New York’s new schools chief just got a lesson in the three Rs — reading, ’riting and race relations.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza ignited the first controversy of his tenure early Friday when he tweeted out a story with the headline “Wealthy white Manhattan parents angrily rant against plan to bring more black kids to their schools.”
The chancellor, who has been in his job for less than a month, spent the rest of the day dealing with the fallout as the post divided parents.
“That’s fueling the fire, and that’s a mistake,” said Joshua Goldberg, a parent of a sixth-grader at the Upper West Side’s MS 245 on West 77th Street.
Middle School 245 is a half block from the American Museum of Natural History on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. That’s pretty pricey The Squid and the Whale territory. The precinct that the school is in appears to have voted 90-7 for Hillary over Trump.
Carranza’s tweet linked to an article on the news site Raw Story. Posted Wednesday, the story recaps an NY1 report on a heated meeting between school officials and a group of mostly white parents over a proposal to diversify Upper West Side middle schools.
The Department of Education proposal calls for reserving 25 percent of seats at 17 middle schools in District 3 for kids who score below grade level on state exams.
Parents have objected to the plan for its impact on school quality, but critics argue their opposition is fueled by class and racial animus because many low-scoring students are black or Hispanic.
This school is currently pretty diverse: 46% white, 26% Hispanic, 17% black, but the nonwhites are exceptionally smart. In English tests, both the Hispanics and blacks score above the state average for whites. So it’s a nice bubble for wealthy liberal white families.
The Raw Story article includes NY1’s video of the meeting, which was held Tuesday at PS 199.
“You’re talking about an 11-year-old, ‘You worked your butt off, and you didn’t get that, what you needed or wanted,’ ” one woman rails in the meeting. “You’re telling them, ‘You’re going to go to a school that’s not going to educate you in the same way you’ve been educated. Life sucks!’ ”
Asked on Friday whether he agrees that it’s a race issue, Carranza tried to have it both ways.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had those conversations with the folks. Again, I will say that the video speaks for itself. I didn’t write the words. I retweeted the report,” he said during a stop in Harlem.
“This has been a conversation that’s been everywhere, so I’m glad we’re having the conversation,” added Carranza, who is Mexican-American. “But I will say very strongly that as the chancellor of schools in New York City, I am who I am, and I’ve lived the life I’ve lived, and I am a man of color.”
Indeed, Carranza looks like a member of Los Lobos. And the Tucson native takes pride in being a mariachi musician in his spare time.
But you have to wonder if his heretofore glorious career climb up the superintendent ladder in Las Vegas, San Francisco (where rich people all send their kids to private schools, so nobody much cares how terrible the public schools are there), and humble Houston has fully prepared him for the shark tank that is the Upper West Side.
