licfamily

Elementary schools in Long Island City

The 6 NYC public and charter elementary schools in LIC proper (zip 11101 and 11109) — where they are, how full they are, and which enrollment process actually applies to each one. Private and special-education schools are in the questions below and can be switched on in the map.

2 P.S. 111 Jacob Blackwell -12 VOICE Charter School (Annex) P.S. 112 Dutch Kills -53 P.S. 439Q Academy of Cultural Excellence Kids-Centric Growing Up Green Charter School P.S. 508Q (Court Square) The Riverview School Gersh Academy P.S./I.S. 78Q -71 Birch Family Services Gantry View School P.S. 341Q (Hunters Point South) P.S. 384 Hunters Point Elementary School -48

DOE public Charter Shared building Opening this year Private Square = special education Under construction School zone –71 = seats short, District Planning, Feb 2026 Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors

6
Schools
4 + 2
DOE + charter
−184
Seats short
across 4 schools · District Planning, 2026-05-11 · how this is measured

How full each school is comes from the Office of District Planning's K–5 seat count, presented to Community Education Council 30 on May 11, 2026. It covers 4 of the 6 schools here; the rest, and the pre-K counts on each card, come from the SCA capacity report (2025-26).

DOE public schools

P.S. 111 Jacob Blackwell

Pre-K–8

37-15 13 STREET, 11101 · District 30 · 30Q111

12 seats short

Over capacity · 341 K–5 students for 329 K–5 seats · 36 pre-K seats

Office of District Planning, 2026-05-11

P.S. 112 Dutch Kills

K–5

25-05 37 AVENUE, 11101 · District 30 · 30Q112

53 seats short

Over capacity · 377 K–5 students for 324 K–5 seats · 90 pre-K seats

Office of District Planning, 2026-05-11

P.S. 384 Hunters Point Elementary School

K–5

1-35 57 AVENUE, 11101 · District 30 · 30Q384

48 seats short

Over capacity · 552 K–5 students for 504 K–5 seats · 18 pre-K seats

Office of District Planning, 2026-05-11

P.S./I.S. 78Q

Pre-K–5

48-09 CENTER BOULEVARD, 11109 · District 30 · 30Q078

71 seats short

Over capacity · 578 K–5 students for 507 K–5 seats · 36 pre-K seats

Office of District Planning, 2026-05-11

Charter schools

Charters are tuition-free and public, but they do not use MySchools and they have no zone — a separate application and lottery, described below.

Growing Up Green Charter School

K–5

39-27 28 STREET, 11101 · 84Q321

Capacity not reported — this school is not in a DOE building, so the Blue Book does not cover it.

VOICE Charter School (Annex)

K–8

37-15 13 STREET, 11101 · 84Q304

48 seats short

Over capacity · against 131 target seats

SCA capacity report, 2026-09-09 — District Planning did not report on this school

Is there a seat shortage?

Short answer: yes, and both of the city's measures now say so. District Planning puts the 4 LIC elementary schools it reported on 184 K–5 seats short (May 2026). The School Construction Authority's 2025-26 capacity report — the Blue Book, enrolment on October 31, 2025 — puts the 5 schools here that it covers 264 seats short.

District Planning counts K–5 seats only: K–5 enrolment on the 2025-26 audited register against K–5 capacity from the 2024-25 Blue Book. The Blue Book counts every seat in each school — pre-K too, and at P.S. 111 and P.S./I.S. 78 the middle-school grades. The two also use different editions of capacity: the 2025-26 Blue Book credits P.S. 384’s building with 575 seats against 523 in the 2024-25 edition District Planning used, which is why the Blue Book shows that one school with room.

The shortage is local. Across the whole Long Island City / Ravenswood sub-district, K–5 enrolment and capacity are about even (3,247 students, 3,242 seats). The deficit sits in the Hunters Point and Court Square schools above. The nearest spare seats are at P.S. 76 William Hallet in Astoria, 217 of them, outside these ZIPs. Elementary seats are zoned, so room at one school does not help a family zoned to another.

What the city is doing about it now. On September 29, 2026, District Planning presented a draft map that splits the P.S./I.S. 78 zone three ways, giving P.S./I.S. 78, P.S. 384 and the new P.S. 439Q (Academy of Cultural Excellence) a zone each. It would apply to children entering 3-K, pre-K and kindergarten in September 2027; current students would not be displaced. CEC 30 is aiming to vote before Thanksgiving, ahead of kindergarten applications opening in December. Even with the new zones, District Planning projects all three schools over capacity in 2031-32: P.S./I.S. 78 at 121–122%, P.S. 439Q at 112–114% and P.S. 384 at 101–102%. Hunters Point Ledger, 30 September 2026

If you have read that LIC has spare seats: that came from the previous Blue Book on open data, the 2021-22 edition published in January 2023. It was measured in the pandemic enrolment dip, while P.S. 384 was still phasing in grades, and showed 678 seats spare — 410 of them at P.S. 384 alone. P.S. 384 now has 567 students for 575 seats.

