With Banks and Adams, NYC school integration advocates see an uphill fight
At a town hall meeting in southeast Queens this spring, a parent leader asked David Banks, the newly minted schools chancellor: Will you fight to integrate our segregated schools?
“I think diversity, when it’s done well, provides a level of enrichment for education that you cannot beat,” Banks responded. “But I also think that it is critically important that we not lose sight of the fact that we have to increase the quality of all of our schools.”
Six months into his tenure, Banks, along with his boss, Mayor Eric Adams, have not laid out plans to advance integration in the city’s school system — one of the most segregated in the nation. Instead, as the chancellor told that crowd in Queens, they have said their focus is on making sure all of the city’s 1,600 schools are effective.