In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate but equal schools were unconstitutional

The problem is that schools in New York City are separated by race and not equal. Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers, when you de-segregate public schools then you can bash charter schools.

This is in response of Michael Mulgrew's Be Our Guest column on March 18, 2016.  Its shocking that even though schools were desegregated in the 1960's, it still exists and it exists in Manhattan, one of the most diverse cities in the nation and the world.  The worst examples of this are PS145, which is almost entirely black and Spanish, where as P.S. 199 on West 70th Street has scores twice as high as the city average and most money than most schools combined. The majority of the students at PS 199 are white. Yet P.S. 191 has the complete opposite make up and their test scores are far below the city average mainly because of the disparity of money between PS 199 and PS 191.

The same disparity in race can be seen in PS 84 Lillian Webber which has 60% population of black and Spanish and only 35% white, yet the school around the corner PS 333 has 64% white 27% black and Spanish.  One might ask why two schools, PS 84 and PS 333 have such different racial make ups, and the answer lies is PS 84 accepts all students and PS 333 has a lottery which is closed to the public so they can pic and choose the students that attend their school without any oversight.   You might expect a school named after ‪#‎BookerTWashington, who was an African American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States, between 1890 and 1915, ‪#‎btwhspva to have at least the same amount of black students as white students, but just like others in zone 3, the school, MS54, located on West 107th street has 65% white students and only 10% black and 14% Hispanic students ‪#‎D3equity, ‪#‎D3equityineducation.  This is also true about schools below 95th Street on the Upper East side, which are all white.

Natalie Russo, the principal of ‪#‎PS145 put together a great panel on the lack of diversity in Manhattan's district 3 public schools. Michael Alves, Controlled Choice Pioneer, Lisa Donlan, District 1 Parent Leader, Rene Kathawala District 3 parent leader, Clara Hemphill Inside Schools Editor and Kim Watkins, Community Education Council district 3 were very informative. Also thank you to Councilmen Mark Levine for attending. 

Dr. Russo is nice enough to select students from anywhere in zone 3, even students who were zoned for PS 87 but weren't given a spot there.  But when those students leave pre K they go to PS 87, PS 452, PS009 the same schools that didn't have a spot for them in pre k, leaving Dr, Russo's school, PS 145 under its capacity and therefore not entitled to certain funds.  The ironic thing now is that PS 87, PS 87, PS 452, PS009 aren't even selecting some students for kindergarten who were zoned for those schools and therefore they need to either attend PS191, a low funded school or forget going to public school. I suggest those students remain at PS145 and help Dr. Russo get the funds she needs to improve the school.  

Unfortunately the panel will accomplish nothing because many public schools in the west 70s, west 80's and west 90's below 96th Street will continue to pick only white students 

‪#‎D3equity, ‪#‎D3equityineducation. The good news is that my son's school ‪#‎HHLAis the most diverse school in the city and maybe even the nation, with no race prevalent.  How are these racial discrepancies  alright with Michael Mulgrew? 

 It seems that Mr. Mulgrew and the city's united federation of teachers is trying their hardest to keep schools segregated and the only people who are willing to give black and Spanish students a chance are charter schools which the mayor and the city's united federation of teachers are trying to close.  I'm glad Charter Schools have the Governor on our side. 

The solution is to give parents who are zoned for very good but over crowded schools the option to select nearby schools and give them a tax incentive to do so.  That way people who are zoned for the schools like PS87, PS452, PS166 etc have a financial incentive to enroll their kids in schools like PS145, which is a great school but suffers from low enrollment because parents take their kids out of the school after pre K.   The parents should get the tax incentive to send their kids tp a school like PS145 and the school would get additional money from the state for being fully enrolled. Also maybe PS145 which accepts students from anywhere in zone 3 (something PS 166, PS87 and PS 452 don't do), needs to require students who enroll in Pre K to stay entire at least Kindergarten.  Also maybe PS145 and other schools should get all students into a second language program therefore there's more an incentive to remain in the school and build on the spanish or russian language skills they've acquired.  Maybe there should be a cap on the money school can get through donations from large donors and if they go over that cap, the money gets distributed to other schools that don't have access to large donors.