Queens Pols Rip City's Handling Of School Integration Process

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Elected officials in Queens are criticizing the city's handling of a plan to improve racial diversity in the school district that runs from Forest Hills down to Jamaica, demanding "real opportunities" for residents to get involved in the process.

In a letter sent Thursday to Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, the eight officials ask the city's education department to host more than its four planned public engagement meetings on the new effort to integrate middle schools in District 28, which includes Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Jamaica.

"For the record, none of the signatories of this letter are opposed to diversity and equity in our schools," the officials wrote. "However, it is our responsibility to report to you that the way this process has been introduced to our respective communities has been opaque, confusing, and inconsistent."

U.S. Rep. Grace Meng; New York Assembly Members David Weprin, Dan Rosenthal and Andrew Hevesi; State Sens. John Liu and Toby Ann Stavisky and City Council Member Adrienne Adams signed the letter.

The officials ask that the Department of Education host public meetings in varying locations and at different times of the day "in order to be as inclusive and respectful as possible of the constraints of the daily lives of our constituents" and provide "adequate notice" of those meetings.

"It would be inappropriate for any of us to support a diversity plan created without meaningful conversation and engagement of our constituents," the officials wrote.

Miranda Barbot, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, said the agency would review the letter. "District 28 is at the very beginning of a community driven process to foster greater diversity in their schools," she said in an emailed statement. "We will continue robust community engagement throughout this process, which will involve additional public workshops, community presentations, and stakeholder meetings before a final proposal is put forward."

Planned public meetings and workshops on the potential District 28 overhaul won't start until next month, but a meeting in Jamaica last week on the diversity plan process filled to the brim with parents whose children attend school in the district, according to Chalkbeat and THE CITY.

The Department of Education has hired the firm WXY to direct the planning process.

Last school year, about a third of students in District 28 were Asian, 28 percent were Hispanic, 20 percent were black and 16 percent were white, Chalkbeat and THE CITY reported. Yet the majority of white students attend schools in Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, in the district's northern half, while most black students go to schools in the southern portion of the district.

Now District 28 is one of five school districts citywide that received a grant from the city to boost schools' diversity.

"Even though we are diverse as a district, many of our students from different ends never get to know and interact with each other," former district superintendent Mabel Sarduy wrote in the grant application.