A Brighter Choice: Building a Just School in an Unequal City

Discover how a group of mostly Black parents, working with an energetic principal and dedicated staff, helped build a sought-after, multiracial school in Brooklyn's rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant—a neighborhood where parents have long been dissatisfied with most of their local public schools. Under the leadership of PTA President Keesha Wright Sheppard and Principal Jeremy Daniel, the parents and staff at Brighter Choice Community School confront myriad problems both within the school and outside of the school's control. Challenges include the legacy of decades of housing discrimination, redlining, and disinvestment in Brooklyn; the high rates of homelessness and asthma that make it so hard for children to succeed; and a global pandemic that disproportionately hit people of color. The roots of educational inequality are deep, and not easily overcome without tackling racial and income inequality in our society as a whole. Yet, as this book demonstrates, parents are not powerless. This is the inspirational story of how parents overcame the past and created an equitable school within an unequal city.

Book Features:

• Follows a multiracial group of parents, working with an effective principal and staff, as they begin to bridge the deep divides of race and class.
• Shows why school integration is so difficult to achieve, even in integrated neighborhoods, because of the weight of historical inequalities and mistrust between groups.
• Incorporates social science research to show the impact of school and neighborhood conditions on academic achievement.
• Argues that socioeconomic integration offers the best hope for improving schools, but only if school leaders take care not to marginalize children from low-income families.
• Draws on interviews with parents and staff, school visits and observations, newspaper articles, scholarly books, and policy reports on school segregation.

• Contents
• Introduction 1
• 1. A Proudly Black School in a Gentrifying Neighborhood 5
• 2. The Roots of Inequality and the Struggle for Just Schools 13
• 3. The Deep Decline and Uneven Revival of the City's Schools 26
• 4. The Promise and Pitfalls of School Choice 42
• 5. How Gentrification Brought Conflict 59
• 6. Bringing the Community Together 75
• 7. Problems Outside the School's Control 86
• 8. COVID-19 Tests the Community 101
• 9. ÒTrust Is the GlueÓ 115
• 10. The Work Still to Be Done 129
• Conclusion 139
• Acknowledgments 145
• Notes 147
• Data Sources 157
• A Word About Names 159
• Index 161
• About the Author 168

Clara Hemphill, founding editor of InsideSchools.org, is a lifelong journalist who has built a career helping New York City parents navigate a complex system of school choice. She is the author of New York City's Best Public Pre-K and Elementary Schools, New York City's Best Public Middle Schools, and New York City's Best Public High Schools.