Your Address, as Get-Into-School Card - NYTimes.com

Your Address, as Get-Into-School Card - NYTimes.com:

Your Address, as Get-Into-School Card

by By MICHELLE HIGGINS

Kelly Bare and her husband, Jonathan Cohen, live on the border of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with Lizzie, 2, and Drew, 5. They are delighted with Public School 705.

Moving to a particular neighborhood in order to land a seat at a coveted public school has long been the middle-class modus operandi for obtaining a high-quality education in New York, where placement in many elementary schools is determined by home address.

But navigating school zones has become much trickier in the past few years as more families with young children put down roots in the city. Even living two blocks from a well-regarded public school no longer means your child will get in, and with many neighborhoods becoming increasingly expensive, it isn’t always possible to squeeze into a smaller apartment.

In November the attendance boundaries for Public Schools 321 and 107 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, were redrawn to relieve overcrowding, which was bad luck for families who had bought their homes specifically because of those schools and suddenly found themselves zoned for another.

Even without rezoning, families living in districts with overcrowded schools may find their best-laid plans upended. Last month, more than 2,300 children, or roughly 3 percent of applicants, were put on waiting lists for kindergarten seats at 105 schools, according to the