Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza To Hold UWS Town Hall

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza will hold a town hall meeting on the Upper West Side this week, according to the community education council for school district 3.

A flier advertising the town hall meeting does not specify what Carranza will be discussing with parents, but a plan to increase diversity among district middle schools will likely be broached. In June, the city Department of Education announced it will move forward with a plan to reserve 25 percent of seats at District 3 middle schools for low-performing students who qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program starting with students entering sixth grade in 2019.

"Students benefit from integrated schools, and I applaud the District 3 community on taking this step to integrate their middle schools," Carranza said in June. "I hope what we're announcing in District 3 will be a model for other districts to integrate schools across the City, and I look forward to working with parents and educators as we implement this plan and strengthen middle schools across the district."

The school district's community education council — a volunteer body made up of district parents — debated the merits of the plan for months, and meetings were often heated. Many district parents spoke out against the plan by claiming it would punish the district's high-performing schools.

The main argument among opponents of the plan was often: Why change admissions at good schools instead of fixing underperforming schools?

Carranza found himself mixed up in the debate when he sent a tweet criticizing the school district's "wealthy white Manhattan parents." Carranza retweeted an article by RawStory with the headline "WATCH: Wealthy white Manhattan parents angrily rant against plan to bring more black kids to their schools." The tweet was liked and retweeted thousands of times, but it didn't earn the chancellor any good will on the Upper West Side.

The article featured video from a Spectrum NY 1 News article about a recent meeting of Community Education Council 3 — a parent-led group that helps dictate school policy on the Upper West Side and in parts of Harlem — that featured some white parents complaining about a city plan to desegregate neighborhood middle schools.

Wednesday night's meeting will be held at P.S. 163 on West 97th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, according to the education council. The town hall is expected to begin at 6:30 p.m. and run until about 7:30 p.m., according to a flyer.

Photo by David J. Phillip/Associated Press