Wednesday, April 06, 2011

New apartment-search site digs for public school treasures in semi-affordable nabes

Two articles about a new web site launched by my friend Eric Grannis (Eva Moskowitz's husband):

A founding board member of two New York City charter schools has started his own website to help parents find good elementary schools in neighborhoods they can afford.

Called SchoolFisher, the site grades elementary schools according to its own criteria — mainly students' scores on the state's tests — and only includes the top 200. Of those, a group of 50 are highlighted in gold for posting the highest scores of all.

"Like Lake Wobegon's children, all of the schools on this site are above average," the site reads.

SchoolFisher's creator is Eric Grannis, who sits on the board of the Public Prep charter school network and is married to Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Charter Network. A longtime charter school supporter, Grannis said he wanted to show parents that they didn't have to live in the poshest neighborhoods to win entry to the best schools.

"This is important information because I think a system that works upon biases and prejudices — the assumption being, oh this school is in a poorer neighborhood, therefore it's bad — is actually unhelpful," he said.

Visitors to SchoolFisher can select whether they plan to buy or rent an apartment and approximately how much they're looking to spend.


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New site marries New York real estate and school searches

http://gothamschools.org/2011/03/15/new-site-marries-new-york-real-estate-and-school-searches/#disqus_thread


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New apartment-search site digs for public school treasures in semi-affordable nabes

by Margot Slade and Teri Rogers | 3/14/11 - 2:26 PM

http://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2011/03/pool_of_quality_public_schools_in_affordable_neighborhoods_gets_bigger

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