Original Research by School Decision on Ps 993
PS 993 is a school serving students from kindergarten through grade twelve in the Floral Park neighborhood of Queens. It is a special education school operated by NYC Special Schools District 75, which administers all of the city's dedicated special education programs across its five boroughs.
The school serves a population of about five hundred seventy students, with substantial variation across grade bands. Elementary grades are more densely enrolled, while high school grades carry only a handful of students. A large majority of the student body, about eighty-four percent, qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The school's population is racially and ethnically diverse: students span Hispanic, Asian, white, Black, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and multiracial backgrounds, with Hispanic students comprising the largest single group, followed by Asian and white students in roughly similar shares.
As a special education school, PS 993 does not participate in state standardized testing in the manner typical of general-education schools. No proficiency data, graduation rate, or statewide assessment results are available for this entity. This is because the school's enrollment, by definition, consists entirely of students with disabilities whose individualized education programs and learning pathways differ fundamentally from grade-level state standards. For similar reasons, the comparison metrics used to position schools against district neighbors—overall proficiency, four-year graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism—do not apply here. A parent seeking to understand PS 993 should look directly to the school and the district for information on student outcomes, support services, curriculum pathways, and placement processes.
District 75 has in recent years adopted the NYC Reads literacy curriculum, a science-of-reading, phonics-based framework, while preserving flexibility in implementation to meet the wide range of needs in its population, including students following life-skills tracks as well as those working toward grade-level standards. The district has also expanded seat capacity across multiple boroughs to reduce the gap between students needing placements and available seats, with new programs opening in the Bronx and Queens in fall 2026. In its recent budgeting cycle, District 75 faced threatened cuts that would have affected support staff and extracurriculars; the Education Department reversed those cuts in January 2024 following community pushback, but the episode underscores funding pressures families should monitor.
Floral Park is a densely built, primarily residential incorporated village in Nassau County on the Nassau-Queens border, roughly developed as a planned suburb around the late nineteenth-century nursery and seed business of founder John Lewis Childs, whose influence persists in the street names: Tulip, Violet, Iris, and Magnolia. The village has retained much of its single-family housing stock and tree-lined blocks through zoning protections and community advocacy. Its civic and commercial life concentrates on Tulip Avenue, a low-rise main street with ground-floor shops and restaurants, and centers around the Floral Park LIRR station, the public library at Tulip Avenue and Caroline Place, and Memorial Park. The median home value in the area is substantially above the New York State benchmark and well above the national median. Rents are in the mid-range for the region.
The village has historically been Irish-, Italian-, and German-American and has in recent decades welcomed growing Jewish and South Asian families. It is moderately to highly walkable in the Tulip Avenue corridor, where most errands can be accomplished on foot, though the immediate village remains primarily car-dependent beyond the downtown spine. Community life includes summer concerts in Memorial Park, movie screenings, and library programming. The neighborhood immediately benefited from the Belmont Park redevelopment just across the village border, which includes UBS Arena (home of the New York Islanders since 2021) and retail and hospitality spaces that have become local employment anchors; the Islanders also relocated their front office to a former bank building adjacent to the Floral Park train station.
The village is largely built-out and has historically seen little large-scale redevelopment. Current growth initiatives center on downtown revitalization, including a state grant application seeking to reinvigorate the Jericho Turnpike and Tulip Avenue corridors. Proposed residential developments have drawn both support from those seeking additional rental housing and opposition from residents concerned about preserving the small-village character. About one-third of the village's housing is renter-occupied.
A parent investigating PS 993 will want to speak directly with the school and district about how placement decisions are made, what individualized education program goals and supports look like, transportation and scheduling, and how the school's curriculum and daily structure align with their child's needs and current level.
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