Some Manhattan parents are weighing in on a controversial rezoning plan that could force their kids to switch schools. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
PS 199 is one of the city's higher-performing schools. It serves a student body that is almost all white and high-income.
Just nine blocks away is PS 191, a school with low test scores that has recently been labeled persistently dangerous by the state for having a significant number of disciplinary incidents. The students are mostly black and Hispanic and from low-income families.
However, the wealthy, high-performing PS 199 is also extremely overcrowded, so the Department of Education is proposing to re-draw the school's zone lines, sending families whose children would have gone there to the much-lower-performing school.
Wednesday night, Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña attended a packed meeting in the community, where she pushed parents to have an open mind, saying if they invest in a school like PS 191, it will improve.
"A school turns around when a community believes in it and says together, 'We can do this,'" Fariña said.
Parents who moved to the neighborhood so their children could attend PS 199 say their concerns with all of the different rezoning proposals have nothing to do with race and class but with academic performance and safety, but other parents say rezoning or combining the zones for the two schools could finally break down the stark segregation that has formed over time in this neighborhood.
"I think the opportunity here is to resolve a very difficult issue for the city and probably for other cities around the country: how do you resolve for overcrowding and, ultimately, for segregation? And the opportunity here is for the community, for the administration, faculty to work together to actually, to integrate the schools," said parent Andrew Chu.
The chancellor spoke about the value of diversity as well, though she stopped short of endorsing any of the rezoning plans that would truly mix the populations at the two schools.
"To the degree that we have good mixtures in all our schools, I think we have a better citizenship," Fariña said.
The local elected parent council is in charge of actually approving a rezoning proposal, which it's supposed to do by next month. However, there is still little concensus on what the final plan should look like.