PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE

PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE is one of the intimate primary schools in BROOKLYN, New York, overseen by NEW YORK CITY GEOGRAPHIC DISTRICT #17, with 180 students on its rolls from grades pre-K through 5. By comparison, New York's public schools average about 443 students each, so PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE sits 59% leaner than that benchmark.

NEW YORK CITY GEOGRAPHIC DISTRICT #17 comprises 49 schools with combined enrollment of 16,990 students; PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE is among them.

Looking at the student body, PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE reports that the largest single group is Black, at 69% of enrollment; the rest comes out to 18% Hispanic, 6% White, 4% Asian. By comparison, Kings County as a whole is about 28% Black, so the school skews considerably more Black than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE reports 16 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 11.0:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 12.8:1 average. Roughly 84% of students at PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

With demographic context factored in, PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE ranks in the top 10% of New York public schools. The BeatsExpectations model, a per-state regression of composite proficiency on FRL share, predicts schools with this student profile to land around 44.1%; PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE posts 64.9%, +20.7 points above that line.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (Kings County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $80,263 per year, about 42% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 15%. PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE is one of 583 public schools in Kings County (combined enrollment of about 291,697 students).

Nearest neighbor: HIGH SCHOOL FOR PUBLIC SERVICE-HEROES OF TOMORROW, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE at 2nd of 8; the average score across the group is 45.1%.

PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE operates from a city-core location.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 8%: 195 students in 2018 compared to 180 in 2025. Over the same period, the Hispanic share climbed from 7% to 18%.

In the discussion threads here, members of the PS 397 FOSTER-LAURIE community share and discuss fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.