Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells a\u00a0poignant story\u00a0about how her whole extended family \u201cchipped in for a down payment\u201d to move from The Bronx to Westchester, so that she and her brother could be enrolled in better schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up between two worlds,\u201d she\u2019s\u00a0said, \u201cand experienced firsthand how a child\u2019s zip code can shape their destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n
That turned out great for Ocasio-Cortez \u2014\u00a0but a lot of working-class families can\u2019t afford to do what hers did.<\/p>\n
Instead, they find themselves boxed out of high-quality schools<\/a> that are practically in their own back yards.\u00a0<\/p>\n As every New York parent knows, the city\u2019s public schools are governed by archaic attendance zone maps.\u00a0<\/p>\n And \u2014 surprise, surprise \u2014 these maps carry forward the legacy of racist public policies from the Jim Crow era.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the conclusion of a new report,\u00a0\u201cAnd Stay Out!,\u201d published this month by my organization Available to All, a nonpartisan watchdog that defends equal access to public schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n We found that many of New York City\u2019s\u00a0most coveted public elementary and middle schools are bound by attendance-zone maps that replicate the patterns of racist \u201credlining\u201d maps from the 1930s.<\/p>\n For decades, those maps restricted mortgage loans in areas where more people of color lived, until Congress outlawed the practice in 1968.<\/p>\n Look, for example, at the\u00a0attendance zone\u00a0for the Emily Warren Roebling School in Brooklyn Heights, a highly regarded elementary school where 76% of the students are white or Asian.<\/p>\n Its current attendance zone encircles, almost perfectly, the area shaded blue, or \u201cdesirable,\u201d on the redlining map drawn in 1938.<\/p>\n That means children who live just a few blocks to the east, in areas shaded yellow or red on the old redlining map, are excluded from the Roebling School.<\/p>\n Our analysis found the same pattern in all five boroughs \u2014\u00a0the primary reason why New York City has been called \u201cthe epicenter of educational segregation in the nation\u201d by UCLA expert Gary Orfield<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But today\u2019s school-zone maps are color-blind; white families on the wrong side of the line are equally out of luck.<\/p>\n They\u2019re also downright bizarre: When NYC public-school admissions expert Alina Adams showed one school map to her son, he responded incredulously, \u201cDid a drunk toddler draw this?\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, these maps are a big part of the housing affordability crisis that drove Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s election campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wealthier families cram into the zones of the most desirable public schools, driving up home prices in some of the city\u2019s most family-friendly neighborhoods.<\/p>\n