DOE’s diversity plan for schools

The Department of Education is planning to tackle school diversity with a series of goals, including putting 50,000 students in more racially proportional schools, breaking up socioeconomic school clusters, and enrolling homeless, special-ed students more evenly.

The DOE wants “racially representative” campuses — where black and Hispanic kids make up at least 50 percent of the population but no more than 90 percent.

Only 30 percent of schools are currently in that category.

The department also hopes to reduce the number of schools that are too rich or too poor, targeting facilities where average student poverty levels are 10 percent above or below the city average.

To meet their new benchmarks, the DOE created a School Diversity Advisory Group to implement 12 proposals in the coming years.

One proposal is the abolition of “limited unscreened” schools that require parents to show up for an open house in order to apply for a spot. The DOE reasoned that the ap- plication process was too onerous for many working parents.

The initiative also expanded a program at elite specialized high schools that admits disadvantaged kids who score below the cutoff on the entrance exam, if they complete a summer course.

Among additional measures are easier online school applications, letting private pre-K programs set aside seats for needy kids, and allowing borough-wide middle-school admissions.

Some critics, however, dismissed the rollout as a tepid, belated effort.

“I think this is more of a campaign document than a policy blueprint,” said Dr. David Bloomfield, a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. “It continues [Mayor de Blasio’s] small series of initiatives without getting his arms around the problem. He was slow out of the starting gate and the plan shows little urgency.

“It certainly shouldn’t have taken four years to write a policy statement,” Bloomfield said. “It doesn’t go far enough or fast enough.”

But the DOE held that the plan represented a concrete advance.