Deseg leap
Screening nix in key B’klyn district
Mayor de Blasio joined schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and parents from Brooklyn and beyond to unveil the city’s latest school desegregation plan on Thursday.
Speaking at Middle School 51 in Park Slope, de Blasio laid out the details of a proposal to remove academic screening from all middle schools in District 15 and set aside 52% of those seats for impoverished kids and children learning to speak English.
The hotly anticipated program affects just 11 out of the city’s 600 middle schools, but de Blasio said it has great meaning beyond the district where it’s being enacted, which includes the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook and parts of Sunset Park.
“I have faith that we will make big changes. Yes, again it will take time, it will take work, there will be challenges,” de Blasio said. “But I have faith that working together and listening to parents and listening to educators that we will surely get here in this city.”
De Blasio and Carranza also announced a plan to put aside $2 million to help other districts launch desegregation programs.
Besides District 15, two other districts, both in Manhattan, already have such programs.
That’s just out of the city’s 32 geographical school districts, but Carranza called it a turning point.
“Today is literally the shot heard around the world when it comes to equity in our city,” he said.
The 1.1 million students who attend the city’s public schools comprise one of the most diverse student bodies on the planet.
But the city’s huge system of more than 1,800 schools is one of the most segregated in the nation.
The situation is particularly extreme in the city’s elite specialized high schools, where only 4.1% of admissions offers went to black students and 6.3% to Hispanic kids in 2018, even though they account for nearly 67% of the overall student body.
De Blasio backed a plan to desegregate those schools in June, but the proposal has encountered a mixed reaction from communities and faces long odds in the state Legislature, where it must be approved to take effect.
In contrast, the District 15 initiative encountered strong support from many local parents, including families who helped craft the program.
Advocates from outside the district expressed hope it could become a model for desegregation programs in other neighborhoods.
“We think that what District 15 did really set a standard for creating equitable access across the districts,” said Matt Gonzales, director of the School Diversity Project at New York Appleseed.
“It’s a really exciting moment for this work,” he added.