“Holding the Line”: Investigating How Urban School Leaders’ Respond to Gentrification in New York City Schools

Abstract

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.

Gentrifying Neighborhoods, Gentrifying Schools? An Emerging Typology of School Changes in a Gentrifying Urban School District

“…Given the connections between urban schools' catchment areas and local neighborhoods (Green et al, 2017), schools located in gentrifying neighborhoods can also be restructured through larger community-level racial and socioeconomic shifts (Posey-Maddox et al, 2014;Smith & Stovall, 2008). A growing body of research examines the nexus of neighborhood gentrification and urban schools (Billingham, 2019;Cucchiara, 2013;Diem et al, 2019;Freidus, 2016Freidus, , 2019Keels et al, 2013;Lipman, 2013;McGhee & Anderson, 2019;Pearman, 2019Pearman, , 2020Posey-Maddox, 2014;Roda, 2020). Scholars have analyzed the ways that gentrification remakes cities and deepens racial, educational, and social exclusion and oppression (Bridge, 2005;Lipman, 2013;Pedroni, 2011;Smith & Stovall, 2008), the impacts of neighborhood gentrification on academic achievement (Keels et al, 2013;Pearman, 2019), the demographics of gentrified neighborhoods and schools (Bischoff & Tach, 2018;Candipan, 2019), the engagement, consequences, and equity impact of white, middle-class parents in urban schools (Cucchiara & Horvat, 2009;Stillman, 2012), and how districts market schools to middle-class parents in gentrifying urban contexts (Cucchiara, 2013).…”

Building Civic Capacity: The History and Landscape of NYC Integration Activism, 2012–2021

“…This set aside a portion of seats for free- and reduced-lunch-eligible students and English language learners, a policy that became a model for developing non-race-based measures that could still address segregation (New York Appleseed, n.d.). Inspired by PS 133’s diversity plan, seven NYC principals, “holding the line” against gentrification in their schools, expressed interest in developing similar plans (Roda, 2020), alongside parents in Manhattan’s CSD 1 who had advocated for decades for school enrollment changes. Second, to address segregation in NYC’s selective enrollment schools, a separate multiracial cross-sector coalition of 14 education, civic, and civil rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (NAACP LDF) and Latino Justice PRLDEF, filed a federal complaint in 2012 about the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students at NYC’s eight specialized public high schools (NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 2012).…”

“…. pushing the envelope and making sure that things are getting done.” While researchers and journalists have examined how parents, school, and political leaders advocate for integration in NYC (Freidus, 2019; Geringer-Sameth, 2019; Malone, 2021; Roda, 2015, 2020), there is limited research on citywide coalition-building among stakeholders, particularly the role of youth in such efforts. This project asks: Between 2012 and 2021, how has school integration advocacy in NYC evolved?…”

Making Waves: Districts as Policy Mediators in the Flow of School Gentrification

“…Future research might further explore the role of principals as micro-mediators in the forces of school gentrification. Indeed, this study invites further research on how principals respond to gentrification (e.g., Roda, 2020), how they perceive gentrification’s impacts on their campuses, and how the racial dynamics of school gentrification play out. Scholarship in these areas will allow researchers, practitioners, and educators to better understand and mediate the effects of school gentrification.…”

“…To address this question, we center the perspectives of school principals because of their mediating role in gentrification. Indeed, school principals are key mediating actors who navigate the pressures of school gentrification on their campuses and negotiate district, school, families, and communities’ interests (Cucchiara, 2013; McGee & Anderson, 2019; Roda, 2020).…”