K–5 seat counts: NYC Public Schools, Office of District Planning — CEC 30 presentation, 11 May 2026 (K–5 enrollment from the 2025-26 audited register against K–5 capacity from the 2024-25 Blue Book). Whole-school figures: SCA Enrollment, Capacity & Utilization Report, 2025-26, on open data since September 9, 2026. Sub-district totals: NYC Public Schools, Office of District Planning — District 30 Data Summary, Spring 2026.

What's changing

7 things that alter which seats exist and where. Dates are targets, not commitments — school construction slips. Each links to the record it came from.

Will the new schools fix it?

On the published numbers, comfortably — and then the city's own behaviour argues otherwise. Both halves are below.

-184
Seats short now
K–5, across 4 LIC schools, May 2026
+902
General-ed seats coming
2 buildings, 2027 & 2028 · plus 192 District 75
4.9×
Cover for the gap
if demand held still — it is not projected to
-12.4%
Projected K–5, district
2024-25 to 2034-35, trough -16.1% in 2030-31

District 30's K–5 enrollment is projected to fall 12.4% by 2034-35, and the SCA states that projection already accounts for projected housing growth — so the decline is net of new construction. SCA — Demographic Enrollment Projection (Section 1, FY2025-2029 Capital Plan)

Why that is not the whole answer

The deficit is local; the projection is district-wide

District 30 runs from Hunters Point to Jackson Heights. A district-wide decline can sit alongside an acute LIC shortage, and the SCA’s own seat-need table places all of District 30’s identified need in the Long Island City / Ravenswood sub-district. A spare seat in Astoria does not serve a Hunters Point family.

Not all of those seats are new capacity for new children

P.S. 384 has been approved to become a K–8, with its pre-K–3 grades moving into Parcel C in 2027-28, so part of that building absorbs existing P.S. 384 students and new middle-school grades rather than adding elementary places. District Planning also said it expected to reduce kindergarten seats at P.S. 384 for 2026-27 for want of space. How much of the new capacity is genuinely additional is not published.

The city does not behave as though two buildings are enough

This is the strongest counter-argument and it is not a number. If the two buildings closed the gap, the OneLIC plan would not have committed at least 1,300 further seats, and the School Construction Authority would not have spent 2026 acquiring three more sites. The people who own the projection model are still buying land.

The relief and the housing do not arrive together

The two buildings open in September 2027 and September 2028. OneLIC’s homes arrive over a decade and more, and its three replacement sites are still pending City Council approval before design and construction even begin. A period where the shortage eases and then housing catches up is entirely consistent with all of this.

The one nearby surplus, P.S. 76 William Hallet at +217 seats, is in Astoria and outside both scope ZIPs — it is counted in none of the figures above. What is not known: The projection was published in November 2025, the same month the OneLIC rezoning passed, and nothing published says whether it accounts for it. The seat balances measure enrolment on 31 October 2025; this school year’s register has not been published.

Enrollment projection: SCA — Demographic Enrollment Projection (Section 1, FY2025-2029 Capital Plan). Seat balances: NYC Public Schools, Office of District Planning — CEC 30 presentation, 11 May 2026. Building seat splits: District Planning, 9 February 2026.

Following this closely? The Office of District Planning presents to Community Education Council 30 at its monthly meetings, and NYC Public Schools posts the slide decks — the May 2026 deck is the source of the K–5 figures here. The council can be reached at cec30@schools.nyc.gov, and District Planning's Queens team takes rezoning feedback at queenszoning@schools.nyc.gov. The rezoning that funded the new seats is the OneLIC Neighborhood Plan, approved 2025-11-12.

Key dates

Every NYC resident who turns five in a calendar year is guaranteed a kindergarten seat that September. For fall 2027, that means children born in 2022.

Charter deadlines are set by each school and cannot fall before April 1 — contact the school for its actual date. DOE dates are subject to change; verified against schools.nyc.gov on 2026-08-16.

Questions parents ask

How do I apply to a DOE public school?

Apply through MySchools. Every five-year-old NYC resident is guaranteed a kindergarten seat, and most addresses have a zoned school that gives priority to children living in its zone.

Priority order

  1. Students who live in the zone and have a sibling at the school
  2. Other students who live in the zone

If space allows, students living outside the zone may also be admitted:

  1. Students with a sibling at the school who live in the district
  2. Students with a sibling at the school who live outside the district
  3. Students who live in the district and are currently enrolled at the school for pre-K
  4. Students who live outside the district and are currently enrolled at the school for pre-K
  5. Other students who live in the district
  6. Other students who live outside the district

Source: NYC DOE — Kindergarten · verified 2026-08-16

How do I apply to a charter school?

