Tonight is the “big” rezoning vote. See today’s @wnyc​‘s write-up ahead of the vote here. 

I am one of the ten CEC 13 members voting at PS 56 this evening. I do not intend to reveal my vote here but did want to go through my thoughts.

These are my observations from over a half year of hearings plus my reading of over 200 submitted comments; impressions as a white D13 public school parent whose kids attend a school that is 90% students of color; and hopes for where we go from here.

I am sincerely in awe of the hard work of so many parents, teachers, school leaders, fellow CEC members, and dedicated DOE civil servants and leaders throughout this process – let’s not stop this dialogue.

These thoughts below are partially a follow-up to my tweet storm last week. I’ve also sought to expand on and revisit some thoughts about the rezoning I shared three months ago. They are intended to be provocative and insightful about what I’ve seen, and hopefully to give us some things to talk about further.  

1. Zoning, capacity planning, funding, integration, segregation, diversity, and school quality are a huge Gordian knot.

Looking at and addressing only one element, one facet, of the education “problem” is not enough. It’s all inter-connected. For example, If the rezoning is approved, that doesn’t necessarily mean any more parents from DUMBO will send their kids to PS 307 next year than did this year. Zoning lines alone can’t fix segregation, increase funding, or change people’s perceptions about school quality. 

Zoning is simply an admissions preference policy. It’s not a mandate. The intent behind the hybrid NYC elementary school policy of a zone school and district choice is, I assume, to give parents the best of both worlds – a good choice nearby, and a few other compelling choices further afield.

But in reality what happens often, especially in areas impacted most by gentrification, is that the zoned schools that serve the wealthiest and most privileged communities are able to pay for the broadest and deepest set of enrichments and, critically, attract top talent from graduate schools of education. Parents are able to hold lavish fundraisers and, through their networks, attract top artists, musicians, and business leaders to visit and support their school.

With school choice, parents who live in nearby zones, but not in the zone itself, “vote with their feet”, sending their children to the affluent school they perceive as more desirable. Over years these patterns codify and calcify. One school in a neighborhood is considered “the IT school” (e.g., PS 321 in Park Slope or PS 87 in the UWS), a couple others are “good”, and a few others are considered by parents, the blogosphere, and the tastemaker consultants as less desirable. No surprise, these distinctions end up getting correlated with race and class. 

Meanwhile principals at Title I schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are faced with a very tough choice. Do they continue to preserve their Title I funding – often hundreds of thousands of dollars, by maintaining a high FRL student population, even if that means marketing their school to students in other districts instead of within their own zone? Or do they take the risk of existing for years, perhaps a decade or more, in the funding “doughnut hole” between Title I and the million dollar PTA? Our current budgeting process, which must also consider PTA resources, benefits most the schools on the extremes, and punishes the schools in the middle (those with, say, 40-60% FRL), which are also the schools that are the most diverse. 

As I wrote about in August, we live with not just segregated schools, but in entirely parallel education universes in Brooklyn and NYC as a whole. This rezoning process has only made me despair more about the current state of affairs.

2. The most urgent issue in D13 remains middle school quality and diversity.

There are twelve district middle schools in D13. Several are part of 6-12 programs, such as MS 265. Three are the latter portions of K-8 models – these schools are MS 282, Arts & Letters, and MS 8.

Looking at ten of the twelve schools – i.e., all those other than MS 8 and Arts & Letters (MS 282 plus M.S. 113, MS 265, M.S. 266, MS 301, MS 313, MS351, Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, MS 596, and Fort Greene Preparatory Academy) here’s a data point that astonished me: the total white student population across these ten middle schools is just 45 students. (source: https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000045563). 

