District 28 Parents Demand Details On School Diversity Task Force

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Queens parents are protesting the hush-hush nature of a working group charged with guiding the just-launched process of integrating their children's school district, which includes Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Jamaica.

The 20-member working group is responsible for helping draft recommendations for a plan to increase diversity in District 28 middle schools and boosting public involvement in the process, which officially kicks off in January 2020 — but members' names, and why officials chose them, are largely secret.

A group calling itself Queens Parents United is petitioning the city Department of Education and consultants for WXY Studio, which the city commissioned to guide the planning process, to release detailed criteria for how they chose the working group's members.

"We have a right to know who has been chosen to represent us," the petition says. "These are voluntary positions and by not revealing them, or the methodology of their selection, suggests this is a 'kangaroo court' of cronies and known 'friendlies.'"

More than a thousand people have signed the petition since its launch over the weekend.

Representatives from the education department and WXY Studio did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the petition and its claims.

WXY Studio —which is being paid $775,000 in grant money to consult on diversity plans for District 28 and four other city school districts, according to THE CITY — spent three months choosing working group members in collaboration with education department officials and the District 28 superintendent's office, according to a website created about the plan.

Members' affiliations are listed on the website, but they are not identified by name. They include parents and students, members of local nonprofits and school officials.

The working group met for the first time on Dec. 4, the website says.

Forest Hills parent Kristin Gorman said her children's school principal nominated her to be on the working group, but she was rejected after a 30-minute phone interview with a WXY project manager and an education department staffer.

Gorman said in an interview she wasn't surprised she was rejected; she recalled the interviewers telling her they'd seen a lot of interest from District 28's northern half, but that they wanted the working group to represent all parts of the district.

"I had zero expectation that I would be selected, because I knew how competitive it was," she said.

But Gorman said she agreed with the petition's claim that members were chosen to "produce a predetermined outcome." When interviewers asked Gorman about her views on diversifying the district, she told them she thought eliminating zoned schools would "put our community at a disadvantage," she recalled.

Yanhai Wan, another parent living in Forest Hills, claims the education department is trying to "manipulate the planning process without transparency and without competition" and called for a working group open to all parents, teachers, students and other stakeholders in a statement sent to Patch.

Most District 28 middle schools are residentially zoned, meaning students' eligibility to go to a particular school is determined by where they live.

Of the nearly 42,000 students who attend school in the district, 30 percent are Asian, 28 percent are Hispanic, 20 percent are black and 16 percent are white, THE CITY reported; more than two-thirds are classified as living in poverty.

But a disproportionate number of the district's black students and students living in poverty attend school in the southern part of the district, according to THE CITY.

"Even though we are diverse as a district, many of our students from different ends never get to know and interact with each other," former District 28 superintendent Mabel Sarduy wrote in her application for the diversity grant.

"We believe students would benefit from schools that more closely reflect the diversity of the entire district."