Mayor, Carranza Use Brooklyn District To Launch Diversity Plan

Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza approved a plan to better integrate middle schools in Brooklyn’s District 15 Sept. 20, while also announcing a $2-million program to encourage other school districts to come up with their own diversity initiatives.

The plan, proposed by parents from Red Hook, Sunset Park, Gowanus and the more-affluent Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, was aimed at desegregating the district’s 11 middle schools. Though 55 percent of middle school students were non-white, 64 percent of Latino students attended just three of the schools, while 81 percent of white students went to the district’s most-elite three middle schools, including M.S. 51, which the Mayor’s two children attended.