P.S. 958

No state test scores are reported for P.S. 958, which is typical — state ELA and Math assessments don't formally begin until 3rd grade, and this school serves pre-K through 3rd. With only a handful of 3rd graders in any given year, the school is too small to generate the kind of proficiency data that gets published for older grades. That means academic quality here has to be read through other signals — and the teacher survey is genuinely strong: 98% of teachers rate their own instruction quality positively, well above the district average of 89%. Parents clearly see learning happening too, given the near-universal satisfaction scores.

This is a school where the adults clearly like working with each other and where families feel genuinely heard. Parent-teacher trust sits at 99%, parent-principal trust at 98%, and every single parent respondent agreed there are strong relationships — a remarkable sweep. Teachers give their own instruction quality a 98% thumbs-up and report 95% collegial trust with one another, suggesting a staff that feels supported rather than siloed. Teacher-reported safety is 94%, a touch below the district average of 97%, which is worth noting but not alarming — and there were zero the prior year too. Discipline is essentially a non-issue: zero suspensions in both 2022-23 and 2023-24, far below the district rate.

The school's community is a reflection of the Sunset Park families it draws from — a mixed-income, mixed-background neighborhood where renters make up about three-quarters of households and roughly one in five homes includes children. The PTA raised nearly $38,000 last year, which is meaningful for a small school, though it works out to less per student than the district average of about $491. With only 20 teachers responding to the climate survey, this is a genuinely small campus where most families and staff know each other by name.

Sunset Park sits on the Brooklyn waterfront, and this stretch of it — west of the Gowanus — is a densely residential mix of pre-war apartment buildings, modest single-family homes, and the kind of small businesses that anchor a real neighborhood. Median household income is around $81,000, with about 17% of residents below the poverty line and a little over a third holding a bachelor's degree. Homeownership is low (about 25%) and home values are high (over $1 million), which tells you this is a renter-heavy community where families have weathered rising costs. Just under 20% of households include children, so there are plenty of school-age neighbors.

The 36 St station on the D, N, and R lines is about a three-minute walk — about as convenient as Brooklyn subway access gets. The 25 St and 45 St stops on the R line are each around an eleven-minute walk for families coming from the edges of the catchment area.