So, what’s different about MS 8 and Arts & Letters from the other ten schools? Three differences:

• MS 8 and Arts & Letters (along with MS 282) are part of K-8 programs. I.e., while these three schools are open to any 5th grader in D13, they give first preference to students “continuing on” from their K-5 schools
• Arts & Letters and MS 8, despite active opt-out movements at both, especially at the former, have much higher state test scores than the other 10 schools (NOTE: I’m not including this data to endorse state tests, but rather simply to compare one measure of academic outcomes):
• MS 8 Grade 7 ELA Proficiency Rate (3 or 4): 61%
• Arts & Letters Grade 7 ELA Proficiency Rate (3 or 4): 45%
• District 13 Overall Grade 7 Proficiency Rate (3 or 4): 25% (I’ve chosen ELA only for space reasons – the math results follow the same pattern)
• Both schools have higher white populations than any of the other 10 schools
• At MS 8, nearly half (42%), 76 students, of the 6-8 population are white. At Arts & Letters, the 6-8 white population is less – 23 students (10%) – but still higher than the district average (6%)
• Together MS 8 and Arts & Letters have a total white student population double (76 at MS 8, 23 at A&L) that of the other 10 schools combined (45). 

Here are some data points about the other ten schools. I’ve not mentioned the specific middles by name/number given the many sensitivities around quality but this is all public data:

• At one D13 middle, 4% of the students were proficient (3 or 4) in math in 2015, down 3 points from 2014 when the school scored 7%.
• At another D13 middle, 8% of the students were proficient (3 or 4 on the state test) in math; in 2015 it was 7%.
• At still another middle, 10% of students rated proficient in reading; 6% were proficient in math (down from 8% in 2014)
• The enrollment at one of our largest middles – 6th: 140 / 7th: 169 / 8th: 244 – is trending significantly downward YoY.
• At another school, 33% of the students are chronically absent.
• Three D13 schools are on the persistently dangerous list – i.e., 10% of the statewide list of 32 “persistently dangerous”, which includes both middle and high schools, are D13 middle schools.

So this leads to a few questions:

• Why is it that white parents in particular are avoiding the D13 middles (other than MS 8 and Arts & Letters)? Given that the underlying population in D13 is year over year becoming more white, is this sustainable?
• It’s widely known that many D13 parents, of all races, seek District 15 middle schools in lieu of their D13 options. D13 is a huge source of D15 middle school overcrowding. What is being done to create better options to retain kids in D13 as they transition from elementary to middle? 
• While I recognize that in D15 the near obsession of some parents with MS 447, MS 51, and New Voices comes with its own set of problems – and that many capable parents are working on associated diversity and admissions issues in that district that are correlated with the popularity of these three schools – there are simply no equivalent middle schools in D13. There are no middles in D13 like 447 and 51 in D15, that are at once truly open to the entire district (i.e., no “continuing on” preferences), with high level academics, deep enrichments, and a track record of graduates securing seats at sought-after specialize high schools such as Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant. Schools like MS 51 – where our Mayor’s kids went to middle school – have the additional benefit of larger size and their own campus. To quote Inside Schools, “The district (D13) is still lacking strong middle schools, especially for academically advanced students.”
• According to pubic school data, MS 313 (Satellite West), the school being moved from the PS 307 building to Dock Street, had zero white students last year. What is being done as part of the re-design of that school to promote diversity? I was disappointed that the DOE did not stick with its plan to create a new school (IS 611) at Dock Street but that decision is in the past now and I am eager to work with our DOE partners, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders, such as the developer, to help the MS 313 redesign succeed.
• When will the DOE commit to a plan for the new school proposed for Atlantic Yards / Pacific Park to be a middle school, ideally one based on the MSOneBrooklyn vision, overwhelmingly endorsed by Brooklyn elected officials? A new middle school at Atlantic Yards / Pacific Park is critical to a long term plan to improve the D13 middle school portfolio.

Finally, any attempt to implement a controlled choice plan for D13 middle schools in the absence of a serious, comprehensive plan to address quality will be doomed. 

3. All our schools are NOT overcrowded.
I’ve heard a lot of people say “all our schools are overcrowded.” As a Park Slope resident (most of Park Slope is D15; North Slope is D13) who is also the CB6 (which overlaps almost entirely with D15 but for North Slope in D13) Youth Committee Co-Chair, I see and hear a lot about both D15 and D13 “overcrowding”. To be clear, some schools are definitely overcrowded. But not all.

At my daughter’s pre-K at PS/MS 282, there are 10 kids in her class. We can’t give Pre-K seats away at 282, and the school is in the middle of Park Slope, one of the neighborhoods supposedly most burdened with overcrowded schools and generally considered a pretty desirable place for child rearing. 

What’s different about 282 than the rest of the Park Slope schools? 282 is 90% students of color. 

