At a Glance
A Harlem PK-8 with a striking academic turnaround and unusually strong family trust, though grade-by-grade results remain uneven.
Best suited for
Families who live in or near Central Harlem, want a PK-8 option that lets kids stay in one building through middle school, and value a tight-knit school community over top-tier ELA test scores.
Overall Rating
Rating = average of NY State ELA + math proficiency, grades 3–8
Bands are Motley's thresholds on a 0–100 scale, not New York State performance levels.
How this is scored→What stands out
- Math results now edge out the district average, an unusual reversal for a school that posted 6% math proficiency less than a decade ago.
- Parent satisfaction (95%) and parent-teacher trust (96%) run well above district averages, suggesting a genuinely tight school community.
- A 90/100 program richness score reflects a sprawling extracurricular menu — Chess, Comic Book Club, Yearbook, Coding, Dance, Saturday Academy, and Spanish among them.
- Suspensions have dropped sharply each year (8 → 4 → 2), an encouraging discipline trajectory.
- ELL Support is built into the program for a student body where English Language Learners make up roughly a quarter of enrollment.
Things to consider
- Chronic absenteeism at 47.9% means nearly half the students miss enough school to be flagged — ask how the school is addressing this and whether your family has flexibility to keep attendance consistent.
- ELA proficiency is still about 20 percentage points behind the district, and Grade 6 results in particular (9.5% ELA) are worth asking about if your child is approaching middle school.
- Teacher-reported safety at 85% is below the district's 94% — worth probing during a school visit.
- The overall school quality score (1.86/4) sits below the district average, which captures the inconsistency beneath the upward trend.
- Admissions are unscreened, which is reassuring for access but also means no selection bar shapes the incoming class.
Based on 2024-25 data
School SummaryDistrict 3
District 3 is home to some of the city's most selective schools — Special Music, Anderson, P.S. 166 — so P.S. 149 sits in a district with very high-ceiling peers, and its overall quality score (1.86/4) trails the district average. But within the universe of unscreened, neighborhood-serving schools, its math story is genuinely distinctive.
Academics
Math is the headline here: at 54.4%, P.S. 149 slightly outperforms the district average of 54.0%, a remarkable swing from 6.1% in 2016. ELA proficiency (38.6%) still trails the district average of 59.3% by a wide margin, though it's more than tripled since 2016. The grade-level breakdown shows real volatility — Grades 3, 4, 7, and 8 posted strong math results (61-73%), while Grade 6 lagged badly at 13%. Science proficiency (26.7%) is a softer spot worth noting.
Culture
Families clearly love this school — 95% parent satisfaction (well above the district 88%) and 96% parent-teacher trust suggest strong, working relationships. Teacher-reported safety (85%) sits below the district's 94%, which is something to ask about on a tour, but discipline is moving in the right direction: suspensions dropped from 8 in 2021-22 to just 2 in 2023-24. Attendance is a quieter concern — at 87.1%, it lags the district's 90.4%, and nearly half of students are chronically absent, which is the kind of thing that drags down everything else.
Community
P.S. 149's student body is 55% Black and 36% Hispanic, mirroring the South Harlem neighborhood around it, with smaller shares of Asian and White students. The economic need index of 90.4% means most students come from households facing real financial pressure, and 25% of students have IEPs. A quarter of students are also English Language Learners, supported by the school's ELL program. It is, in short, a school serving the neighborhood it's located in — not a destination school drawing families across boroughs.
Neighborhood
South Harlem is a densely populated, renter-majority neighborhood where most adults don't own their homes and median household income sits around $69,000. About half of neighborhood adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and roughly one in five households lives below the poverty line — a neighborhood of working- and middle-class families alongside real economic strain. With only about 12% of households containing children, families with school-age kids are a notable presence on the blocks around the school.
The 116 St station on the 2 and 3 lines is about a 2-minute walk, with the 110 St-Malcolm X Plaza and 125 St stops on the same lines within 8 minutes on foot — extremely easy subway access.
Academic Performance
ELA Proficiency
Students scoring proficient or above on the NY State ELA exam.
NYC DOE InfoHub · 2022-23
Math Proficiency
Students scoring proficient or above on the NY State Math exam.
NYC DOE InfoHub · 2022-23
Science Proficiency
Students scoring proficient or above on the NY State Science exam.
NYC DOE InfoHub · 2022-23
Historical Trends
The dashed line marks 2023, when New York changed its grades 3–8 state tests. Scores before and after it aren’t directly comparable.
2020–2021 data unavailable due to COVID-19
Source: NYC DOE School Quality Reports
Survey Results
NYC School Survey (2025) · 113 families responded (47% rate)
Programs & Activities
Racial & Ethnic Diversity
NYC DOE InfoHub · 2022-23
Discipline
NYSED Student & Educator Database (2023-24)
Economic Need & Special Populations
How to get in, step by step
Pre-K
P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth also has Pre-K classes. They're a separate application from kindergarten, made on MySchools.
Pre-K application
Applications typically open in the winter and close in the spring, with offers in late spring; the city announces exact dates each year.
Kindergarten
P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth has an attendance zone. At elementary level, in-zone students get a guaranteed seat. Every family still applies on MySchools: the application confirms the zoned seat, and ranking other schools doesn't cost you it.
Kindergarten application
- Opens
- Wed, Dec 9
- Closes
- Fri, Jan 22
- Offers
- Tue, Mar 30
The DOE’s published dates.
- 1Check that your address is inside the zone — zones change, so confirm it before you sign a lease.
- 2Apply during the kindergarten application, even with a zoned seat.
- 3Rank this school along with any others you'd take, in true preference order.
Middle school (6th grade)
Middle school is one citywide application, made in 5th grade. P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth admits through one program, and each one has its own admissions method:
- Sojourner Truth School (M149)Unscreened47 seats
Middle school application
- Opened
- Wed, Oct 14
- Closes
- Fri, Dec 11
- Offers
- Wed, Apr 7
The DOE’s published dates.
- 1Apply on MySchools during the middle school application, in 5th grade.
- 2Unscreened programs fill by random lottery among the families who rank them.
- 3Rank programs in true preference order — the match places your child in the highest-ranked one that offers a seat.
Open houses and tours
We haven’t seen open-house dates for this school yet.
From the MySchools admissions calendar, checked weekly.
Make this school part of your plan
Everything on this page is yours to read. An account keeps your research in one place.
No credit card required
Compare head-to-head
Explore nearby
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth a good school?
- On Motley, P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth earns an overall rating of 47/100 — the average of the school's New York State ELA and math proficiency, grades 3–8, shown out of 100. Its state test results run below the District 3 average.
- What grades does P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth serve?
- P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth serves grades Pre-K to 8.
- How do students get into P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth?
- P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth admits by application through a random lottery, with no academic screen.
- Is P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth public, charter, or private?
- P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth is a public school in NYC Community School District 3.
- What neighborhood is P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth in?
- P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth is in Harlem (South), Manhattan.