Apartheid in Brooklyn?

In New York City, for anyone unfamiliar with the public school 'system', there are districts, and zones. These represent territories of sorts, sometimes cutting through large swaths of diverse neighborhoods... and supposedly represent the schools a given student can enroll. Back when I was growing up, in the middle 70's, that meant not travelling too far for any school with the exception of high school, and even then most high schools were neighborhood accessible. For a myriad of (mostly political) reasons, that is essentially not the case but for the littlest kids.

The elementary schools (PreK, K - 5th grade) tend to take only from their immediate 'zone'... and for some highly regarded zones, notably covering areas in the city one can easily guess (i.e, upper east side of Manhattan, and Park Slope, Brooklyn) those schools are inundated with kids, parents of kids clamoring for spots, regularly faking and falsifying addresses, paying off landlords for 'leases', even moving families to areas to fall into a coveted 'zone'....

And, as a parent, I can tell you that along with tens of thousands of other 'in-the-know' parents, I have navigated, manipulated, and otherwise begged, borrowed and won spots for my own offspring over the years. And each year, articles appear in the Times, Post or Daily News...all of which presumably speak to the essential 'inenquity' of the system. Knowing where to go and who to talk to makes for huge differences and so it follows that those who DO NOT know, perhaps who are unfamiliar with the city, the language (recent immigrant families), or other such disadvantages simply dont find out.

What is peculiar about the newer system of 'school choice' and with older students and families 'choosing schools' is that there are schools sprinkled in many areas and districts (both good and bad as they are known to all) which for a number of reasons can become popular (or not) with the middle and upper middle class (and primarily white) families. Then, there are the schools in both areas again but which have not acheived that level or reputation. It is this latter category of school where I find myself (a white, middle class woman) as I walk into the very first school's 'SUBCentral' assignment: "This", I tell myself, " is the apartheid of Brooklyn" as I see immediately that the students of the school are all but entirely black. Curiously too, the large school building is situated right in the middle of one of the priciest real estate sections of downtown Brooklyn. With the parade just on the corner of white, and affluent residents, heading to the Brooklyn F Train, or pushing the $1200 Italian or British 'prams' to their respective nannie's, day care or private school nurseries, I enter the school, passing directly through massive metal detectors, several oversized school 'security' guards with NYPD armbands, and head to the office. "Apartheid in Brooklyn", I am thinking, as I march on..., "This is going to be interesting".