Textbook lesson in gentrification
Erik Engquist Published: October 7, 2007 - 6:59 am The city's ballyhooed rezoning of Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn is supposed to create a vibrant, integrated community with whites and minorities, rich and poor living together. A proverbial melting pot. But in local public schools, it is fanning a cauldron. Incoming parents--largely white and well-educated--are rejecting neighborhood public schools en masse. Parents seeking progressive reforms are meeting fierce resistance from an entrenched school bureaucracy. Classrooms are emptying out as newcomers decline to fill the seats vacated by minorities priced out of the area. "When parents come in and say a school's not good enough for their children, it's a very sensitive issue," says Kate Yourke, an activist parent who moved to Williamsburg from the Upper West Side in 1985. "Parents were quite naive about the implications." The May 2005 rezoning of northern Brooklyn by the Bloomberg administration and the City Council has triggered a boom of luxury apartment projects. In the next few years, tens of thousands of affluent residents will plunk themselves down in what has long been a poor, heavily ethnic area. The schoolyard fights of the last two years point to uglier times ahead for the administration's most ambitious experiment with accelerated gentrification. Consider what happened to Brooke Parker, who led an effort to increase arts education at P.S. 84 in Williamsburg. "I was running for the school leadership team, and I got heckled by faculty at a meeting," she says. "The faculty was trying to push out parents they didn't want." It worked: Ms. Parker and the others pulled their kids from the school. It's a common scenario in District 14, where many schools feature tightly controlled classrooms in which test preparation, handwriting drills and homework are emphasized. Some schools have no recess, and children are rarely allowed to speak to each other, even at lunch. Students might have just one gym class a week but spend two hours a day on penmanship. Exams begin in kindergarten. The rigid approach, which produces admirable test scores in some District 14 schools, is typical of conservative, immigrant-dominated communities. "From when you drop your children off to when you pick them up, they're not allowed to have fun," says one white mother who expects to transfer her child to a private elementary school next year. With few exceptions, the neighborhood's new arrivals are sending their kids anywhere but their zoned schools. Many use false addresses to enroll them in schools in lower Manhattan. Others opt for a charter school in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, or private or magnet schools as far as an hour away. As a result, enrollment fell 12% over two years in the district's 20 elementary schools; 13 were left at less than 80% of capacity and seven at less than 60%. The five conventional middle schools are now just 56% full on average. Developers are worried The problem is not lost on the developers marketing new apartments to white professionals from Manhattan who demand schools with parental involvement, field trips, hands-on projects and the like. "We have thought about it," says Ron Moelis, who is building hundreds of luxury units in Williamsburg. "I don't have an answer for you. There's talk of a charter school, a new magnet school or maybe even a new private school. It would be great if that occurs." No new schools, says city With so many vacant desks, the Department of Education says it won't build new schools. Instead, District 14 Superintendent James Quail says he will try to accommodate parents who seek "more opportunities for children to think and develop their own learning styles in classrooms, and more opportunities for parents to engage." But the department has given principals great autonomy, and many resist change. "[Former Deputy Chancellor] Carmen Farina said that all you need is 10 families to move in and help turn a school around," says Pamela Wheaton, the director of InsideSchools.org, which gives District 14 schools mixed reviews. "But if you have a principal who's diametrically opposed. ..." Some parents are plotting to start self-contained boutique schools within existing district buildings. Ms. Yourke, whose 7-year-old son attends public school in East Williamsburg, opposes that move. She is leading a small group of parents who are trying to move District 14 out of the 1950s. They aired their grievances at a powwow in June, but little has happened since. "Our last chance to integrate these communities is by raising our children together, and I don't think the Department of Education has a mind-set or a plan for how that can happen," Ms. Yourke says. "They have been completely negligent in dealing with this." SCHOOL DISTRICT 14 Includes Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and part of Bedford-Stuyvesant Enrollment, October 2006 19,652 Two-year change in K-5 enrollment -12% ETHNIC BREAKDOWN Hispanic 62% Black 25% White 9% Asian/other 4% Students with Limited English proficiency 15% Sources: NYC and NYS departments of education NO HELP FOR THE GIFTED Programs for the gifted, used by many districts to attract middle-class parents, don't exist in District 14. Officials tried to launch a program last year, but they promoted it poorly and located it at P.S. 297--a 99% black and Latino school in an area so dangerous that students are forbidden from using the playground. Only three students accepted spots in the gifted program, so it was canceled. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/