Exciting Work for Advocates of Equity and Access!

An update from PARCEO and the Parent Leadership Project: This past week-end was very productive for those of us fighting for equitable admissions. The District 3 Working Group on Fairness and Equity in Admissions has been meeting together over the past year to craft and propose an admissions policy for District 3 that is fair, equitable, transparent, and easy to implement.
We have been looking specifically at Controlled Choice assignment plans.   Controlled Choice is an educationally sound, transparent, and equity-driven method of assigning students to public schools that promotes diversity and empowers parents to choose the schools they want their children to attend, in a manner that is fair to all students and is practicable to implement.
Representatives of different communities within District 3 have come together for this undertaking.  These include former district 3 community school board members, past and present District 3 community education council members, a representative from an assemblyman’s office, principals, parents, educators, Community Board 7 members, representatives from local parent groups and a Head Start Center.
This past week end they met for two intensive and exciting days of meetings to further explore how a controlled choice admissions plan can further the goals of equity and create a policy that truly serves all our children and makes our district three schools as strong as they can be.  The group brought in Michael Alves, Marco Acuna, and Jeanette Ramos who have implemented controlled choice admissions policies across the country and are widely recognized for the work they have done in the field. They were stupendous!! They provided information about the role of family resource centers and showed us the software so that we could see how the process could work and spoke to us in great detail about the specifics of implementing a controlled choice policy.
We are excited about continuing this process and creating a proposal that will ensure that all our children receive the kind of education they deserve, and that we have schools that reflect and respect all our communities.