Upper West Side parents gather to tackle middle-school integration

The contentious rezoning of elementary schools on the Upper West Side drew citywide attention to the challenges of integrating schools in a district that includes both affluent high-rise buildings and public housing. Now community members in the area are turning their attention to another integration battlefield: middle schools.

The Community Education Council in District 3, which includes the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem, hosted a symposium Thursday night focused on middle school diversity. It featured a panel of integration advocates and experts, including Jill Bloomberg, principal of Park Slope Collegiate, a secondary school; David Goldsmith, president of District 13’s Community Education Council; and Jeff Young, former superintendent of the Cambridge, Mass. school system.

In elementary school, students are assigned to schools based on where they live, but in District 3 and several others districts across the city, students can apply to different middle schools across the district. Yet, despite that freedom, the middle schools in District 3 remain deeply divided along racial and socioeconomic lines.

It’s no secret that school choice is not always an antidote to segregation. The city’s system of universal high school choice has not desegregated schools, nor that happened in other middle school choice districts, or when the city “dezoned” a district on the Lower East Side.

In some cases, that is likely due to the barriers schools use to shape their student bodies — like requiring students to submit test scores or projects, or come to open houses — all of which advantage those with the savvy to work the system.

Still, the influence of those obstacles on school segregation has been a relatively small part of the conversation. When asked at a press conference Thursday about how high school choice can lead to extreme academic sorting, Mayor Bill de Blasio jumped to an explanation that involved housing segregation — even though prospective high school students can apply to any school in the city.

“The history of our city, the geography, all sorts of other things that have determined how we are shaped today,” de Blasio said. “We cannot change the basic reality of housing in New York City.”

But the panelists Thursday spoke about ways to address middle school segregation — from personal appeals to district-wide plans. Here are three significant moments from the event:

Jill Bloomberg, principal of Park Slope Collegiate, on how she spoke with parents of new students when integrating schools

So in 2011, 10 somewhat trepidatious, white middle-class families came into our school. And we had said from the beginning, “You are welcome in our school.” And … there was zero discussion of what we are going to do for you. We said, “Here’s what we do for the kids who are here. We think it’s amazing. You are welcome to join us.” So there were lots of questions about safety, which are really very coded questions about race and racism. We assured them that their kids would be fine. They wanted to meet the teachers. They wanted to see the classes. There were lots of discussions of, “How’s my child going to learn next to this child who doesn’t look like him and I’m assuming isn’t as bright?” I’m just going to put it out there. So we just said, “Look, the kids here are just as bright as your kids and we’re going to teach them exactly the same way.”

David Goldsmith, president of CEC 13, on what he’s learned from trying to integrate District 13 about the importance of looking at the system as a whole

You cannot plan for success for some kids, or one school, and not plan for success for all the schools. So we decided very quickly that single-school models for set-asides was not fair, and it’s not what we were interested in. We would create these little Shangri-Las of these beautiful little high-performing schools that were diverse and all that. Meanwhile, all the rest of the schools got squat. And that wasn’t our plan, so we went districtwide.

Jeff Young on why parents have to be receptive to integration before you can enlist them

I just think the framing of the question of “How do you convince somebody to do something?” is problematic. How do you convince a kid to eat broccoli? You can tell them that it’s good for you. It tastes good, trust me. Or whatever kinds of things we say to kids to make them eat broccoli. But they have to kind of want to try the broccoli … If I had some little laminated 3 x 5 card that I could give you that say, “Say these three things and you’ll convince people,” I’d be happy to hand you such a card. But I just don’t think it exists.