School big’s race regret
CITY SCHOOLS Chancellor Richard Carranza called on the city to “take a breath” and consider the thorny issue of school segregation as he apologized Monday for a tweet last week in which he called out white parents for failing to integrate their schools.
Carranza, 51, the son of Mexican immigrants, took to Twitter at 1 a.m. Friday to share a RawStory recap of a raucous Upper West Side school meeting at which white parents spoke out against controversial plans to integrate some of the neighborhood’s middle schools.
“WATCH: Wealthy white Manhattan parents angrily rant against plan to bring more black kids to their schools,” Carranza tweeted from his official @DOEChancellor account with a link to the video, which originally appeared on NY1.
Hours later, Mayor de Blasio backed away from the tweet on “The Brian Lehrer Show,” saying, “This was his own personal voice . . . I might phrase it differently.”
On Monday, Carranza (photo) tried to temper the tweet by saying the inflammatory headline wasn’t his, apologizing to anyone who might have been offended.
“I will pay more attention in future when I retweet, to make sure that the language that is automatically generated in the retweet is something that I would say,” Carranza said, adding, “If that has caused any kind of pain, then I apologize for it.”
Carranza, who took the city’s top schools job April 2, also urged people to exercise patience with the city’s slow-developing plans to desegregate schools, which are among the most racially divided in the nation.
“Listen folks, take a breath,” Carranza said. “The criticism of my predecessor Chancellor (Carmen) Fariña was that she didn’t do anything about this. And here I am in my first month, actually engaging in this conversation.”
He added, “Let’s just take a breath and let the process develop.”
Carranza faces pressure from parents, students and activists who seek to integrate the public schools — even though not all families are on board.
A 2014 report from UCLA found New York State schools are the most segregated in America, with some particularly extreme examples in the city’s public schools.
De Blasio has vowed to address the issue for years.
“It’s always going to be a challenge, but I do think a robust local discussion about the best way to achieve it is part of how we succeed,” the mayor said Monday night on NY1.
Even though his desegregation plans have been criticized for doing too little, they still draw fire from parents seeking to protect the status quo.