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Multiple studies have shown the potential for school choice policies to benefit middle-class families, often to the detriment of lower income students in the same district. Yet, there is limited research examining the role of policies in promoting inequality by encouraging exclusionary behaviors. In this article, we utilize the concept of opportunity hoarding to analyze the specific policy provisions built into New York City’s elementary and high school choice plans that prompt middle-class parents to act in ways that secure advantages for their children. We find that parents’ anxiety about scarcity of high-quality educational options combined with the design of the choice policies facilitated pervasive opportunity hoarding that functioned as a collective strategy of class preservation.

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This case study investigated how three New York City schools responded to gentrification’s effects as student demographics shifted. I used the conceptual framework of urban school leaders as cultural workers to examine the tensions, successes, and challenges inherent in the school gentrification and integration process. I found that each school leader defied the school gentrification narrative by “holding the line” in terms of preserving diversity, cultivating integration, and counterbalancing the opportunity hoarding behaviors of White, advantaged parents. The results have implications for urban school leaders who want to be agents of change by leveraging gentrification’s effects into positive results.

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