Two houses can share the same 10583 ZIP code, sit less than a mile apart, and pay into two completely different school systems at two different tax rates. That isn't a clerical error. It's how the boundary between the Village of Scarsdale and the unincorporated Edgemont section of the Town of Greenburgh has worked for decades, and it still trips up buyers who assume a Scarsdale mailing address guarantees Scarsdale schools.
The confusion is understandable. The post office doesn't draw school district lines, and a listing sheet that says "Scarsdale, NY" tells you nothing about which district actually educates the kids who live there or which tax bill the sellers have been paying.
The address and the district are two separate maps
The Village of Scarsdale is served by the Scarsdale Union Free School District, which also covers a small slice of the neighboring Town of Mamaroneck. But large portions of the Town of Greenburgh, including the area known as Edgemont, carry Scarsdale 10583 addresses (some carry Hartsdale 10530 addresses instead) while answering to a completely separate school system: the Edgemont Union Free School District.
Locally, people describe this by district rather than by postal designation. When someone says they live in Edgemont, they mean their home falls inside the Edgemont school boundary, not that they live in a place with its own town hall or ZIP code. Edgemont isn't a municipality. It's a school and civic identity layered on top of Greenburgh, and the line between it and the Village of Scarsdale can run down the middle of a residential street.
That line matters because in Westchester, the school district determines two things at once: which building your child attends and which tax rate appears on your bill.
What each map actually contains
Inside the Village of Scarsdale, the school district is a single, unified system built around geography. Five elementary schools anchor five neighborhoods: Edgewood, Fox Meadow, Greenacres, Heathcote, and Quaker Ridge. Every one of them feeds into the same Scarsdale Middle School for grades 6 through 8, and every student in the village continues to the same Scarsdale High School for grades 9 through 12, known for replacing Advanced Placement courses with its own Advanced Topics curriculum. The elementary zone dictates the first six years, but after that every child in the village converges on identical middle and high school buildings.
Edgemont runs on a smaller, separate system. Its three schools, Greenville Elementary, Seely Place Elementary, and Edgemont Junior/Senior High, serve the Greenville section of Greenburgh under the Edgemont Union Free School District. It's a different administration, a different budget, a different tax levy, even though the mailbox out front might say Scarsdale.
Neither system is better documented than the other for a buyer doing due diligence. Both are well-regarded locally. The point isn't which is preferable. It's that the ZIP code on a listing sheet answers a postal question, not a school or tax question, and the two maps don't line up.
The tax rate gap is real and it's official
Westchester County publishes a school district tax rate table each year, and the most recent one on file, covering the 2025-2026 school year, puts the Edgemont Union Free School District's rate at 19.7773 per $1,000 of assessed value against 13.576578 per $1,000 of assessed value for the Scarsdale Union Free School District. That's roughly a 46 percent gap on an assessed-value basis. School boards adopt new levies each spring after the statewide budget vote, so a 2026-2027 table will eventually supersede this one, but the structure it reflects, a materially higher Edgemont rate sitting on top of the same shared ZIP code, has held for years and is worth confirming against the current bill on any specific address rather than assuming it has closed.
This isn't a new pattern. Back in 2015, after Edgemont completed a property revaluation that brought assessments up to full market value, the Edgemont Community Council, the area's civic organization, published a comparison showing the blended tax rate on a $1 million home came to about $22,400 a year in the Village of Scarsdale versus roughly $33,400 in Edgemont, an $11,000 annual gap on comparably priced houses. The council's point at the time was that underassessment had been masking the real size of the difference, and once assessments caught up to market value, the gap became visible in a way it hadn't been before.
That 2015 dollar figure is history, not a current quote, but the mechanism it describes, a higher school levy applied against a smaller tax base in Edgemont compared to the Village, is the same mechanism visible in the most recently published rate table. A buyer comparing two similarly priced homes, one inside the village line and one just across it in Edgemont, is comparing more than square footage and school reputation. They're comparing two different levy structures that happen to share a ZIP code.
Where STAR fits, and where it doesn't
New York's STAR program offers real relief here, but it doesn't erase the gap. New York State publishes the current maximum STAR savings by school district, including separate figures for Edgemont Union Free School District and Scarsdale Union Free School District, and it's worth checking both if a specific address is under consideration.
What to actually check before writing an offer
The fix here isn't complicated, it's just a step buyers sometimes skip because the ZIP code feels like confirmation enough.
- Ask for the property's school district by name, not by ZIP code or postal city, before assuming which schools apply.
- Pull the most recent tax bill and confirm which district levy is on it: Scarsdale Union Free School District or Edgemont Union Free School District.
- If buying in the Village of Scarsdale, confirm the elementary zone specifically. Boundaries between Edgewood, Fox Meadow, Greenacres, Heathcote, and Quaker Ridge are reviewed periodically and can run down the middle of a street, so a house two doors from a boundary can zone differently than its neighbor.
- Check STAR savings for the correct district, since the two districts publish different maximum benefit amounts.
- If an assessment looks out of step with recent sales, note that Scarsdale has a process for filing an assessment challenge with the Board of Assessment Review.
None of this requires guesswork. The Village of Scarsdale Assessor's office and the Westchester County tax rate tables are public records, and confirming a specific address against them takes minutes, not days.
A quick FAQ
Does every Scarsdale 10583 address mean Scarsdale schools? No. Parts of Greenburgh, including Edgemont, carry Scarsdale 10583 addresses (and some carry Hartsdale 10530 addresses) while being zoned for the Edgemont Union Free School District rather than the Scarsdale Union Free School District.
How can I verify which district a specific house belongs to before I write an offer? Ask the listing agent to confirm the district by name, then cross-check the property's most recent tax bill, which will show the actual district levy rather than the postal city.
Does STAR make up the difference between the two districts' tax rates? It softens the bill but doesn't close the gap. STAR only reduces the school tax portion, leaving county, town, village, and special district charges untouched.
Is one district objectively better than the other? That's a judgment for each family to make based on program fit and campus feel, not something a tax rate table can answer. What the rate table can tell you is the cost side of the comparison, which is often the part buyers research last.
Every commuter town in Westchester has some version of this quirk, a boundary that predates the ZIP code system and never quite lines up with it. Scarsdale and Edgemont just happen to be the clearest example in the county, because the disparity is large enough to show up in a single year's tax table.
If you're comparing a home inside the Village of Scarsdale against one just across the Edgemont line, Totally Westchester can pull the actual district and current tax rate for any address before you write an offer. Start Your Westchester Move.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.