Guides
How NYC elementary school (grades 1–5) works
Last reviewed Jun 26, 2026 · Official source, current cycle · Verify dates and rules with the official source before acting.
This guide is for families who need an elementary seat in grades 1–5, not at Kindergarten. Kindergarten is NYC's main elementary entry point, and it has its own annual ranked match (our Kindergarten guide covers that in full). Grades 1–5 work very differently. There is no single ranked citywide match for 1–5 entry. Instead, getting a mid-grade seat is almost always about one of three things: a transfer (you're already in NYC and want a different school), being new to NYC or moving across it, or Gifted & Talented. These are handled year-round and case by case, mid-stream, not on a fixed cycle. The exact criteria, documents, dates, and seat availability shift, so confirm the specifics for your child on the official source before acting.
Like every NYC grade, there are four genuinely separate worlds (Public (DOE), Charter, Independent / Private, and Parochial / Catholic), each with its own application and logic. They don't share a system, and applying to one never affects another, so you can pursue more than one at once. This page gives an overview, then a self-contained section for each, with how transfers (getting a mid-grade seat) work as the main story inside each one.
Your four options, in one line each
- Public (DOE), free, and the backstop: you have a right to your zoned school, so a move means you can just enroll; changing schools for cause is a transfer decided case-by-case on seat availability.
- Charter, free and lottery-based: there's no "transfer," you simply apply to the school's lottery/waitlist for the grade, and seats open as students leave.
- Independent / Private, high-cost and selective: mid-grade seats open mainly through attrition, so you apply directly and hope a seat is free.
- Parochial / Catholic, faith-based and far more affordable: rolling admissions, so you apply directly whenever a seat is open.
At a glance
| Public (DOE) | Charter | Independent / Private | Parochial / Catholic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | NYC Public Schools (the DOE) | Nonprofit boards; publicly funded | Private boards of trustees | Archdiocese of NY / Diocese of Brooklyn–Queens |
| Cost | Free | Free | Tuition (high at top schools) | Tuition (much lower) |
| Mid-grade seat via | Zoned right / for-cause transfer | The school's lottery + waitlist | Attrition: apply directly (Ravenna) | Rolling: apply directly (FACTS) |
| How they pick | Right to zoned seat; transfers by need + seats | Lottery only (no tests/essays/interviews) | Holistic: records + recs + interview | Application + interview; far less selective |
| Centralized? | Zoned enrollment is direct; transfers via OSE | No; each school runs its own lottery | No, but ISAAGNY coordinates dates | No |
| Key site | schools.nyc.gov | nyccharterschools.org | isaagny.org | catholicschoolsny.org |
A few things that are true across all four
- There's no annual ranked match for 1–5 entry. Unlike Kindergarten, getting a grades 1–5 seat is handled year-round and case by case: by transfer, by enrolling when you move in, or through a separate G&T window. Don't wait for a "cycle" that doesn't exist at this level.
- You can (and many families do) hedge across systems. They don't conflict: a charter lottery entry costs nothing, a private application doesn't affect your zoned rights, and so on. Run the ones that genuinely fit your child in parallel.
- Public is the guaranteed backstop. Every NYC child has a right to a public seat: your zoned school must take you when you live in the zone, or a Family Welcome Center will place you. That floor is what makes it safe to gamble on a charter lottery or a competitive private school.
- "Transfer" means something different in each world. In public it's a for-cause request (or just enrolling at a new zoned school after a move); in the tuition and charter worlds it's simply applying when a seat is open. The details live in each section, but the backstop above always applies.
The mid-stream timeline (grades 1–5)
| Timing | Public (DOE) | Charter | Independent | Catholic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Any time | Enroll at new zoned school after a move | Apply to lottery/waitlist anytime | Inquire about open seats | Apply when a seat is open |
| Mid-year | For-cause transfer (seat-dependent) | Waitlist may move as seats open | Attrition seats may open | Rolling admission as space allows |
| Fall | New-arrival enrollment; research | Common-app cycle for next year | Applications open (Ravenna) | Applications often open |
| Winter–spring | G&T grades 1–4 window (opens ~spring) | Main lottery cutoff (~spring) | Notifications / replies | Rolling offers |
The one cross-cutting caution: the simplest path for a non-urgent move is just enrolling at your new zoned public school (you don't need a transfer for that). Reach for a for-cause transfer or a tuition-school application only when the zoned seat isn't what you need.
Pick a school type below. Each section is self-contained, including how you get a mid-grade seat (transfers) in that world. A glossary and the official sources are at the bottom of the page.
