New York Appleseed's Year in Review

New York Appleseed This Year

2019

Accomplishments

New York Appleseed advocates for integrated schools and communities in New York City and New York State. With evidence-based advocacy and close work with stakeholders, we achieve direct impact in the community and beyond. We extend and magnify this impact across North America through participation in the Appleseed network.

A clarion call for our middle schools

Appleseed burst into 2019 with the release of a new advocacy briefing on January 5. The briefing demonstrated that policy - not geography - is responsible for much of the segregation in middle schools within community school districts across New York City. In the briefing, Appleseed called for an end to the use of competitive admissions (based on the behavior and academic performance of students in the first nine years of their lives) at all middle schools across the city. Both the Daily News and Chalkbeat covered the release.

Appleseed is grateful to our longtime pro bono partner Orrick for the careful research at the core of the briefing.

In August , the School Diversity Advisory Group endorsed our conclusion with its own recommendation to end the use of competitive admissions to middle school (below). With support from the Donors’ Education Collaborative, Appleseed will be working with IntegrateNYC toward this key priority in 2020.

Closing the Divide report released

Since the fall of 2017 New York Appleseed has been proud to be a part of the Fair & Affordable Housing Roundtable that brought together advocates from the too-often separate affordable-housing and fair-housing (integration) communities. In January , the Roundtable released a new policy agenda Closing the Divide: Creating Equitable, Inclusive, and Affordable Communities with recommendations for creating equitable, inclusive, and affordable communities. The Roundtable will be working in 2020 toward the implementation of these priorities.

Adoption of initial recommendations from School Diversity Advisory Group

Appleseed was proud to be represented on the School Diversity Advisory Group (SDAG) appointed by Mayor de Blasio to develop solutions to segregation in New York City public schools. In February SDAG released its first report, Making the Grade: The Path to Real Integration and Equity for NYC Public School Students , which offered a comprehensive vision for integration and equity in New York City schools. The report’s embrace of IntegrateNYC’s 5 Rs of Real Integration showed a powerful commitment to youth voice in the policy process and a dynamic re-imagining of integration. We were happy to see the report call out the use of middle-school screens as the “biggest contributor to middle-school segregation.”

In June, Mayor de Blasio announced that New York City would adopt nearly all of these initial recommendations. The announcement was significant from a mayor who has moved cautiously to integrate schools, but the ultimate test for his leadership will be in his response to the Advisory Group's second set of recommendations (below). Read the press release from the Mayor’s Office with a statement from Appleseed , the article in Chalkbeat , and the mayor's op-ed in the Daily News.

A Victory for Integrated Communities in New York State

In March , the governor and legislature agreed to include “source of income” protection for tenants across New York State in their final budget agreement - a huge victory for more integrated communities in New York State. New York Appleseed has been a proud member of Ban Income Bias NY, which has been advocating for a statewide law for years. Landlord discrimination against prospective tenants with Housing Choice Vouchers and other forms of non-traditional income has been a significant barrier to low-income communities and communities of color. The coalition will be working in 2020 to make sure that the new law is enforced.

Integrated Middle Schools in District 15

The published results from the Community School District 15 middle school diversity plan in 2019 were overwhelming positive. In April , middle school offers in the district released showed major progress toward a more integrated system, which was more than anyone expected in the first year. Appleseed was proud to have supported the diversity planning process resulting in the end of competitive admissions to middle school, and we applaud the community for creating a more equitable vision for their schools.

Then in the fall, we learned that the plan was also a huge victory in terms of actual enrollment . Recently released data demonstrate that most families accepted their offers of admission and have not “fled” the district schools in search of other options as some commentators had predicted. ( Read the Daily News op-ed by Council Member Brad Lander and Appleseed . )

School Diversity Advisory Group Final Report

In August , School Diversity Advisory Group released its final report with bold and lucid recommendations to phase out competitive admissions processes in middle schools and to implement inclusionary admissions methods for high schools - long time goals for Appleseed and its student-led partner IntegrateNYC . Both organizations had provided leadership on the SDAG since its inception. With support from the Donors’ Education Collaborative, both organizations will be working toward this key priority in 2020. ( Read the press release with a statement from Executive Director David Tipson and Read the article in Chalkbeat .)

