A SCHOOL HOUSE DIVIDED
Minority students ‘segregated’ at posh NYC prep
Parents at the Little Red School House in the West Village (inset) — which counts the kids of David Schwimmer, Christy Turlington Burns and Sofia Coppola among i ts pupils — recently revolted over plans to place al l minority middle-school students in the same classes for 30 percent of the day come fall, and are worried that administrators have been placing pupils by race all along.
Parents are irate over a plan to segregate students by race at the celebrity-friendly Little Red School House in the West Village.
In the last month, parents at the $45,485-per-year private school — which counts David Schwimmer’s, Christy Turlington Burns’ and Sofia Coppola’s offspring among its pupils — became aware that Director Philip Kassen would place minority middle-school students in the same homerooms come fall.
They also learned that the racebased placement policy had already been in effect for the 2017-18 school year for seventhand eighth-graders and would likely be expanded to the sixth grade in September.
Each grade, which has approximately 40 students, has two homerooms. Students remain with their homeroom groups for 30 percent of the school day.
Parents revolted at the revelation.
“My daughter who is 11 was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy. They are talking about separating by color,’ ” one father, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Post.
“And I was thinking, how antiquated is this? This is backwards. It’s almost like segregation now.”
After a Post inquiry last week, Kassen sent a letter to parents Wednesday detailing last year’s race-placement initiative — which multiple sources said they had never been informed of.
But parents said the school has always let race play a large role in class placement. One mother said that for three years, all but one of the 10 nonwhite students in her child’s grade were assigned to the same class in lower school.
Another father, whose daughter recently graduated from the middle school, said that classes had been segregated for as long as she was enrolled there and that the separation was conspicuously in effect during the 2016-17 year.
“They weren’t very transparent about it,” said the grad’s father, whose daughter was in what he called the “minority class.”
“It was my daughter who immediately noticed that all the kids of color were in one class. If you’re going to have that policy, you need to be upfront,” he said.
The grad’s father said the divisions were obvious as far back as kindergarten.
“We realized she was placed with all the minority students but none of her friends. It was peculiar that they didn’t spread everyone out,” he said.
In 2016, when he mentioned his concerns to fellow parents, they refused to believe the school would section off kids by race.
“They said, ‘That’s not true.’ That’s how quiet it was,” he recalled.
Once the policy — which Kassen claimed was in effect only last year and limited to seventh and eighth grades — became common knowledge in early June, parents went on the offensive.
“They had a couple meetings with parents, and there was a lot of buzz and outrage and yelling,” said another parent at the school.
“Everyone was saying, ‘We don’t think it’s necessary. These kids have been friends since kindergarten and nursery school. They don’t see color, so why are you doing this?’ ”
On June 12, Kassen — who made $403,039 in total compensation in 2016 — e-mailed parents saying the proposed class-placement policy would be reviewed.
Eight days later, he e-mailed again, stating that he would nix the policy but continue to keep “race as a critical, but not primary, determinant.”
Parents are unclear what that means, and Kassen refused to comment to The Post beyond providing e-mails sent to parents.
On Wednesday, in another email to parents, he explained that the policy was born from conversations with recent graduates who said the school could “create
greater opportunities for connection and support.”
He points to a passage from the school’s handbook that states, “Research points to the academic, social, and emotional benefits to being in a classroom with others who share racial, ethnic, linguistic, and/or cultural backgrounds.”
Amanda Uhry, president of Manhattan Private School Advisors, said she has heard complaints from clients regarding the Little Red School House controversy.
“How could a school possibly do that? I don’t know if I would necessarily send a child to a school that separated by race,” she said. “1964, remember that? We had segregation in America. What is this? It’s segregation!”
Another private-school adviser, Victoria Goldman, author of “The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools,” predicted the brouhaha would “most likely affect admissions” at the97-y yearold ins ti tut ion.ut ion.
A New York Citybased educational consultant hit focus on minority students said the Little Red School House’s proposal was “thee lesser off two evils,” explaining that often when there is a single black or Latin student in a class — especially a history and literature class where discussions can turn political or personal — the student can feel isolated and uncomfortable.
“The intention is to make students of color feel that they are a critical mass and have a voice,” the consultant said. The consultant noted that a handful of other schools have experimented with similar policies, although to a much lesser degree. Bank Street on the Upper West Side, for example, has students break into self-identified “affinity groups” four times a year for 45-minute classes. “If that results in clumping kids and creating some allwhite classrooms, it’s a tradeoff worth making,” the consultant said.
But, the consultant warned, it’s only a temporary solution.
“The problem is there still isn’t enough diversity in New York City independent schools. This is just a Band-Aid. You need to advocate for more financial aid and diversity.”
The Little Red School House father said it’s a case of good intentions gone awry.
“It’s almost like sometimes, in trying to do the right thing, they go too far,” he said. “They are trying so hard to equalize everything that they end up making some of those people in the groups more uncomfortable.”
Research points to the academic, social and emotional benefits to being in a classroom with others who share racial, ethnic, linguistic and/or cultural backgrounds. — Little Red School House Director Philip Kassen, citing the school handbook