Families of fifth graders will be able to apply to any middle school in the city, as part of a series of shifts in admission policies Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks announced on Friday.
Previously, most fifth graders could only apply to middle schools in the zones or districts where they live, although some middle schools were already open to students citywide. Now, students can apply to middle schools in all five boroughs, but most will still prioritize applicants who live in-district or whose siblings attend the school.
Admissions experts said the policy change won’t dramatically change families’ chances of snagging spots at the most popular schools.
“Parents are going to assume ‘I have an opportunity at a hot school,’ but they probably don’t have much more of an opportunity [than] previously because [most of] those schools will still fill with people from the district,” schools consultant Joyce Szuflita said.
However, she said the change may encourage more families to explore nearby schools that are just over the district line.
“I think it’s going to benefit some worthy schools where the population in their districts may be lower and they don’t fill,” she said. “You can put it on your application and if that school doesn’t fill, you have a shot.”
The mayor and the chancellor also announced middle and high school applicants can now list more than 12 choices. A new feature on the city’s MySchools portal will tell eighth graders if they have a “low,” “medium” or “high” chance of getting into a certain high school — based on geography, grades and the school’s admissions method, such as whether the admission is open or screened. Officials said the new feature was designed in partnership with a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Our administration continues to expand access and increase equity across our public school system, and today’s announcement on admissions changes for middle and high schools does just that,” Adams said in a statement.
Banks said in the statement that the changes aimed to make the admissions process “easier” and were made based on direct feedback from families.
Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, which advocates for more integrated schools, praised the move to open middle school admissions.
“I think it’s great that they’re opening up access for folks on a more broad level,” she said. But she called the unlimited choices of high schools “unnecessary,” given that less than 40% of students fill out all 12 available choices now.
Szuflita said unlimited choices are counterproductive because it’s too hard to thoroughly research more than a dozen schools.
“This is already an impossible task and now you’re telling people to willy-nilly put down schools that they can’t possibly vet,” she said.
The mayor and chancellor made the announcement amid unprecedented turbulence in the administration. Just hours earlier, Adams appeared in federal court and pled not guilty on charges that he traded political favors for illegal campaign contributions.
On Tuesday, Banks announced plans to retire at the end of the year, weeks after his phones were seized in an apparently separate federal investigation.
Deputy Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos is set to take the reins of the nation’s largest school system in January.
Adams and Banks have insisted they can focus on the day-to-day governance of the city despite the investigations and indictment.
High school applications open Oct. 1 and close Dec. 4. Middle school applications open Oct. 9 and close Dec. 13. Offers are to be announced April 9, 2025.