Schools Head Sorry For Racially-Charged Tweet About UWS Parents

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — New York City's new School's Chancellor apologized Monday for sending a tweet aimed at "wealthy white Manhattan parents" amid a push to desegregate schools on the Upper West Side.

Last week, 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." Carranza's tweet was liked more 4,500 times, retweeted more than 3,500 times and garnered hundreds of comments, but it also didn't earn him 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.

Carranza walked back his criticism of the parents and apologized for tweeting the article's racially-charged headline.

"I will pay more attention in the future when I retweet, to make sure that the language that is automatically generated in the retweet is something that I would say," Carranza said Monday as reported by the Daily News. "If that has caused any kind of pain, then I apologize for it."

The new school's chancellor also urged New Yorkers to "take a breath" and be patient with the city as it works to integrate public schools, the Daily News reported.

The proposal in front of Community Education Council 3 would require each of the district's middle schools to accept reserve a quarter of its seats for students performing at a low level on state English and math tests, NY 1 reported. While the plan does not specifically mention splitting student up by race, the district's high-performing schools are mostly attended by white students.

Parents opposed to the plan argue that students will be forced out of high-performing schools despite their family's attempts to enroll them in the best schools, NY 1 reported. The CEC 3 meeting NY 1 reported on was held at PS 199, one of the highest-performing schools in the district.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio weighed in on Carranza's controversy during an appearance on NY 1's "Inside City Hall."

"I understand any parent who says, 'I had my heart set on a certain school for my kid or a lot of my kid’s classmates are going there, I want maximum opportunity to go there.' That’s very human. That’s very natural," de Blasio said.

De Blasio pointed to a necessary "robust local discussion" in order to strike a balance between some parents' fears and the need to integrate city schools. The mayor also referenced a successful push by CEC 3 and the Department of Education to reshape the Upper West Side's elementary school zones in 2016 in an effort to ease overcrowding and integrate some of the neighborhood's schools.

CEC 3 will meet twice in May to discuss the middle school plan. The council will hold a normal business and calendar meeting on May 16 at PS 242 at West 122nd Street in Harlem and a special calendar meeting on the middle school plan on May 22 at PS 163 on West 97th Street.