NYC council postpones school segregation hearing amid fears of Trump administration scrutiny

A classroom filled with high school students sitting at desks.
Students at New Design High School in Manhattan. A long-awaited New York City Council hearing on school diversity was postponed over concerns it could invite unwanted scrutiny from President Donald Trump's administration. (Thalía Juárez for Chalkbeat)

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The latest aftershock from President Donald Trump’s recent federal guidance threatening to investigate schools advancing diversity efforts: a long-awaited New York City Council oversight hearing on racial segregation in the nation’s largest school system has been postponed indefinitely.

The hearing aimed to give city lawmakers a chance to publicly question Education Department officials on their efforts to integrate city schools 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation in public schools. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the hearing was postponed due to concerns that it could expose the city to interference from the Trump administration, multiple sources familiar with the situation said.

The council has not yet set a new date, according to its website.

The decision followed a Feb. 14 Dear Colleague letter from the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education advising schools and districts that admissions policies seeking to boost racial diversity, even if they’re not explicitly race based, are illegal and subject to federal investigation.

Dozens of schools across New York City set aside a portion of their seats for students who are learning English, live in temporary housing, or come from low-income families as part of a Diversity in Admissions program.

Lawyers from both the city Education Department and the council urged lawmakers to postpone the hearing to give the city more time to understand the legal implications of the letter and to avoid drawing unwanted scrutiny or an investigation, according to three sources familiar with the situation.

“What we don’t want is to have the [New York City Department of Education] being subpoenaed in D.C., and having all the equity issues aired so Elon Musk can tweet it out … and they come for us,” said one of the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to share internal conversations. Musk, the billionaire and chief executive officer of Tesla, heads up the Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting team that has enacted sweeping cuts across the federal government, including the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts through the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump administration’s chilling effect

The postponement is an early tangible consequence of the federal letter, which is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to purge equity-focused policies from public schools. Trump has also issued executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that support gender-nonconforming students and teach about the prevalence of racism in American life.

Experts have said the latest federal guidance on school diversity efforts clearly misstates existing legal precedent that gives K-12 schools flexibility to use non-racial admissions criteria to boost diversity, but have warned that it could nonetheless create a chilling effect.

Brooklyn Council member Rita Joseph, chair of the council education committee, and Queens Council member Nantasha Williams, the chair of the council committee on human and civil rights, who were jointly running the hearing, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours said the council plans to hold the hearing in the future, but didn’t provide a specific date or comment on the reasons for the postponement. An Education Department spokesperson declined to comment on the postponement of the council hearing but noted the Dear Colleague letter “doesn’t create any new legal obligations” for the city school system, and that no policies have changed.

School integration had already garnered less focus lately

New York City’s schools remain among the most segregated in the nation, but the issue has largely faded from the spotlight under Mayor Eric Adams, whose administration has not prioritized aggressive citywide integration efforts and reversed some reforms meant to open access to selective schools during the pandemic.

The City Council hearing, which was first announced last May, would have been a rare public opportunity to hear Education Department officials speak at length about the state of the city’s school diversity efforts.

The Dear Colleague letter warns that “relying on non-racial information as a proxy for race” for admissions purposes is illegal and explicitly cautions schools against eliminating standardized testing from admissions requirements as a means of achieving racial balance in schools.

Both of those policies are at the center of long-running conversations about how to diversify schools in New York City, which often select students based on academic results and other criteria.

A growing number of city schools have opted into the Diversity in Admissions program in recent years, in many cases significantly boosting their racial diversity along the way. Several districts have implemented middle school diversity plans that have made significant progress in racially integrating schools.

The city has also moved away from using test results in admissions, removing state test results as admissions criteria for many selective high schools and scrapping the entrance exam for kindergarten gifted and talented programs. Eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, still use an admissions exam, which is codified in state law.

Officials from both the City Council and Education Department worried that discussing those initiatives in a public hearing could bring unwanted attention and put them in the crosshairs of a federal administration that has targeted education programs after they were highlighted on right-wing social media accounts, according to the sources.

“We’re just trying to protect what we have,” said one of the sources. “It doesn’t go nearly far enough, but [we’re] just trying to protect it.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

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