An inside player who helped negotiate an unusual admissions policy at an elementary school in fast-changing Sunset Park, Brooklyn lifts the curtain on the process behind the policy that will set aside more than a third of the Kindergarten seats for poor and immigrant students.

A parent argues against the city’s proposal to re-draw the lines for elementary schools in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She says it causes more problems than it solves.

Like many other New Yorkers, Kristi Barlow found herself consumed with the process of finding the right neighborhood and the right school for her child, and when she couldn’t find an accurate map showing, block by block, which neighborhoods were zoned for which elementary schools, she made one of her own. Out of that obsession was born a small business.

A reader looking for a new apartment asks: What are the rules and regulations surrounding how often school zones can change?