253 E 240th St
Bronx, NY 10470

With my youngest child graduating from PS 19 this year, I’m taking this opportunity to summarize our overall extremely positive experience with this wonderful school.First, some background: we moved to this neighborhood in the early 2010s after living on the UES for more than a decade. The school’s great reputation (then and now) drew us in. We are college+ educated professionals with a mixed race/nationality household (American, English, Spanish, Moroccan, and Polish) and are non-religious.We sent both kids to PS 19 for both elementary and middle school. Both kids received an excellent, excellent, excellent education. Neither teacher nor staff turnover (which happens; nothing significant at this school) meaningfully affected the school’s ability to teach, challenge, and develop our kids. Even the recent departure of 2 beloved, longtime instructors (Hi Mr. F and Dr. W!!!) was managed very well and with minimal (if any) impact to the students’ education. This kind of change management is uncommonly done well; this school handled it fantastically.Our older child scored a “4” for Regents Algebra & History and was admitted to Beacon High School as well as Fordham Prep and Xavier High School (Honors programs both, with ~33% merit scholarships to boot); he attended Fordham Prep is now at university in Madrid.Our younger child is on pace to receive Regents credit for Algebra, History, and Biology and was admitted to Beacon, Fordham Honors (33% merit scholarship), Xavier Honors (75% merit scholarship), and SHAS Lehman College (where he’ll be attending). Worth noting: ~10% of this year’s 8th grade class “passed” the SHSAT (1 HSMSE; 3 Bronx Science; 4 SHAS) … This is exceptional by any metric.Both our kids have made lifelong friends at PS 19; both kids were unequivocably well-prepared for rigorous academic studies in high school; both kids would absolutely follow the same path if we were to do it again.

The fish rots from the head down. The administration is awful and therefore it trickles down to the students. There is no founding leadership and value from staff for the students to patternize. Horrible learning environment and one that needs to be evaluated for drastic change by the dept of education.