Nikole Hannah-Jones rips into NYC schools chancellor over lack of school integration plan

Por Madina Touré — POLITICO – TOP Stories

NEW YORK — New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels found himself in the hot seat Tuesday night as investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and a crowd of students laced into him over his failure to clearly lay out a plan to tackle segregation in public schools.

The New York Times writer, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for commentary, challenged Samuels to explain why he has yet to fully implement key recommendations made by the city’s School Diversity Advisory Group in 2019, including eliminating admissions screens that advocates say perpetuate segregation.

Hannah-Jones appeared alongside about 800 students and advocates at a town hall in Manhattan, which was sponsored by The Bell, a student journalism nonprofit, and New York Appleseed, a school integration advocacy group. Samuels, who identified integration as a key priority upon being appointed chancellor by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, previously spearheaded school mergers aimed at advancing school integration.

On Tuesday night, Hannah-Jones pressed him again and again to delineate his plans now that he’s chancellor.

“Now you are the head of that system, a system that despite what Mayor Mamdani promised during his campaign, remains under mayoral control, and so there is no buck to be passed now,” she said, to a swell of applause. “You have the system. So while I appreciate the work you have done today, we want to talk about the work you will do.

“I don’t think anybody here tonight came to hear platitudes or vague proclamations,” she added.

Hannah-Jones made waves among educators and parents last month with an essay in The New York Times about her decision to send her daughter to a majority-Black, low-income school. While hailed by many as a clarion call for integration of schools in the city, Hannah-Jones herself wrote of how she now questioned herself for making that decision to send her daughter to the school. Tuesday night’s town hall brought much of the private discussion of the story to a head, bringing together the writer, Samuels, students, parent leaders and advocates to debate how the city can advance school integration.

Samuels repeatedly defended his community-driven approach to integration, citing working groups that are developing proposals focused on integration and academic rigor. He said the administration is laying the groundwork by engaging communities, establishing structures for those conversations and building the capacity of superintendents who will lead the work.

“I don’t believe the best way to integrate schools is by large proclamations,” he said. “We’ve seen that happen before and we’ve seen that that hasn’t necessarily worked because you have an organized resistance against that and so on. So what I believe is that we have to work with communities.”

His emphasis on process did little to satisfy Hannah-Jones, who accused him of being coached to avoid answering questions about the city’s integration plan. Samuels denied it and maintained that the administration was already carrying out parts of its approach.

The exchange grew particularly contentious over academic admissions screens. Hannah-Jones questioned why communities should be allowed to preserve admissions policies that create racially or academically homogeneous student populations at the expense of other children.

“Why should a community get to decide that they get to create a homogeneous learning community?” she asked.

Samuels responded that such screens create schools where students perform at a certain academic level, which drew boos from the audience. He argued that eliminating screens alone would not resolve segregation and reiterated that reforms needed to be developed with communities.

Samuels did not offer a firm timeline for implementing an integration plan.

The heated town hall comes as Mamdani’s administration faces mounting pressure to develop a more detailed plan to address racial and socioeconomic segregation in public schools, which remain among the most segregated in the country.

That pressure intensified after Hannah-Jones published her recent essay. At the time, Samuels was superintendent of District 13 in Brooklyn, where her daughter attended P.S. 307.

When Hannah-Jones requested help from Samuels, he assigned an extra teacher to help her daughter and other lagging students catch up. While Hannah-Jones did not name Samuels in her essay, she has since confirmed that he was the superintendent.

Mamdani has signaled that desegregating the school system is a priority for the administration.

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories