The Emerson School

The Emerson School, opened in 2013, partners with the Hispanic Coalition for Family Services, which runs an Arts and Literacy program during and after school. Teachers seem happy here, they are rarely absent, and all would recommend the school to other families.

Principal Jakub Lau was born in Poland and moved to the United States when he was 7 years old. Prior to taking the top spot at Emersob in 2015, he taught English to high school students in the South Bronx and served as an assistant principal in Harlem, according to his bio on the school website.

Test scores are below average. Many children miss more than 13 days of school, interrupting the flow of lessons, as teachers must decide whether to repeat material or move on.

The school offers high school­–level (Regents) courses in math, science and history.

Emerson shares a building with JHS 8, a low-performing and sometimes disorderly school in the South Jamaica section of Queens. The Department of Education bet that shrinking the size of JHS 8 and opening a new school would offer children better options than the large JHS 8 has done. The building also houses York Early College Academy.

ADMISSIONS: Priority to children who live in the JHS 8 zone. (Lydie Raschka, web reports and DOE data, January 2018)