Modes of Belonging: Debating School Demographics in Gentrifying New York

Abstract

This article examines the frameworks that stakeholders bring to debates about diversifying schools in gentrifying areas of New York City. Using critical ethnographic methods, I explore stakeholders’ hopes and fears about the effects of shifting school demographics and the relationships between student demographics and school quality. I find that stakeholders use racialized discourses of belonging to discuss whether, why, and how student demographics matter. These discourses of belonging overlap with perceptions of demographic change as opportunities for integration, fears of gentrification, and threats to individual property. Complicating celebrations of “diversity,” I explore the ways in which race is implicated in considerations of who belongs in a school and to whom a school belongs.

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).…”

Segregation, Diversity, and Pathology: School Quality and Student Demographics in Gentrifying New York

“…At the elementary school, White students constituted only 5% of the overall student population, but they were increasingly represented in Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classes; at the middle school, the student population had shifted from under 5% White 5 years prior to 36% White during the year I completed my fieldwork. These changes, together with rapid gentrification across the school district, were the subject of much local debate (Freidus, 2020b).…”

“Problem Children” and “Children with Problems”: Discipline and Innocence in a Gentrifying Elementary School

“…Hazel's mother, who talked primarily with other newcomer families, did not seem to consider how important her family's continued presence at PS 411 may have felt to school staff. Many gentrifying schools see attracting and retaining neighborhood newcomers as a priority; these families are viewed as important sources of economic and social resources (Cucchiara, 2013;Freidus, 2019Freidus, , 2020Posey-Maddox, 2014). Similar considerations may have played a role in PS 411's willingness to be flexible and supportive with Hazel and her family.…”