I have chosen Morris Park as my neighborhood, however that is the informal name, according to the New York City government, my neighborhood is community district 11, Allerton-Pelham Gardens. My neighborhood is made up of Allerton, Bronx Park East, Eastchester gardens, Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, and Pelham Gardens. The community has its own board members, 50 individuals that are appointed by the Bronx county president Ruben Diaz Jr. The responsibility of the board members is to bring forth the issues of the community in board meetings, and have needs met by adding things into its budget.

The district has an overall population of 113,232 people. According the census for Allerton-Pelham Gardens from 2000-2010 the population of White non-Hispanic has decreased 29.2%, whereas the Asian non-Hispanic demographic takes up a significant 58.4%. To be honest, I haven’t physically noticed the rise of the Asian American culture in the community, but I have noticed the shift of the overall demographic. When my family and I first moved to this neighborhood we were the only black family on our street. It might be a stretch of an assumption but I believe we were the beginning of a migration. I am beginning to see more Hispanic, Black, and Caribbean families move into the neighborhood. Some white families have chosen to adjust to the demographic shift while others have chosen to leave, or move further to the outskirts of the neighborhood.

My neighborhood is considerably clean, most of the area is residential homes with a few apartment buildings sparsely scattered throughout the community. The condition of playgrounds around the area has fluctuated over the years but has stayed within an 85%-95% cleanliness rating. Something I did notice is that the average household size increased from 2.74 in 2000 to 2.85 in 2010, so most houses are still around the same size in the area, but a few have increased. Furthermore, housing in my area seems pretty stable. Over the course of 10 years the number of occupied housing units has only decreased by 1.5%, I guess it would be safe to say people move to this area and don’t want to leave right away. In addition to the decrease of occupied homes, inevitably there was an increase in vacancies of about 1.2%, yet again not a significant change, but a change none the less.

Now, I will turn my attention to the educational aspect of my neighborhood which is important for this family orientated area. Of the 113,232 people that inhabit this community about 26,014 of them are children in the New York City school system. Allerton-Pelham Gardens has 23 public and 10 private schools. The overall ratings for the schools vary but ratings for daily attendance have steadily increased over the past 5 years.  The rate of students exceeding standards from third to eighth grade leave much to be desired, reading scores are at 43.9% while math scores are 57.3%. These percentages are the lowest scores district 11 has seen within the same 5 year time span.

I beginning to believe that education may be the root of my conflict story. How is that schools have increased attendance but substantially fallen behind in performance?