By Kate Taylor
Parents
and advocates of integration in the East Village and Lower East Side
have pushed for a plan to improve diversity in their district’s
elementary schools for years.
On
Thursday, the New York City Education Department announced that it was
implementing a school choice system aimed at increasing the racial and
socioeconomic diversity in their district, Community School District 1.
Parents
in District 1 have been able to choose among any of the district’s
elementary schools. Schools that are oversubscribed assign seats by
lottery. Despite this freedom of choice,
the district’s schools tend to be segregated by race and
socioeconomics. In the 2016-17 school year, for example, the students at
East Village Community School on East 12th Street were 58 percent
white, but Public School 15, the Roberto Clemente School, on East Fourth
Street, had only four white students out of 178.
Under
the new plan, priority for 67 percent of the seats in kindergarten and
prekindergarten at every elementary school will be given to students who
qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, live in temporary housing or
are learning English. Priority for the other 33 percent of seats will go
to students who do not fall into any of those categories.
Click here for the full article.
Source: The New York Times (via The Empire Report)
No comments:
Post a Comment