P.S. 398 Walter Weaver

The headline number — an overall score of 1.47 out of 4 — sits well below the district 17 average of 2.36, and proficiency rates trail the district by a wide margin: 31.5% in ELA versus the district's 60.5%, and 41.8% in math versus 57.3%. But the trajectory is genuinely encouraging. After bottoming out at 11.5% math proficiency in 2024, the school posted 41.8% in 2025 — a near-quadrupling in a single year — while ELA climbed from 19.4% to 31.5%. Grade 3 math leads the way at 69.4%, more than ten points above the schoolwide average, while Grade 5 math at 13.3% and ELA at 23.3% drag the overall picture down. The pattern suggests the youngest tested cohort is doing meaningfully better than the older students, and that improvement is working its way up the grades over time.

The family experience here looks notably warm. Parent satisfaction sits at 93% (above the district's 91%), parent-teacher trust at 98%, parent-principal trust at 98%, and every single family respondent reported strong relationships with teachers — a remarkable 100%. Teachers echo most of that, with 99% rating instruction quality positively and 93% reporting the school is safe (just shy of the district's 94.7%). The one crack in the picture is teacher-principal trust at 75%, a noticeable gap from the family-side numbers, and teacher collegial trust at 74%. Discipline is essentially a non-issue: just one suspension across the most recent three school years and a 0% suspension rate, well below the district's 0.55%. The big asterisk is attendance — the 90.1% rate is a hair below the district's 91%, but chronic absenteeism at 56.9% means more than half of students miss significant school, a serious barrier to the academic gains the school is otherwise making.

The student body is 78% Black, 16% Hispanic, 3% White, 2% Native American, and 1% Asian, with a diversity index of 40% — a fairly concentrated demographic profile that closely mirrors the surrounding East Flatbush-Remsen Village neighborhood, where the population skews Black and Caribbean-American. A quarter of students (25%) have IEPs, well above typical citywide rates, and the school serves self-contained special education classes alongside general education. The economic need index of 91.3 signals a community where most students arrive with significant economic disadvantage.

East Flatbush-Remsen Village is a solidly middle-to-working-class stretch of central Brooklyn. The median household income is about $57,600, the poverty rate is 18.9%, and roughly 22% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Just under a quarter of households own their homes, and the median home value sits around $691,000 — reflecting Brooklyn's rising prices even in less-affluent corners. Families with children make up 9% of households, and the schools here serve as anchors for a community with deep roots and an increasingly tense housing market.

Most families arrive on foot or by bus, but three subway stations on the 3 and 4 lines are within a reasonable walk: Sutter Av–Rutland Rd (3) about six minutes away, Crown Hts–Utica Av (3 and 4) about ten minutes, and Saratoga Av (3) about thirteen minutes.