"Nothing About Us" at Lefferts House

Since 2017 New York Appleseed has worked with community partners Live Here, Learn Here, Prospect Park Alliance, and the Weeksville Heritage Center to develop new ways of interpreting the Lefferts Historic House Museum that is preserved in Prospect Park. The Lefferts enslaved and trafficked more people than nearly any other family in Kings County. Enslaved persons lived in the structure until Emancipation in 1827.

In October , Appleseed sponsored a production of “Nothing About Us” - a work addressing segregation - at the museum as a way of calling attention to the ongoing legacy of slavery in New York City. The students of Epic Theater Ensemble performed the play with the house as the backdrop. After the play, the performers conducted a dialogue with the audience around a campfire.

Testimony to City Council and amendments to School Diversity Accountability Act

In May, Appleseed presented testimony at a joint hearing held by the Committees on Education and Civil and Human Rights entitled Segregation in NYC Schools. Appleseed testified in favor of necessary amendments to the 2015 School Diversity Accountability Act and against a resolution calling for expansion of Gifted & Talented programs. ( Read the testimony here. )

Then in November , City Council passed a package of four bills in support of school integration. One of the bills contained the amendments we had advocated for to improve the 2015 School Diversity Accountability Act. Appleseed worked with partners Metis Associates , Orrick , and Alves Educational Consultants on the original law in 2014. The new version of the bill passed by Council addressed most of Appleseed’s concerns. Three other new bills sent to the mayor by the City Council would establish a permanent School Diversity Advisory Group, facilitate the creation of “diversity working groups” at the community-school-district level, and require reporting on the demographics of school staff.

Continued growth of Diversity in Admissions pro gram

The diversity in admissions pilot program that began with our 2012 breakthrough with the PS 133 admission plan continues to grow. Since additional schools began adopting their own plans in 2015, the number has grown every year. In 2019 nearly one hundred schools and programs are now using pro-diversity admissions plans. Among these are schools that are part of district-wide plans in Community School District 1 and 15, both of which have been making steady progress toward their diversity goals.

Media Coverage

New York Appleseed advanced its advocacy priorities through frequent appearances in New York media outlets. Appleseed staff was frequently quoted or covered over the last year by The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , the New York Daily News , WNYC , WFUV , Gotham Gazette , Chalkbeat , and The 74 , and we successfully guided the content of many news articles in which we were not quoted. We published two op-eds in City Limits and a third in The Daily News and were featured on The Brian Lehrer Show and the podcasts What’s The [DATA] Point? and Point of Learning.

Staffing

This year David Tipson completed his tenth year at the helm of New York Appleseed. Under his leadership, New York Appleseed grew from a small project of the Washington-based Appleseed Foundation to an independent and prominent nonprofit organization in New York.

This summer we welcomed Nyah Berg as our new Integrated Schools Project Director. Nyah joined the Appleseed team in October after leading advocacy efforts for educational equity at ERASE Racism on Long Island. With ERASE Racism, Nyah worked with students and teachers, leading workshops around culturally responsive education, implicit bias, student advocacy and suburban segregation. She is pleased to join Appleseed, where she will draw on her previous experiences working to advocate for Real Integration and educational equity in New York. Late in the year, we hired Lena Dalke as our first integrated schools project associate. Lena’s support for the integrated schools project has dramatically expanded the capacity of the project in just a few months. We also had to say goodbye to Matt Gonzales, who transitioned from Appleseed to an exciting new position with the NYU Metro Center where we continue to work closely with him.

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New York Appleseed is a part of a nonprofit network of 17 public interest centers in the United States and Mexico. Appleseed centers are dedicated to building a society win which opportunities are genuine, access to justice is universal and equal, and government advances the public interest. Click on the links below to explore the Appleseed network: