14 AWP Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 November 22–28, 2019
1.90 10-MONTH CD SPECIAL
Kensington pushes safety
Locals demand street changes amid bloody year for pedestrians
Progress on school desegregation
A new push to integrate Brooklyn middle schools is showing results
Photo by Christina Veiga/Chalkbeat
An integration plan for District 15 was created after
a public engagement process that included parents,
educators, and community members.
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By Christina Veiga,
Amy Zimmer
Chalkbeat
This story was originally
published by Chalkbeat, a
nonprofit news organization
covering public education,
on November 14, 2019.
A pioneering diversity
plan is starting to shift racial
demographics of schools
in one corner of Brooklyn, according
to preliminary 2019-
20 enrollment data released
Thursday by the education
department.
By moving to a lotterybased
admission system and
getting rid of competitive
screens, the new policy aims
to integrate middle schools so
they reflect the demographics
of District 15 — which includes
affluent brownstone
neighborhoods, such as Cobble
Hill, Carroll Gardens and
Park Slope, as well lower-income
areas, such as Red Hook
and Sunset Park.
This year’s enrollment
numbers show that disproportionately
white and affluent
schools saw some of
the most dramatic changes.
Schools serving mostly Hispanic
students also experienced
notable shifts — but in
some cases the changes were
less pronounced, suggesting
there is still work to be done
to convince families to consider
a wider range of options
for their children.
“It’s hard work, and there’s
a lot more to do. But the
District 15 diversity plan
is working,” tweeted Brad
Lander, a City Council member
representing a large swath
of the district.
City leaders hope that
District 15’s efforts can be
a model for the city’s other
school districts — all of which
must now develop integration
plans of their own.
Dire warnings that white
and more affluent families
would flee the public school
system largely did not come
to pass. In fact, the district’s
share of white sixth graders —
31 % — remained unchanged
compared to last year.
Claire McNamara, who
is white, enrolled her son at
Sunset Park Prep this year, a
school where there were virtually
no white students the
prior year. Her family hadn’t
previously considered the
school but decided it was a
good option after taking a tour
and being impressed with the
engaged students and friendly
teachers.
“We came in with an open
mind, and we’re pretty happy,”
she said. “I feel kind of lucky
that we ended up here.”
South Slope’s New Voices,
a performing arts school coveted
by white families in the
district, saw Hispanic student
enrollment climb by almost
20 percentage points, to 41%
of the sixth-grade class. At
M.S. 51, which has billed itself
as a school for gifted students,
Hispanic enrollment
jumped by 13 percentage
points, to 36%.
Meanwhile at the southern
end of the district in Sunset
Park, the incoming classes remained
overwhelmingly Hispanic,
though the number of
white students is slowly ticking
upward. At Sunset Park
Prep and Charles O. Dewey,
for instance, the number of
white sixth graders was negligible
last year. This year, 9
and 10% of the students were
white, respectively.
In a sign of the challenges
that remain, many more white
students received offers to
both schools than those who
ultimately enrolled. The disparity
was especially stark
at Dewey, where 27% of offers
went to white students,
according to an analysis by
WXY, the firm that helped
lead the community-driven
plan to overhaul the admission
policy.
That said, there did not appear
to be a mass exodus students
from the district’s public
schools. Roughly 76% of fifth
graders from District 15 elementary
schools ended staying
in the district for sixth
grade, according to education
department data. The
year before about 80% enrolled
in the district’s middle
schools. Those numbers
reveal that many students who
applied to middle schools in
previous years also ended up
going to schools beyond the
district, whether they went
to private schools, charters
or selective public schools
elsewhere.
Before this year, most middle
schools in the district had
used their own selective criteria,
such as test scores and
attendance records, to admit
students. Integration advo-
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
Amid a particularly deadly
year for pedestrians, Kensingtonians
are demanding the
city redesign the local streets
to improve safety.
“We want the first priority
to be safety for pedestrians —
then we can worry about the
trucks and deliveries,” said
Jerry Wein.
At a Nov. 18 town hall meeting
in the neighborhood, Department
of Transportation
reps assured the community
that they would study the
area’s roadways, which have
seen a number of deaths in
recent months — including
10-year-old bicyclist Dalerjon
Shahobiddinov who was fatally
struck by a car on Foster
Avenue, and 60-year-old Olga
Feldman, who was killed in a
Church Avenue crosswalk.
But locals fired back, arguing
that studies weren’t enough
to stop the onslaught of motor
vehicles.
“We’re appreciative of
studies, we’re appreciative
of the work being done, but
what we want is for the priorities
to change with the data,”
said Wein.
Locals gathered last week
for a walking tour of the neighborhood’s
most deadly intersections.
Transit officials did make
some promises — such as installing
pedestrian islands on
Coney Island Avenue — but
made no other commitments,
like outlawing left turns off
of the north-south parkway
onto Church Avenue.
“The changes that have
been made are minimal,”
said Lisa Bocchini, who lives
at the corner of Church and
Ocean.
Bocchini said she felt the
transportation department
was more focused on pedestrian
traffic control instead of
attempting to slow the massive
volume of car traffic
that passes through the area
each day.
“Who cares about traffic?
I care about the pedestrians,”
she said. “Pedestrians are not
the problem.”
Making matters worse, residents
claim the local police
precinct fails to properly enforce
traffic violations, including
at the numerous car-centric
businesses on Coney Island
Avenue, who they say illegally
park with impunity.
“The 66th precinct has no
enforcement there,” said Patrick
Russell. “They don’t do
anything.”
Rusell said he made numerous
311 reports about abandoned
cars and illegally parked
cars on Coney Island Avenue
— to no avail.
“If you’re going to
straighten out Coney Island,
you can’t have abandoned cars,
you can’t have cars repaired on
the sidewalk,” he said. “Sometimes
you’re forced to walk in
the street because they’re repairing
cars!”
cates say the city’s widespread
use of competitive
admissions standards helps
drive New York City’s status
as the most segregated school
system in the country.
For this year’s incoming
sixth graders, the uniquely
diverse district eliminated
screens. Instead, students were
admitted by lottery, with preference
given to students who
are low-income, in temporary
housing, or learning English as a
new language. The aim is for all
of the district’s middle schools
to enroll 40 to 75% of students
who fall under those categories.
In this first year of the initiative,
all but three schools met
those benchmarks. (The year
before only three schools reflected
those targets.)
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit
news site covering educational
change in public
schools.
Sign up for their newsletter
online at www.Chalkbeat.
org.
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