LOWER EAST SIDE — Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña will speak to parents and answer their questions during a town hall meeting next week on the Lower East Side.
The Sept. 17 meeting at P.S. 20 The Anna Silver School will be hosted by the District 1 Community Education Council, which will collect questions in advance through an online form. Parents will also be able to fill out a question card at the 166 Essex St. school before the meeting starts at 6 p.m.
“We’re pleased to host the chancellor," said Lisa Donlan, president of the District 1 CEC. "It’s important to hear from her."
The chancellor will answer as many questions as possible during the meeting, and her office will collect all unanswered questions and respond to them in writing, Donlan said. Answers will be emailed to parents and will also be available in print at the school.
After the Q-and-A session with Fariña, the CEC meeting will continue with a discussion of open admissions and how it's reducing diversity in the district's schools, Donlan said.
Lower East Side and East Village schools had relied on race-based admissions policies since the early 1990s, using quotas so that each elementary school had roughly the same breakdown. However, after the city ended the policy under the Bloomberg administration and forced schools to use race-blind admissions, the district's schools have become increasingly more segregated, Donlan said.
“There’s great inequities that come from this open enrollment that we have and we know there’s a way to solve it,” Donlan said.
The CEC will invite parents to take part in diversity workshops this year, designed to build consensus on how to diversify the neighborhood's schools.
“There’s a million ways to look at diversity," Donlan said, "so we want to say, 'What does our community value?'"