Apply directly to the school, not through MySchools. Charters must admit students of all kinds, and if applications exceed seats they run a random lottery. Many use the NYC Charter School Center’s Common Application.

Priority order

  1. Returning students
  2. Siblings of enrolled students
  3. Students living in the same community school district

Source: NYC DOE — Charter enrollment · verified 2026-08-16

What is pre-K?

A year of school before kindergarten. In New York City children begin pre-K in the calendar year they turn four, and the city guarantees a pre-K seat for every four-year-old. It is play-based and full-day. Three-year-olds have a separate programme, 3-K, on its own timeline.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Pre-K · verified 2026-08-16

Is pre-K free?

Yes. A School Day seat is free, runs 6 hours 20 minutes a day from roughly September to June, is open to every NYC child, and is offered in all three pre-K settings. Two longer seat types also exist: Extended Day and Year seats are free or low cost and run 8–10 hours a day year-round with eligibility based on family income and needs, and City Transitional seats are free with 8–10 hours year-round. Both of those are offered by NYC Early Education Centers, and an Extended Day and Year offer has to be confirmed with a Child Care application on MyCity.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Pre-K seat types · verified 2026-08-16

My child’s daycare has pre-K. Is that the same thing?

It may well be exactly the same thing. One of the three official pre-K settings is the NYC Early Education Center, and NYCEECs can be private schools, daycares or other community organisations that partner with NYC Public Schools. They teach the same curriculum and offer the same free School Day seat, applied for through the same MySchools application. The distinction to check with your daycare is whether its pre-K is a DOE-funded seat — in which case it appears in MySchools and is free — or a private tuition programme, which is not. Worth asking separately: NYCEECs commonly charge a fee for early drop-off or late pickup even when the pre-K seat itself is free.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Pre-K settings · verified 2026-08-16

Which schools here have pre-K?

P.S. 111 Jacob Blackwell, P.S. 112 Dutch Kills, P.S. 384 Hunters Point Elementary School, P.S./I.S. 78Q have pre-K. Growing Up Green Charter School, VOICE Charter School (Annex) do not. Two sources disagree for P.S. 112 Dutch Kills, P.S. 384 Hunters Point Elementary School: the 2019-20 grade table does not list a pre-K grade, but the newer capacity report (as of 2026-09-09) counts 90 pre-K seats at P.S. 112 Dutch Kills and 18 pre-K seats at P.S. 384 Hunters Point Elementary School. The seat count is the newer and more specific figure, so it is taken as the answer here. Pre-K is also offered at NYC Early Education Centers and standalone Pre-K Centers, which are not elementary schools and so are not listed here. Both sources are old enough that a school can have added or dropped pre-K since, so confirm in MySchools.

Source: DOE School Locations (grade ranges) and SCA Enrollment Capacity & Utilization (pre-K seats)

Does a pre-K place at a school guarantee a kindergarten place there?

No — and whether it helps at all depends on where you live. A child in pre-K at a DOE public elementary school still has to apply to kindergarten, and gets an admissions priority at that school for having done so. But that priority is the fifth of eight tiers, and tiers three onward are only reached "if space allows" for students living outside the zone. So if the school is already your zoned school you are in tier two regardless, above every pre-K attendee, and the pre-K priority adds nothing. If it is not your zoned school, pre-K there moves you from tier seven to tier five — real, but still behind out-of-zone siblings, and worth nothing at a school that never admits beyond tier two.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Kindergarten priorities · verified 2026-08-16

What happens if my child does not get into our zoned school?

Your child still gets a kindergarten seat: every NYC child is guaranteed one at a public school, though not necessarily the zoned one. The offer goes to the highest school on your application that has room, so list several schools in your true order of preference. Your child is then automatically on the waitlist for every school you ranked above the one offered, and you can add them to other waitlists too. Schools fill waitlist seats as they open up after spring offers and contact you directly. Once a child starts kindergarten they can stay at that school through its last elementary grade. In LIC specifically, P.S./I.S. 78’s building has never held every child in its zone, and P.S. 384 has taken the overflow — as of 27 May 2025 only 5 children zoned to P.S./I.S. 78 had no offer to either school. That margin is shrinking: District Planning expected to cut kindergarten seats at P.S. 384 for 2026-27, and P.S. 439Q opened in 2026 as a third option. Before applying, check each school’s “My Chances” section in MySchools, which shows whether zoned applicants received offers the previous year.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Kindergarten offers and waitlists and District Planning — CEC 30 presentation, May 2026 · verified 2026-10-08

Should I do pre-K at a school or at my daycare?

