St Mary School

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 excellent teachers at this school make it a passable school. I think proper conduct is needed at the school. Some employees talk about kids and families. The staff members that stay to greet families are the ones who converse the most, especially near the back of the school. That's a sad situation with society and school staff. In one instance, I overheard a staff member discussing my child as gossiping. Parents are definitely capable of lip-reading. The school is abhorrent. It's unfortunate especially because if the parent is acting unprofessionally than it’s a parent being unfit. In the meantime, the school and its employees lack professionalism.

My two daughters have been in this school since 2019 when my eldest started pre-K. I have nothing but amazing things to say from the teachers to Mr. H. My girls are supported in their academics with my youngest receiving special education this year. I truly have no complaints whenever I have raised concerns with things like bullying they have been addressed immediately by Mr.H and their teachers. They have sports teams and lots of amazing events through out the year for the kids from BBQ’s to book fairs

In my opinion, this school has been a bad experience for me, first of all, they have changed the principals so many times, they have been overstaffed and understaffed, Favortism has been shown on many different accounts especially around the males and popular females in the school. This school is bad and it needs to do better, because if it keeps on staying understaffed, they should at least cut the tuition by $3,000.