Desegregation In New York

While Southern cities were firing legal smoke shells at school integration last week, New York City announced a historic breach of de facto segregation. A growing problem in every big Northern city, de facto segregation results from slum housing, racial ghettos and rigid school zoning laws. In New York City, where three-quarters of Manhattan's public-school pupils are now Negro and Puerto Rican, the concentration of them in some schools is as high as 100%. Negro parents complain that such schools are educationally inferior. Demanding a chance to send their children to more racially mixed schools, many of them were prepared to keep their kids at home next week in "sit-out" boycotts.

Last week, giving way to the threat, the city's board of education for the first time systematically broke its own traditional rule that children must attend schools in their own neighborhoods. The new plan: students from 21 "sending" junior high schools with crowded classrooms and high concentrations of Negroes and Puerto Ricans will be allowed to shift to 28 "receiving" schools that have space for 3,000 more students. The plan will be extended to elementary schools next year, and ultimately may involve 15,000 transfers. Will the sending schools continue to be neglected educationally, and will the receiving schools be swamped with poor students? To avoid either possibility, the board promised to keep a sharp eye on standards at both ends. Said Superintendent of Schools John J. Theobald: "The 1,000,000 kids in our schools are my kids--and I'm going to give them the best education I can give them."

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