PS/IS 208

PS/IS 208 operates as a reasonably sized elementary school in BELLEROSE, New York, one of the schools within NEW YORK CITY GEOGRAPHIC DISTRICT #29. Current enrollment sits at 605 students spanning grades K through 8. That puts it 37% larger than the typical public school in New York, which averages around 443 students.

NEW YORK CITY GEOGRAPHIC DISTRICT #29 comprises 46 schools with combined enrollment of 21,817 students; PS/IS 208 is among them.

Looking at the student body, PS/IS 208 logs that Black students make up the majority at 58%. Other groups include 14% Hispanic, 12% Asian, 10% Native American, 3% multiracial. That is considerably more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 17%.

On the income-and-resources front, Staff filings list 62 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 9.8:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 12.8:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. An estimated 63% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against Queens County (around 77%), the school's rate is south of typical.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), PS/IS 208 performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 51.8%, the actual is 57.1%, a residual of +5.4 points.

Across the wider county, ACS estimates for Queens County put the typical household earns roughly $86,136 per year, roughly 36% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 10% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, Queens County runs 392 public schools (combined enrollment of about 268,205 students), of which PS/IS 208 is one.

The closest other public school is QUEENS HIGH SCHOOL OF TEACHING LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES, roughly 0.1 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around PS/IS 208. On composite proficiency, PS/IS 208 comes 4th of 5 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 63.3%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 14%: 706 students in 2018 compared to 605 in 2025. The Black share of enrollment fell from 74% to 58% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 14.1:1 in 2018 to 9.8:1 today.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Members of the school community can share what they know.