Description
Book SynopsisDiscover 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 neighbourhood where parents have long been dissatisfied with most of their local public schools.
Trade Review“A Brighter Choice masterfully chronicles one woman’s struggle to maintain a school’s mission as a bastion of hope for Black families in the face of gentrification. The story shines new light on the process of neighborhood change and provides hope that we can manage gentrification in a way that benefits us all.”
—Lance Freeman, Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
“For many years, Clara Hemphill has been one of the most astute observers of New York City’s public school system. A Brighter Choice, which is incisively reported and beautifully written, explores the efforts of a Black-majority school in Brooklyn to provide a first-rate education for all its students amid the changes of gentrification and the crisis of COVID. With an emphasis on the crucial role played by parents, Hemphill reverses the usual top-down focus on New York City’s schools, dispels much conventional wisdom, and sympathetically shows that it is possible to reconcile Black empowerment with racial and economic integration in public education. A Brighter Choice provides a new way to think about the promise and challenges of public schools today.”
—Peter Eisenstadt, author, Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing and editor, The Encyclopedia of New York State
“’Clara Hemphill’s fascinating, stirring book,
A Brighter Choice, suggests skilled and empathetic parents can help to create truly integrated schools that provide our best hope for restoring social cohesion and social mobility in America.”
—
Richard D. Kahlenberg, New York City School Diversity Advisory Group executive committee member, former senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Table of Contents
- 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
