Post by Logan on Feb 16, 2016 6:57:51 GMT -6
Program Aims to Keep Schools Diverse as New York Neighborhoods Gentrify
How white is too white? At the Academy of Arts and Letters, a small K-8 school in Brooklyn founded in 2006 to educate a community of “diverse individuals,” that question is being put to the test.
The school — along with six others in New York City — is part of a new Education Department initiative aimed at maintaining a racial and socio-economic balance at schools in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods. For the first time the department is allowing a group of principals to set aside a percentage of seats for low-income families, English-language learners or students engaged with the child welfare system as a means of creating greater diversity within their schools.
Many of the principals aggressively pushed for the initiative with the schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, who like Mayor Bill de Blasio has disappointed school diversity advocates by failing to make integration a priority during her tenure. Ms. Fariña approved the plan in November.
For the past several years the principals have worried that their institutions — designed to be racial and economic melting pots, but now attracting more white and middle-class families — will “tip” over into majority white, middle-class schools.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2016/02/17/nyregion/program-aims-to-keep-schools-diverse-as-new-york-neighborhoods-gentrify.html
How white is too white? At the Academy of Arts and Letters, a small K-8 school in Brooklyn founded in 2006 to educate a community of “diverse individuals,” that question is being put to the test.
The school — along with six others in New York City — is part of a new Education Department initiative aimed at maintaining a racial and socio-economic balance at schools in fast-gentrifying neighborhoods. For the first time the department is allowing a group of principals to set aside a percentage of seats for low-income families, English-language learners or students engaged with the child welfare system as a means of creating greater diversity within their schools.
Many of the principals aggressively pushed for the initiative with the schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, who like Mayor Bill de Blasio has disappointed school diversity advocates by failing to make integration a priority during her tenure. Ms. Fariña approved the plan in November.
For the past several years the principals have worried that their institutions — designed to be racial and economic melting pots, but now attracting more white and middle-class families — will “tip” over into majority white, middle-class schools.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2016/02/17/nyregion/program-aims-to-keep-schools-diverse-as-new-york-neighborhoods-gentrify.html