Gamblers, no need to head to the track. Just put your 13-year-old through admissions roulette at the city’s public and private schools.
As many as 10,000 city families will roll the dice this week and pay fees of $150 to $8,000 to register their kids and retain seats at parochial and private high schools before finding out if they’ve won coveted spots in the top public schools, which are free.
The agonizing 11th-hour drama comes after the city Department of Education pushed the notification deadline back more than two weeks, to March 15, following Hurricane Sandy. But religious and prep schools didn’t alter their calendars to match — demanding deposits and answers from parents this week or next.
“The money is nothing to sneeze at,” said Martina Seidman, who will pay about $1,000, a month’s tuition at St. Peter’s HS on Staten Island, although her son Brandon may still earn a seat at high-ranked Staten Island Tech. “These schools couldn’t wait a week?”
All 34 Catholic high schools in Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx will register new students Wednesday, charging fees of $150 to $1,000. Many of the 20 Catholic high schools in Queens and Brooklyn share the registration date and require similar payments. The registration money comes on top of acceptance fees that were due to the schools in February.
The church blames the city.
“We select our registration dates so that they fall after the DOE notification date,” said Joseph Gerics of the Archdiocese of New York. “But they changed their calendar after our acceptance notices went out. This is a problem of the public schools’ making.”
The Independent Schools Admissions Association of Greater New York also retained its March 13 decision date for private high schools.