Timeline For District 28 Diversity Plan Extended To End Of Year

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — The NYC Department of Education will give families more time to weigh in on a contentious plan to diversify the public school district that runs from Forest Hills down to Jamaica.

City school officials will host meetings at every elementary and middle school in District 28 starting in March, then hold six public workshops to gather input on how to shape the diversity plan. The planning process will wrap up in December 2020.

The changes, announced Wednesday, come after parents and elected officials bashed the community engagement process as opaque and insufficient.

Among their concerns was the hush-hush nature of a 20-person working group charged with guiding the planning process, whose members' names were kept secret.

The Department of Education on Wednesday released the names of the working group members, and a spokesperson said community leaders would recruit additional members.

"The District 28 Diversity Plan is driven by community voice and we are excited to make this process more inclusive and offer additional opportunities for parents, students, educators and all other community members to get involved and make our schools stronger," the agency wrote in a press release about the changes.

WXY Studio, a consultant hired by the department to put together a diversity plan for District 28 schools, was originally due to finalize a list of recommendations in June, based on four rounds of public workshops.

Those workshops were supposed to start at the beginning of the year. Instead, the Department of Education suddenly tossed that schedule and announced it would delay the process and go back to the drawing board, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"This process’s success is dependent on hearing viewpoints from every corner of the District, mutual trust, transparency and clarity, and we are committed to responding to the requests we’ve received," the agency said in a statement Wednesday.

"Some of these requests have included a desire for this process to include more voices and ensure that there are ample opportunities for engagement."

District 28 is one of five school districts citywide that received a grant to boost schools' diversity, following an application from the district's then-superintendent Mabel Sarduy.

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.

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.