As PS 307 parent Faraji Hannah-Jones has said several times at public hearings, PS 307, like PS 282, does not annually fill its Pre-K. Now, with the Dock Street building (which will house both a Pre-K center and MS 313) coming on line, Hannah-Jones has expressed concerns that the 307 Pre-K will only further struggle to fill its seats – a valid concern.

But why is it that 307 can’t fill its Pre-K seats in the first place? We hear our elected officials continue to push for more Pre-K seats, and use waitlists for Pre-K as the rationale, but the first hand experiences at schools like PS 307 and PS 282 tells us that there are strong school-based Pre-K programs, in convenient locations in or near wealthy neighborhoods, that can’t fill their Pre-K programs. Why? These may be inconvenient facts to the “overcrowding narrative” but they exist nonetheless. We can’t ignore 282 and 307′s pre-K when we say “all the pre-k’s have waitlists.” It’s just not true.

There’s another form of under-enrollment too – the “soft” under-enrollment of schools that perennially rely on students rely from other districts, especially districts such as D17, D16, and D32, further east in Brooklyn, to fill rosters. PS/MS 282 is a good example here too – there are many more students from Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Garden than there are Park Slope students at 282.

As a 282 parent, my kids and me have made lifelong friendships with many great families from the Caribbean community of central Brooklyn that embraced and nurtured 282 when Park Slope parents couldn’t be bothered to even do a tour. But 282′s reliance on out-of-district kids to fill its roster is also a form of under-enrollment in that this represents additional potential D13 capacity. When parents demand more elementary schools be built in D13, the SLA and ODP will somewhat justifiably point to schools like 282, 287, 307, 46, 67, etc. and the fact D13 is not using all the elementary and middle capacity it already has. 

4. We do need better long term planning (as there could be a day when all of our schools WILL be overcrowded).

To my previous point, we need to use the capacity we already have first. It’s not ok, in D13, D15, or anywhere in the city, to have one school at 140% capacity while another school just blocks aways can’t fill its register. There are parts of Queens and even neighborhoods closer to home such as Sunset Park, with true overcrowding crises. Let’s maximize the use of the space we already have in our district.

But the long term trend is clear, and when people point to the new development projects happening and proposed for Brooklyn and conclude we will need more school capacity they are right. So, as many elected officials have said, we need to expect and demand more of developers when they build new buildings in terms of also creating new schools. And, crucially, we need to remember that all babies become middle schoolers and high schoolers too. Too often the capacity discussions have seemed to be only about elementary school. 

5. What does diversity mean?

After six months of a rezoning that, according to the DOE, was not supposed to be about diversity, but was clearly about race and class from the outset, I don’t really know what is meant by diversity any more.

Coming into this, I thought diversity was more or less the opposite of segregation. My general rule of thumb was that if a school is 80-90% of one race, that school is probably “segregated”, at least if the underlying communities (e.g., the zone and district) are more integrated.

A couple things I have learned through this rezoning:

• Intent matters more that data. It’s bad form to call schools that are 81% white “segregated” if the members of the school community have stated publicly that they wish the demographics were different. Essentially, the actual hard data of a school can be – and is expected to be – disregarded if the stated intent around diversity is otherwise. I don’t think this political correctness is useful to having candid conversations.
• Schools that are 90-95% students of color may be called “Apartheid Schools” by academics but should be referred to only as “diverse schools” by non-academics – even if the white population at the school is in the low single digits or non-existent. I think these schools are also segregated and avoiding using that term stifles conversation.
• “Diversity” appears more about preserving communities and patterns that once were than developing policies that reflect the community as it exists today and likely will tomorrow, in large part because gentrification is such a complex and toxic topic. 