Public (DOE): how to get a grades 1–5 seat
This is where most NYC kids are, and it's the backstop for everyone. For grades 1–5 there is no annual ranked match. You get a seat in one of two ways: by right (your zoned school, usually after a move) or by a for-cause transfer. Everything in this tab is specific to the public system.
You have a right to your zoned school
Your home address sets your zoned school and your community school district, and that geography is the most powerful input in NYC enrollment. If you live inside a school's zone, your child sits in the highest priority group for its seats, and for routine K–8 enrollment you can register at the zoned school directly when you move in.
zoned school
A school tied to your home address that gives priority — sometimes a near-guaranteed match — to children living in its geographic boundary.
- Look up your address first. It places you in one of NYC's 32 community school districts and, for most families, one elementary zone. The DOE's Find a School tool (or 311) tells you whether that address has a zoned school and which one.
- Register directly at the zoned school. Bring two proofs of your new address (typically dated within ~60 days: a lease, deed, or recent utility bill), proof of your child's age (birth certificate or passport), and immunization and prior school records. Treat that as the general shape, not a definitive checklist; confirm the current Registration Checklist on the official source.
- No zoned school, or no seat? Three districts, 1 (Lower East Side), 7 (South Bronx), and 23 (East New York), have no zoned elementary schools at all; they're "choice" districts where every resident has priority district-wide. Wherever there's no zoned seat, a Family Welcome Center (the DOE's five-borough enrollment offices) will place your child.
- Once enrolled, the seat is secure through that school's terminal grade, even if zone lines are later redrawn, and a student who moves within NYC may stay at their current school through its terminal grade rather than switch.
A note on residency: do it honestly. Because address drives priority, families sometimes ask about using a relative's address. Don't: the DOE verifies residency, and a misrepresented address can cost you the seat entirely.
New to NYC or moving mid-year
If you're new to the city or arriving partway through the year, you're not using a ranked match at all; you're using the enrollment channel, which runs year-round, based on available seats. Register directly at your new zoned school (above), or make an appointment at a Family Welcome Center if you have no zoned school or need help.
Families in temporary housing have stronger rights. A student in temporary housing has the right to enroll immediately (the same day) and cannot be turned away for lacking the usual documents or a permanent address, and has the right to transportation to school. Tell the school or Family Welcome Center about your housing situation so those protections apply.
Changing schools for cause: the transfer process
If your child is already enrolled and needs a different school for a reason, that runs through the current school and a Family Welcome Center, under Chancellor's Regulation A-101 (the umbrella rule for admissions, re-admissions, and transfers; safety transfers have their own regulation, A-449). The usual first step is to discuss the situation with your child's teacher, counselor, or principal; a Family Welcome Center then walks you through which ground fits and what documentation to bring. The Office of Student Enrollment, not the school, makes the final decision, weighing your child's documented need against seat availability elsewhere. Most requests are handled year-round and case by case.
The grounds NYC recognizes at the elementary (K–5) level, each needing documentation reflecting a real circumstance:
- Safety. For a student who is unsafe at their current school (bullying, harassment, a specific incident). The request must point to a specific incident; bring supporting records (occurrence report, police report, hospital or court papers, screenshots). Safety transfers fall under the safety provisions of the Chancellor's transfer rules (A-449).
- Medical or accessibility. When attending the assigned school is a hardship for a health or accessibility reason, whether for the student or for a parent whose own condition prevents getting to the school. You'll generally need a letter from your medical provider on their letterhead explaining the condition and why a transfer is recommended.
- Childcare hardship. An elementary-only (K–5) ground for when the school's distance from your job and/or childcare location creates a hardship. Request it at a Family Welcome Center with documentation from your employer and/or childcare provider.
- Sibling. Also elementary-only (K–5): if you want your child at the same school as a sibling who attends a different school, you can request a sibling transfer. The sibling generally must be enrolled (or pre-registered) in that school's K–5 for the relevant year; siblings include half-, step-, and foster siblings living in the same home.
- Guidance. For a student struggling academically or socially when the family believes a different school would help. Raise it with the school's counselor; the request is made through a Family Welcome Center.
One ground you may have heard of does not apply at elementary. Travel hardship (the long-commute reason) is a high-school-only ground. Don't plan a K–5 request around it.
Caveats that catch families off guard:
- Transfers are not guaranteed and are subject to seat availability: a valid reason doesn't conjure a seat.
- You don't pick the destination. You can name preferred schools; placement depends on where seats are open, and decisions are final.
- The simplest alternative is often a move. A move opens a new option (the new zoned school) you can enroll in directly, no for-cause transfer needed. It never forces you out of a school where your child is already enrolled.
