I'm the parent of two New York City public school children, who count immigrants among their great grandparents, as well as office cleaners and entrepreneurs. We have a long experience with the NYC DOE admissions process. I'm specifically writing about the 2022 Middle School Admissions Process, which impacts 9-and-10-year-old children. My city has become entangled in a proposed return to the sorting and segregation of young school children, which is promoting resource hoarding among economically enhanced parents. I ask that NYC School District 2 not return to the harmful middle school screening process — no school district should —and am writing to shine a light on the misinformation campaign happening in real time over middle school admissions.
 
Emboldened by the negative commentary about New York City public school students from Chancellor David Banks, Community Education Council District 2 (CECD2) passed Resolution 209 to demand the school district do away with its current lottery and reinstate a middle school screening process. I am outraged at their embracement of an outdated model of public education, which reinforces middle school segregation, as well the lack of real facts being utilized in the discussion of who has access to quality childhood education. Lies have been publicized at CECD2 meetings regarding middle school lotteries.  
 
Certain CECD2 members embarked on a misinformation campaign regarding Brooklyn School District 15 (D15), which transitioned to a lottery process for middle school admissions pre-covid. These lies disparaged the accomplishments in D15 and placed D15 in a negative light for having moved away from screens to a lottery. Two examples of the misinformation campaign include: 
     

• A "MIT STUDY" was referenced in public meetings. CECD2 members claimed that a MIT study showed the D15 admissions process had negative effects on enrollment. Yet the cited study was never a published study! It was a PhD Dissertation, not a peer reviewed study.  Furthermore, the dissertation in fact concludes that the D15 diversity plan decreased socioeconomic and racial segregation in D15 middle schools, as intended.
• Statements about enrollment loss (a.k.a. white flight/high income flight) after the lottery was instituted were also made about D15. This is fundamentally not true! In reality, District 15 had a charter school relocate to a different building in a different school district, reducing the number of students in D15.  

 
When I reached out to members of CECD15 I learned that something remarkable is happening. Families are moving into their district so as to avoid the harm from a middle school screening process. White and affluent families have continued to choose D15 middle schools, so much so that some of its schools have lost Title One funding. In addition they pointed out DOE Director of Enrollment Research and Policy Andy McClintock has debunked the notion that there was enrollment loss in year one of the D15 plan. 
  
Let's be real about the state of public education in 2022 because CECD2 is not. Children currently enrolled in elementary school have had a severe disruption to educational experiences due to the pandemic. As I write this Covid Exposure Notifications are being emailed to parents like me, and school staff are covering for teachers who tested positive for Covid and are unable to work. This is the new normal and it disrupts education. Now is not the time to use test taking as an admissions process for middle school, nor have there ever been circumstances where this would be acceptable for young learners. There has never been a fair delivery of quality education to all elementary schools. Class sizes are much too large. Our elementary schools do not even have librarians! The list of disparity goes on. 
 
Let's be real about the situation in school District 2. Our local school council, CECD2, has a few members who use the coded language of "advanced learners" to make us believe there is a select group of students somehow being deprived by the middle school lottery. The fact is all 9-and-10-year-olds are advanced learners by the very nature of their rapid brain development at these ages.
 
The reality is Resolution 209 endorses policies rooted in segregation. The goal of this resolution is primarily to segregate as a method to hoard resources, and to maintain a feeling of privilege. CECD2 Resolution 209 aims to sort children by an ability to "bubble in" the answers on tests. Sorting by testing is a useful tactic to move test-prepped children away from the masses, placing them into a few school buildings. This feeds directly into the stereotypes of "good" and "bad" middle schools in a district. It reduces choice for all families in the district due to this stereotype acting in combination with resource hoarding. 
 
"Public school enrollment policy, which determines who has access to specific schools and who is excluded, was established with land use and local funding and control in mind," said Valerie Sterne and Janelle Taylor, Parents' Conceptions of School Enrollment as Property; Poverty & Race journal; September 2022, Volume 31: Number 1. "Claims of entitlement to attendance at a particular school stem in part from ideals of white privilege and the historically racist foundations of school choice." 
 
Now, as a parent of a student in District 2, will I be forced to participate in school segregation? All because of individuals' misguided view of childhood and lies? We should continue segregation here because of elected officials who feel no responsibility to deliver a quality education for all students—even to children in a pandemic? Resolution 209 reminds me of Alabama Governor George Wallace, because his disgusting vision for humanity specifically targeted education in his pro-segregation campaign.
    
When one of my children attended kindergarten, the classroom was called the Ruby Bridges classroom. Ruby Bridges was one of the first black children to integrate a school in New Orleans in 1960. Last year the book Ruby Bridges Goes To School was targeted for book banning in the state of Tennessee. I see the same vile sentiments, and misguided use of our taxpayer dollars, in CECD2 Resolution 209. Hoarding education as an asset not to be shared, putting in place barriers to education, be it at obstacles at the doorway of a school building, or assessment tests and screens, it’s one in the same —school segregation. And I remind you that I feel this way already knowing that our New York City school system is the most segregated public school system in the United States of America. I cannot fathom our city, our school district, continuing to walk in this same direction. 
 
Lies have been spread about middle school lotteries. Please do not bring back middle school screening, and keep in place the middle school lottery. 
 
Sincerely,
Colleen O’Connor-Grant
New York City Public School Parent 

At a meeting of business leaders, David Banks, the Chancellor of the nation’s largest public school system, spoke about the admissions policies to middle and high schools.  He justified the discriminatory practice of screening 13-year-old children by saying children who “work really hard” should be given access to high schools over students “you have to throw water on their face to get them to go to school every day”  The Chancellor also said: “It’s critically important that if you’re working hard and making good grades, you should not be thrown into a lottery with just everybody.” 

His comment dehumanizes children and shifts the blame for the school system’s failure on children  instead of the adults in charge. The comment perpetuates the myths of meritocracy and deficit narratives thrust upon Black and Latinx children, students living in poverty, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students in temporary housing. The Chancellor justified the maintenance of a two-tiered, segregated public school system in a public event after already making disparaging remarks against our disability community. Last month, the Chancellor stated families with students with disabilities were “gaming the system” by using the special education process to provide their children with support and services.  This is unacceptable for a Chancellor who is responsible for educating all of his one million students.

We call upon the Chancellor to examine his biases and assumptions about the majority of the students in the system under his care.  Some children don't have the luxury of having their own bed or getting a good night's sleep, and others may be dealing with the effects of trauma at school or home.  Some schools are so unable to provide additional educational resources to support a child who needs it, the child has tapped out. Instead of devaluing a child who may require extreme measures to go to school, he should be asking why a child hesitates or refuses to go to school in the first place. Instead of defining hard work in the narrowest sense, he should open his eyes to the hard work of our children who remain in a school system that does not prioritize their needs or worse, criminalizes them. We call upon him to find compassion, and provide the same educational opportunities for students who, for a variety of reasons beyond their control, may find that 98 average just out of reach.