I’ve also discovered what I believe is the present de facto diversity policy. To be clear, I don’t think this is something designed by anyone at DOE, but rather simply the result of inertia, momentum, the law of unintended consequences, and a lack of policy tools. This policy appears to be:

• Leave the majority white schools, including and especially the overwhelmingly white schools (e.g., PS 8 in D13; PS 321, PS 58, PS 29, etc. in D15; PS 199 in D3), the way they are, because, apparently, we are helpless to do anything about these schools and their lack of diversity. 
• Do not – or only very minimally – market the schools that are at once under-enrolled and majority students of color to those affluent and/or white families who may be new to the zone. The current bogeyman is “flipping” (i.e., a school that is historically majority students of color becoming majority white). We’ve heard a lot during the 8/307 rezoning that “307 can’t go the way of PS 8 and ‘flip” to majority white”. “Flipping” seems right now to be a huge concern in Brooklyn.
• Instead develop plans and create policies to preserve majority student of color populations at schools that are currently majority students of color, even if the underlying zone is or soon will be majority white (e.g., the FRL set-aside policy idea proposed for PS 307) – perhaps to preserve Title I funding (See my point about this above). 

District 13 recently was awarded a $1.4 Million Socio-Economic Integration Pilot Program Grant focused primarily on middle schools, and MS 113 in particular. I hope this money is used prudently to develop concrete, measurable outcomes for the district related to improving diversity. Getting a common understanding of what “diversity” means would be a good place to start. 

6. I’m not sure there is much reason to believe the enrollment of DUMBO (e.g., white, affluent) families at 307 will increase just because the zone lines change.

Some of the things a small group of people, including some in DUMBO – have said in public meetings and in submitted comments about 307, Farragut, and people of color has been stomach-churning bigotry. It’s reprehensible (though also entirely consistent with what I’ve long heard other parents say about my own kids’ school community).

Beyond the outright bigotry directed towards the Black community from some white community members, the underlying racial tensions overall have cut both ways. 

There has been FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) brought forth by DUMBO parents about 307. It’s also been surprising and at times disappointing the degree which some DUMBO families are unfamiliar with a school in their own neighborhood – to be clear, it’s not up to the school or DOE to go door-to-door to market a school. It’s a two-way street and it’s up to parents to learn about community and public institutions in their neighborhood. Take a tour.

There has also, though, been several statements made at public meetings that could only be construed that DUMBO parents, especially white DUMBO parents, are not welcome at 307. Thankfully these comments have been only a small part of the conversations, but I couldn’t fault a DUMBO parent who attended a couple of the more heated meetings for leaving with a sense that they were not welcome (a great irony and shame given the open and welcoming approach of the wonderful Principal Davenport). Media outlets, from the New York Times to Brooklyn Heights Blog, have picked up on the race and class tensions – tensions I worry will provide further headwinds to DUMBO families embracing 307.

During these same public hearings, and this was also expressed a lot in the submitted comments, many people asked why more DUMBO families weren’t already sending their kids to PS 307. My CEC 13 colleague and great friend Ed Brown has raised this question about PS 307 many times. It needs asking.

That PS 8 is over-crowded and PS 307 has seats is not new news. During last year’s waitlist, PS 307 was always an option for PS 8 families. In fact, one could plausibly argue that the (in my view entirely unfounded) fear of ending up at PS 307 was in fact a major reason many parents wanted the DOE to take up rezoning. 

So what’s changed? I know Roberta Davenport. I know PS 307. This a wonderful school with deep enrichments. And yet DUMBO parents have largely avoided the school despite its proximity to their homes. Changing lines on a zone map, given our choice model, does not magically change enrollment patterns and preferences. 

Another consideration is the “Pied-à-terre” maneuver. As one parent said in a submitted comment “People (who will be rezoned to 307 in DUMBO) who want to go to PS 8 can simply move into Brooklyn Heights for a year, get their spot and then leave”. 

We see this in Park Slope all the time. The conventional wisdom about how so many (150-200 is the most common estimate I’ve gotten) 282 zoned families get into 321 (which involves crossing not just a zone line, but also a district line from 13 to 15 as well – technically choice is constrained to within your district with the exception of unzoned and/or magnet schools that have in place multi-district policies, e.g., Brooklyn New School, or citywide G&T Programs like NEST+M) is that they borrow utility bills of friends. But the DOE now has mechanisms in place to dissuade and curtail much, though not all, of this practice. What they are powerless to stop though is a family living in the 321 (or 8) zone for a month or two in Kindergarten, moving away, and keeping their child there. This is actually a well intentioned policy to allow for continuity of a child’s education due to a move a few blocks away, but in fact is a giant loophole that allows clever (and often white, affluent, and/or politically connected) parents to rent an apartment for a couple months to secure a seat while keeping their actual residence in a brownstone on condo in the less “desirable” school zone. 