Gifted & Talented in grades 1–4
G&T is optional and separate from your regular school choices, and it's the one date-driven public path at this level. For grades 1–4, eligibility is records-based: it rests on your child's report-card grades (top of the scale in core subjects, with no failing mark in any marking period), not a test. The old standardized admissions test that produced percentile cutoffs has been eliminated, so don't rely on old cutoff numbers. Families whose child attends a charter, private, parochial, or home-school program may need to submit grades to a Family Welcome Center for an eligibility determination first.
Eligibility is a gate, not a guarantee: there are far more eligible children than seats, so many eligible applicants are waitlisted and receive no offer. G&T comes in two kinds: District programs (a district-residency priority) and the five Citywide programs (no district preference, generally the most selective). G&T has sibling priority and may have district priority, but no zoned priority: there is no G&T "zone." Grades 1–4 use a separate application window from Kindergarten, which shifts cycle to cycle; confirm it on the official source. See our Gifted & Talented guide for the full process.
Charter: how to get a grades 1–5 seat
Charters are free public schools run by independent nonprofit boards rather than the DOE. They set their own curriculum and culture, but admissions is tightly regulated by state law, and there is no transfer mechanism in either direction. Getting a mid-grade seat is entirely about open seats and the lottery/waitlist.
The core rule: lottery, and nothing but
By law a charter cannot require a test, interview, essay, audition, or even attendance at an info session to apply. If a school gets more applicants than seats (which popular ones always do), it must hold a random lottery. Everyone who applies on time has an equal shot, subject to a few legal preferences (siblings, in-district residents, sometimes weighted lotteries for low-income families or English-learners).
How to apply
- No centralized system like MySchools: each charter runs its own enrollment.
- Many participate in the Common Online Charter School Application, letting you apply to multiple schools at once; some networks (e.g., Success Academy) use their own portals.
- Find schools and the common app at nyccharterschools.org.
Transfers (Charter): there is no transfer, only the waitlist
- Into a charter at grades 1–5: there's no "transfer" mechanism. You apply to that charter's lottery/waitlist for the grade like any new applicant. Applications are accepted rolling, but there's a hard cutoff for the main lottery (commonly in spring); apply after it and you go to the bottom of the waitlist, getting in only if a seat opens.
- Mid-year seats do open via the waitlist as current students leave, so it's worth getting on the waitlist even outside the main cycle.
- Charter → DOE public: you can enroll in your zoned DOE school at any time during the year; charter students don't need to meet any transfer criteria. No zoned school? A Family Welcome Center helps.
- Charter → charter: apply to the new school's lottery/waitlist; same rules.
Winning a seat isn't enrollment: you then register and prove residency with recent documents.
Independent / Private: how to get a grades 1–5 seat
This is the world of the city's selective K–12 schools: Trinity, Dalton, Horace Mann, Brearley, Chapin, Spence, and many more. It's expensive, holistic, genuinely competitive, and runs on its own calendar coordinated by ISAAGNY (the Independent Schools Admissions Association of Greater New York).
Mid-grade seats open mainly through attrition
Most K–12 independents fill the bulk of their seats at Kindergarten and again at Grade 9. A "transfer in" at grades 1–5 is simply applying for a non-entry grade, and whether you get in depends almost entirely on attrition: whether a current student has left and freed a seat.
- At the most selective schools (Brearley, Chapin, Spence), mid-grade openings are rare, so keep expectations modest and a backup ready.
- Less-selective independents have more flexibility and admit at more grades.
- So first identify which schools actually take new students at your child's grade.
How to apply
- Apply directly to the target school; most live on Ravenna (some on Finalsite); applications generally open the day after Labor Day.
- Submit the same materials as any applicant: application form + fee (often waived for financial-aid applicants), transcripts (current plus prior years), teacher recommendations, a student essay, a parent/guardian statement, and an interview + tour. Some grades require a standardized test (the ISEE via the ERB, or the SSAT).
- Financial aid (if needed) is a separate application, typically via Clarity, with an early deadline.
- ISAAGNY sets uniform notification and reply dates for the main cycles, though some marquee schools set their own; mid-year and non-entry openings are handled more individually as seats appear.
Transfers (Private)
- Moving between privates works the same way: apply and hope a seat is available.
- Falling back to public is always available: your zoned DOE school must take your child, and a Family Welcome Center can place students without a zoned school.
Build a list with realistic options: at mid-grade entry, a good public, charter, or Catholic seat is often the dependable one.
Parochial / Catholic: how to get a grades 1–5 seat
Parochial schools are private schools run by a religious body, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic parishes, organized under the Archdiocese of New York (Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, northern suburbs) and the Diocese of Brooklyn–Queens. They blend faith formation with academics and are typically the most affordable and most accessible private option, and the most flexible for a mid-grade arrival.
