 2 Av (about a 5-minute walk) and the F, M, J, or Z lines at Delancey St-Essex St (about a 9-minute walk).