PS 287 is another interesting data point. As cited in the New School segregation study, “In downtown Brooklyn, the estimated household income of children enrolled at PS 287 is less than half that of all households in the school attendance zone. The school enrollment is 89 percent black and Latino; the zone, just 43 percent.” During the rezoning, the CEC was told by the DOE, ODP in particular, that 287 was not included in the rezoning because of the large scale development work happening in the 287 zone. But based on my visits to the school I’ve suspected that very few if any of the new (and many white) residents in the many new condo towers on Flatbush Avenue Extension are sending their kids to 287. The New School study concludes he same. And when I asked the principal of 287 if “many, some, a few, or none” of the residents of these new towers are sending their kids to 287 she told me, without missing a beat, “none.”

So I remain troubled by an assumption that lines on a map change personal educational preferences and macro-educational enrollment trends. 

7. We have spent entirely too little time talking about school quality.

Every parent wants a great school for her child.

Talking about what makes a school “good” is really hard, and, as WNYC said, very much “in the eye of the beholder.” 

But we’ve just not talked enough about quality during this process. We’ve talked around the issue, and too often when plausibly objective measures like standardized tests have been brought up – including the large gap in the results between 8 and 307 or the overall performance of many of the D13 middles – they’ve been dismissed for a host of reasons or turned into opt-out discussions.

But quality is a real issue. So are academic outcomes such as high school and college graduation rates. I think we too often avoid talking about quality in D13 in large part of because of the uncomfortable correlations with race and class that sometimes (though not always) stubbornly exist. I think in recognition of the degree to which our teachers are underpaid, under-appreciated, and over-worked (and as the son of a special education teacher of 30 years I feel this acutely), we also appear loathe to talk about anything that could ever be perceived as in any way critical of teachers and, to a lesser degree, school leaders.

But face these topics we must, for, as the New School Center for New York Affairs study, widely cited last month, says (emphasis added):

This analysis suggests that many parents, dissatisfied with their neighborhood schools, vote with their feet and send their children to public gifted programs, schools of choice, charter schools or private schools.  It follows that some racial and economic integration can be achieved without changing zone lines or assigning kids to schools outside their neighborhoods—measures which are often politically fraught. The key is to improve these schools to motivate more middle class parents who live in economically mixed neighborhoods (or white and Asian parents living in racially mixed neighborhoods) to send their children to the neighborhood schools. Research shows that attracting higher-income students to such schools typically improves classroom education for all the students.

This means we must have the courage to talk not only about funding, and how to get schools, principals, and teachers the resources they need, but also about what’s happening in the classrooms themselves. To be effective representatives of the districts’ parents, CECs must be willing to ask questions about what’s being taught and how.

I also think throughout the PS 8 and PS 307 rezoning we’ve largely and unfortunately avoided hard topics about different expectations for schools, school pedagogy, and school culture that correlate with race and class. This article from Education Next is a must read about these topics. We need to deal with these issues as well.

IN CONCLUSION …

This was a hard process. I want to thank my fellow CEC 13 members for their thoughtfulness and hard work. I also want to call out and thank the hard work of our great Superintendent, Superintendent Freeman, as well as the Office of District Planning, in particular Tim, Greg, Meg, and Jonathan. Thank you as well to DOE leaders such as Olivia Ellis, Deputy Chancellor Rose, and Deputy Chancellor Gibson for their personal involvement and leadership. A huge thank you of course to parents and community members who have come out to be heard, as well as Principals Vaughn, Carroll, Davenport, and Phillips. And thank you to the many elected leaders who represent D13 and who have made time and provided leadership, especially Borough President Eric Adams and his office; State Senators Montgomery, Squadron, and Hamilton; Assembly Members Mosley and Simon; and City Council Members Cumbo, Levin, and Lander.

I think we have a huge opportunity, here in D13, the ground zero in many ways of gentrification and segregation, to build off the 8/307 rezoning, no matter what the vote turns out to be, and to start really working together on these very big, very complicated challenges. I think we have the right leadership at Tweed, in the Mayor’s Office, in Brooklyn at the Borough Hall and City Council level, and at our schools and in our communities to make a difference.