How admissions works
- Apply directly to each school; no centralized match. The Archdiocese uses the FACTS platform for applications (and tuition/financial-aid management). One application per school, per child.
- After applying, call the school to schedule an interview and submit requested documents (records, plus an IEP if applicable).
- Admission is largely rolling and far less selective than the independent world; at the elementary level there is no entrance exam.
- Financial aid is meaningful: e.g., the Inner-City Scholarship Fund supports families with demonstrated need, open to students of all faiths at many schools.
Transfers (Catholic)
A transfer is just applying when a seat is open, and Catholic schools tend to have more flexibility than selective independents, often admitting on a rolling basis mid-year when space exists.
- Apply directly through FACTS (or the school's process), interview, and enroll if there's room.
- Moving between Catholic schools works the same way.
- As always, public is the backstop: your zoned DOE school must take your child at any time.
What most parents miss
A couple of patterns trip up even careful families at this stage:
DOE, charter, and private are independent shots — run the ones that fit.
A second one specific to grades 1–5: don't wait for the next ranked cycle to get your child into school. There is no annual match to wait for at this level; the year-round enrollment door (your zoned school or a Family Welcome Center) is how you get a seat now. A move is what makes a different zoned school an option in the first place, but it never forces you out of a school where your child is already enrolled.
One forward-looking note for the upper elementary years: Hunter College High School (public and tuition-free, run by Hunter College / CUNY, entirely outside MySchools) admits new students at 7th grade only, and a child earns the right to sit its entrance exam with qualifying scores on the 5th-grade New York State ELA and Math tests (an approved alternative exists for children who didn't take those). Hunter's elementary school admits at Kindergarten only, so Hunter isn't a door at grades 1–5 itself, but the 5th-grade state tests are where its next door quietly opens. If Hunter might interest your family, see our Hunter College schools guide before your child's 5th-grade testing season.
Reading school data honestly
Numbers feel objective, so it's tempting to rank schools by whichever stat is biggest. But every school metric answers a specific question, and the question is often narrower than the headline suggests.
A school-wide applicant-to-offer ratio is not your personal odds. It averages over every kind of applicant at once. Your actual chance is shaped by your priority group (higher tiers, e.g. zoned or sibling priority, are considered first) and by the seat type that applies to your child (general-education and students-with-disabilities seats can have different ratios). Always read the ratio for the seat type that applies to your child.
Small-cohort noise. A tiny program or small cohort produces numbers that swing wildly year to year for reasons unrelated to teaching. Prefer multi-year patterns over a single year's figure.
Quality is not fit. Even after you've read every number correctly, the highest-scoring school can be the wrong choice. A school's outcomes describe its students in aggregate; fit describes the match between this school and your child, on commute, environment, and program. That's why we score fit to your child rather than rank schools by a single "best" number.
Glossary
- DOE / NYC Public Schools: the public system; runs zoned enrollment and the for-cause transfer process.
- MySchools: the public application portal (myschools.nyc), used for the Kindergarten match and G&T, not for routine 1–5 enrollment.
- Family Welcome Center: the DOE's five-borough enrollment offices handling registration, transfers, and placement.
- Office of Student Enrollment (OSE): the DOE office that makes the final decision on transfer requests.
- Community school district: one of 32 numbered districts that drive public-school priority.
- Zone: the geographic catchment that gives your address the highest priority at a specific school.
- Priority group: the tier (zone → district → boroughwide/citywide) served before lower tiers.
- Chancellor's Regulation A-101 / A-449: A-101 is the umbrella rule for DOE admissions, re-admissions, and transfers; A-449 covers safety transfers specifically.
- Gifted & Talented (G&T): the optional academic track; grades 1–4 entry is records-based, on a separate application window.
- Charter: a publicly funded, independently run, free school admitting by lottery, with no transfer mechanism.
- ISAAGNY: the association coordinating independent-school admissions dates.
- Ravenna: the main application platform for independent schools.
- ISEE / SSAT: the two private-school entrance exams (ISEE via the ERB).
- FACTS: the application/financial platform used by Archdiocese Catholic schools.
Verify with the official source
Official source
NYC Public Schools, transfers and enrollmentThe DOE's transfer and enrollment hub. Transfer grounds, eligibility, and timing change and are decided case-by-case, always confirm the specifics for your child with a Family Welcome Center or the official source before acting. For the other systems, confirm current details at nyccharterschools.org (charter), isaagny.org (independent), and catholicschoolsny.org (Catholic).