Hi all—new to this! I just moved onto a block in Flatbush with street cleaning Tuesday and Friday 9:30–11:00 AM and the sign says 'except holidays.' Tomorrow is a school holiday for the kids (a DOE staff development day? Something like that), so I assumed ASP would be suspended and I could leave my car. My neighbor said no, I still have to move it, but she wasn't sure. Do parking agents actually ticket on school holidays if the sign doesn't list them? I don't want to gamble a ticket, but I'd also love a morning without circling the block. Thanks!

Nah, school staff day isn't a parking holiday. The city's ASP calendar is what matters, not the DOE calendar. The sign means major legal holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving, and even then only when the city officially suspends it. If it's a random Tuesday when schools are closed for professional development, you still gotta move the car. Best move: put the car out at 9:00, then go get a coffee and wait it out. Not worth the ticket.

Hold up, the DOT ASP suspension list is not the same as NYC public school closures! That's the #1 thing people get wrong. The signs say 'except holidays' but they mean official parking holidays — usually the big federal/city ones, plus the city can call a suspension for snow, flooding, or a few religious holidays if they decide. A school staff day is definitely not on it. You can check the monthly DOT ASP calendar or get the 311 reminder. Have you tried the desktop calendar from NYC DOT? It shows exactly which days are suspended. Also, I remember a thread about spots for a Tuesday anniversary where people talked about getting parked after the dinner rush: Tuesday anniversary spot that won’t rush us or blast music? Tuesday anniversary spot that won’t rush us or blast music? Someone there said parking gets easier after 7. Anyway, don't skip moving tomorrow!

Flatbush_Fi and RiverdaleRambler have it right: a DOE staff development day is not an ASP holiday. The sign's 'except holidays' refers to the official suspension calendar the city publishes for street cleaning, not the school calendar. In the five boroughs, ASP is typically suspended on the major legal holidays—New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a few others—plus weather events if the sanitation department can't run sweepers. The reason it gets confusing is that many of those days are also school holidays, but the legal basis is separate.

My advice: don't reason backward from whether schools are closed. Look up the exact month on the NYC DOT's ASP schedule, or call 311. On my block, I've seen agents write tickets on Veterans Day and school professional days because people assumed the school closure applied. Even on actual suspensions, I'd still set a phone reminder: the few times I've chanced it, I ended up moving the car anyway because I couldn't stop checking the window.

One caveat: look at the full text of the sign. A very small number of signs near schools might have specific school-day language, but the standard 'except holidays' language does not cover DOE staff days. If you want to be extra safe, move your car to the opposite side after the sweeper passes—then you're done for the day.

I'll add the enforcement angle from Astoria. On my street, ticketing is least predictable on the first day after a suspension. People look at Monday, see a school holiday, and leave the car. A traffic agent still has to write tickets somewhere, and a two-hour window is easy pickings. The safest move is to set two reminders: one for the ASP suspension calendar that Oldyork_Otis mentioned, and one for 9:15 AM on your street cleaning days.

Also, don't confuse street cleaning with meter holidays. Meter holidays are a different list, and parking rule holidays don't always match ASP. The old sign wording 'except Sundays and holidays' just means the city is allowed to skip sweeping on named legal holidays; it doesn't automatically make every school closure a free pass.

If tomorrow is a school staff day, I'd treat it as a normal ASP day. Move the car to the available side, or if you need to leave it all morning, park after 11. The 311 app has a 'Parking Calendar' option that has saved me more than once.

Thanks everyone—this was really clear! I moved it at 8:50 and got a spot on the other side by 9:05. Around 9:40 I saw a traffic agent go down the block, so I'm glad I listened. Quick follow-up: if the city announces a snow suspension or one of those special religious holidays, does 311 send a push alert, or should I just check the DOT page the night before? Also, Flatbush_Fi, coffee-and-wait is now my new Tuesday/Friday morning routine.