For admissions, the one real difference is that the kindergarten pre-K priority is written for pre-K "at a DOE public elementary school". A NYCEEC seat at a daycare is the same free DOE-funded seat with the same curriculum and the same application, but it does not carry that priority. Whether that matters depends on the school: if it is your zoned school the priority is redundant, because living in the zone already outranks it. If it is a school you want but are not zoned for, the priority is worth having — though a non-zoned pre-K seat is harder to get in the first place, since you would have district priority rather than zoned priority. The counterweight is hours: only NYCEECs offer Extended Day and Year seats, 8–10 hours year-round, against a school's 6 hours 20 minutes from September to June. In practice the trade is kindergarten priority against childcare hours.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Kindergarten priorities and NYC Public Schools — Pre-K settings and seat types · verified 2026-08-16

Does 3-K at a daycare hurt my chances of pre-K at a school?

No. The priorities that get a child into a school's pre-K are Zoned Priority and District Priority, and both are set by your home address, not by where the child did 3-K. Taking a 3-K seat at a daycare and then applying to pre-K at your zoned school costs you nothing on that application. What you give up is Current Student Priority, which would have kept the child at that same daycare for pre-K — not useful if you are leaving anyway. Note that 3-K, pre-K and kindergarten are three separate applications on three separate timelines; none of them rolls over, and a pre-K student still has to apply to kindergarten.

Source: NYC Public Schools — Pre-K admissions priorities · verified 2026-08-16

Is there after-school care, and what does it cost?

COMPASS NYC is free. Kindergarten through 5th grade (the COMPASS Elementary model). 3 hours a day, 5 days a week during the school year, including 13 school holidays, with summer programming as well. Run in schools, community centers, religious institutions, public housing and recreation facilities — not only in school buildings.

Which of these schools has it, and at what cost, is not something this page can tell you. DYCD Program Sites confirms COMPASS Elementary programs (grades K–5) are funded in ZIP 11101. It does not say which building each one runs in — the dataset carries provider, program type and ZIP, but no site address or school name. To find out:

Many schools also have fee-based after-school run by a PTA, a YMCA or a private provider, and NYCEEC pre-K sites often charge for early drop-off or late pickup. Those prices are set per program and are not published in any central dataset — the school or provider is the only reliable source.

Source: NYC DYCD — COMPASS · verified 2026-08-16

What other schools are in the area — private and special education?

4 non-public schools are registered in these ZIPs, plus one District 75 site. No capacity, enrolment or admissions data is published for any of them, so none carries the seat figures shown above — a number here would invite a comparison the data cannot support.

Private, general education

Gantry View School · K–5 · 5-36 50 AVENUE, 11101
An independent private elementary school, formerly the Queens Paideia School. Tuition is not published; admission is by enquiry and visit.

Special education

Reached through an IEP rather than an ordinary application, so these are not alternatives to the schools above in the way a private school is.

The Riverview School (277Q @ 78) · DOE-run, District 75 · 46-08 5 Street, 11101 — the P.S./I.S. 78Q annex
A District 75 citywide special-education school. It is based in Woodside and runs classroom programmes inside ten host buildings; this is its site in the P.S./I.S. 78Q annex. Placement is through an IEP, not an application.

Birch Family Services — Long Island City Early Childhood Center · private · 10-24 49 AVENUE, 11101
A non-profit serving children and adults with autism and developmental disabilities. NYSED records this as a satellite site for students with disabilities.

Gersh Academy — AYM · private · 11-20 46 ROAD, 11101
Part of the Gersh Autism Academy network, serving students on the autism spectrum. NYSED records the Long Island City site as a non-public elementary school.

Kids-Centric — Western Queens · private · 10-26 41 AVENUE, 11101
NYSED records this as a satellite site for students with disabilities. The operator publishes no working website, so nothing further is claimed here.

Source: NYC Facilities Database (NYSED registration type) · verified 2026-08-16

What this page does not cover

Capacity for private schools. They are listed in the questions above, but without seat figures: no open dataset publishes capacity or enrolment for a non-public school, so there is nothing to compare against the DOE rows.

Schools just outside the zip. P.S. 150 Queens and P.S. 76 William Hallet serve elementary grades a few blocks away, in 11104 and 11106. They are excluded by the LIC-proper scope, not by an editorial judgment that they do not matter.

Your zone. A zoned school is assigned by home address, and zone lines do not follow zip codes. Check yours at DOE Find a School or by calling 311.

Sources

Roster and locations: NYC Facilities Database (DCP, built from DOE LCGMS). Grade ranges: DOE School Locations, school year 2019-20 — the most recent grade breakdown DOE publishes as a table. Capacity: Enrollment Capacity & Utilization, 2025-26 edition (registers of October 31, 2025), published September 9, 2026. K–5 seat counts: NYC Public Schools, Office of District Planning — CEC 30 presentation, 11 May 2026. Enrollment process: NYC DOE Enrollment.