While New York City has been famously criticized for having one of the most racially segregated school systems in the country, P.S. 9, The Sarah Garnet School, in District 13, demonstrated what is possible when a multi-racial community has the opportunity to learn, grow and thrive together. We are two parents who were very involved in developing a proposal to phase out Gifted and Talented programs (G&T) at our school and want to share how our school engaged with these questions. We offer our story to parent leaders that wish to work at the school-based level to make changes now.
The Who:
We were both active parents on P.S. 9’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, which is a part of both the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) and the School Leadership Team (SLT). The committee was charged with exploring and addressing issues of equity and inclusion at our diverse public elementary school. Over the years we worked on a variety of issues: providing support for our immigrant families; reviewing classroom libraries to ensure that they offer diverse representation; hosting fair-housing workshops to address issues of gentrification in the neighborhood, and many more initiatives. The committee had (and continues to have) a robust membership made up of our students’ families (we even had a couple of grandparents involved), teachers, and other school staff. The committee was co-chaired by a parent and a teacher.
The Why:
P.S. 9 is a zoned, neighborhood elementary school located in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. In addition to having self-contained special education classrooms, general education classrooms, a Dual Language (Spanish/English) program, and Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) classrooms, P.S. 9 housed one of several district-level Gifted and Talented programs and more recently added a Dual-Language (Spanish/English) program.
On paper, P.S. 9 is notably diverse in terms of the racial and economic demographics of families served by the school. Nonetheless, many members of our school community raised concerns that the demographics of separate classrooms for Gifted & Talented students when compared to all other classes revealed that we still had work to do. The issue was of great concern to the EDI Committee, as we sought to create a school that was not just a desegregated building but a fully integrated school community.
Our school community grappled with the issue of G&T programming cultivating segregated classroom settings for years. In many ways, for us, it conflicted with why we fell in love with P.S. 9 over and over again. One of the many times we felt inspired was on the school tours when the principal explained the school-wide enrichment model and shared her belief that every child comes to school with gifts and talents. After many years of working to address concerns about segregation within the school building, in the early spring of 2019 the EDI committee made the decision to finally develop and present a proposal to phase out our G&T program. Some families in the school community were reluctant to consider this change, but the release of the School Diversity Advisory Group’s report in the summer of 2019, highlighted findings that confirmed that tracking children at such a young age has amplified segregation in NYC schools, bolstering our case to phase out the program at PS 9.
The How:
We began by organizing three listening circles with the purpose of gathering feedback from the whole school community that could be incorporated into a proposal in order to understand opportunities, concerns, and unanticipated consequences. A broad cross-section of community members that included teachers and families joined three sessions with about 180 participants in total.
At each session, one parent from the school who was not part of the EDI, but who was professionally involved in issues of educational equity, provided context for the inequities observed in G&T programs citywide and across the nation. Then, members of the community met in small groups to share their ideas using the following protocol:
• What questions, hopes, concerns, and fears do parents have about de-tracking and classroom integration?
• Responses and solutions - What are ways to address these concerns?
• Remaining questions - What prominent questions remain for school officials to consider as they decide on detracking and integrating the school's classrooms?
In each group, one volunteer facilitated the discussion so everyone would have a chance to share and listen to others; another volunteer took notes.
Not everyone in the community was in favor of phasing out the G&T program or was happy when the proposal moved forward. However, a powerful part of this process was that family members had an opportunity to hear from each other. Learning about how the existence of the G&T program had affected the experiences of all children and families in the school contributed to our community’s understanding of the larger implications and consequences of having segregated classrooms. It also offered the opportunity for families with children in different grades and classroom settings to connect and hear from each other.
The Result:
We incorporated the feedback we received at the listening circles into a draft proposal to phase out G&T at our school. Families whose children were already in the G&T track would be able to remain in G&T until they graduated from the school, but P.S. 9 would not admit any new incoming G&T students. We hosted a town hall meeting in the school’s library to review the proposal draft, and then presented a revised version to the SLT in May 2020. The SLT reviewed the proposal, and at their June 2020 meeting, they voted to send the proposal to our district superintendent with their unanimous support that the proposal be approved. The superintendent brought the proposal to the DOE and, eventually, we learned that the incoming 2021 kindergarten class would no longer include a G&T track.
We know that these issues are complicated and that each school faces unique challenges when working toward achieving the equitable education that our children deserve. Decisions about G&T continue to be contentious and complex in New York City, so we offer our story as a model for other parents who wish to engage in this work on the ground in individual schools.