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.
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