P.S. 288 The Shirley Tanyhill

Test scores here are substantially below district averages: 26.7% ELA proficiency versus a district average of 60%, and 21.9% math proficiency versus 63.2% district-wide. The overall school score of 0.97 out of 4 is less than half the district average of 2.46. Looking at the trend, scores have bounced around for nearly a decade without sustained improvement — ELA hovered between 19% and 29% over the past nine years, and math swung from 22.4% in 2019 down to 10.4% in 2022 before recovering to 21.9% this year. There's real variation by grade: third graders hit 31.8% in ELA and 34% in math, while fifth and sixth graders struggle (fifth-grade math is just 12.5%, sixth-grade math 9.3%). Seventh and eighth graders bounce back — eighth-grade math is 34.8%, the strongest in the school. So there's clearly strong teaching happening in pockets, but it's not consistent across grade levels.

The day-to-day feel here is warm, even if attendance numbers tell a harder story. Parents give the school high marks: 93% parent satisfaction (above the district's 92.2%) and 93% parent-teacher trust suggest families feel connected. Teachers are especially positive — 100% rate instruction quality positively and 97% trust the principal, both well above district norms. Teacher-reported safety is 94%, slightly below the district's 96.8% but still strong. The honest concerns: attendance is 83.7% (versus 91.2% district-wide), and 35.5% of students are chronically absent — more than one in three kids missing significant school. Discipline is also trending the wrong way, with suspensions rising from 3 in 2021-22 to 10 in 2023-24, putting the suspension rate at 2%, four times the district norm of 0.5%. The low family survey response rate (11%) and small teacher survey pool (31 responses) mean some of these numbers come from limited samples.

The student body is predominantly Black (57%) and Hispanic (37%), with small Asian and White populations. The diversity index is 51%, meaning the school draws from multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds but isn't maximally mixed. A notable 27% of students have IEPs, well above typical rates, and the school has ELL support for English learners. This composition mirrors the surrounding Coney Island-Sea Gate neighborhood, where the median household income of $43,818 and 27.8% poverty rate reflect a working-class, predominantly immigrant and Black community that has faced economic headwinds.

Coney Island-Sea Gate is a working-class Brooklyn community where the median household income sits around $43,818 — notably below the city median — and nearly 28% of residents live below the poverty line. Just 10.3% of households have children, and the homeownership rate is low at 28.6%, though the median home value of $886,404 reflects the broader coastal real estate market. About 35.6% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. The area is racially and ethnically diverse and has long been a landing spot for immigrant families.

Getting to P.S. 288 typically means a subway ride plus a walk. The nearest station is Coney Island-Stillwell Av, served by the D, F, N, and Q lines, about 13 minutes on foot. The W 8 St-NY Aquarium station, on the F and Q, is about an 18-minute walk.