REAL ESTATE AGENTS WEIGH IN ON LOCAL SCHOOL GRADES

This is a pretty absurd. But in a city where real estate prices are determined by the quality of the local public school it does kind of make sense. So here are Peggy Aguayo and Marc Garstein of Aguayo & Huebener and Warren Lewish Realty respectively with their thoughts in the Tmes.

A number of schools that are a key factor in real estate decisions did not get A’s. In Park Slope, Peggy Aguayo, the principal of Aguayo & Huebener Realty Group, said she did not think that P.S. 321’s B would tarnish its longstanding reputation as the holy grail for public school parents. She described her Park Slope clientele as “independent thinkers and highly intelligent, who I don’t think would necessarily trust a bureaucratic statistical analysis as being the almighty.”

Marc Garstein, the president of Warren Lewis Realty in Park Slope, suggested that the rating system could have more effect for schools just developing their reputation as up-and-coming than for traditional favorites. Mr. Garstein said he was particularly taken aback to hear that P.S. 154, which he said “has become a selling point for moving to Windsor Terrace,” had received a D.

Mr. Garstein said he thought the grades would just confuse parents, saying it was “bizarre” that schools were being judged against others with similar populations but in different neighborhoods.

Because school was out yesterday, some parents said they did not yet know their schools’ grades. Grades have been posted on the Department of Education’s Web site, schools.nyc.gov, and will be distributed at parent-teacher conferences next week