The New York State Education Department on Friday issued a defiant response to the Trump administration’s threats to pull federal funding from public schools over certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a remarkable departure from the conciliatory approach of other institutions in recent weeks.
Daniel Morton-Bentley, the deputy commissioner for legal affairs at the state education agency in New York, wrote in a letter to federal education officials that “we understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion.’”
“But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of D.E.I.,” Mr. Morton-Bentley wrote, adding that the federal government has not defined what practices it believes violate civil rights protections.
The stern letter was sent one day after the federal government issued a memo to education officials across the nation, asking them to confirm the elimination of all programs it argues unfairly promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Title I funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students was at risk pending compliance, federal officials said.
New York’s stance differed from the muted and often deferential responses across academia and other major institutions to the Trump administration’s threats. Some universities have quietly scrubbed diversity websites and canceled events to comply with executive orders — and to avoid the ire of the White House.
I get your concern in a sense because kids in Rochester do have it pretty rough. While crime stats in the us and NY are down, violent crime Rochester specifically has stayed pretty steady since the 90s and is higher than national and NY crime levels.
But I don’t think this will be the thing that impacts these kids and school districts the most. The issues Rochester face come from poor incentive management for schools, high teacher burnout and poor employee retention, large classroom sizes, issues with corruption within specific school systems, and concentrations of low socioeconomic people.
I need to admit I left the public education world in NY a while ago. But it used to be that the worse a school performed the less money it got. Because schools only get a small percentage of funding from the federal government that gets pulled from them when they underperform (I very quickly looked at the numbers and it appears Rochester gets less than the national % average in federal funding, about 10% compared to the national 13% depending on what year you’re looking at). So schools with students who needed the most help either lost money or just tried to cover up student issues to hide them instead of address them. As long as this and property tax funding is the model and admin dictates their own salaries, schools aren’t going to improve.
IMO, it’s even specifically DEI policies that briefly helped some schools excel in the us during school bussing. Bussing students forced integration of students from all different backgrounds and socioeconomic groups. Rich and attentive parents with more bandwidth made sure whatever school their kid was at was well funded and well run. Kids from different backgrounds became friends and humanized each other. Kids from poor backgrounds were offered support systems outside of gangs and violence. And these poor kids didn’t poison the well and bring crime to their new schools. Kids are kids. If you offer them opportunities, they don’t choose gangs and violence.
What will really fix schools and improve things for kids