On my first day of freshman year at NRHS, my classmates who had attended ALMS gave me confused looks. Because I’m white, they said, “Wait...I don’t recognize you from ALMS” and wondered where I came from. They had it in their heads that IEYMS is “all black and Hispanic kids,” so they were shocked to learn that I was actually from Southern New Rochelle and attended IEYMS and Jefferson. It is abundantly clear to me that almost every aspect of the NRCSD is racially segregated: the schools, the classes, and the recreational spaces within the schools (playgrounds, cafeterias).

 

While I would say that my Spanish CILA classes from kindergarten through third grade were diverse, that changed once I joined Kaleidoscope— a program that is basically built to separate mostly white students from the rest of the school and provide them with the school’s best teachers and opportunities for success. Most of the kids from my Kaleidoscope class at Jefferson became the students who took Algebra 1 and Living Environment in eighth grade and later the students who took AP courses in high school. Entrance into Kaleidoscope was based mostly on standardized exams; however, race was definitely a factor whether people realize it or not. White families have the resources to ensure that their kids get into Kaleidoscope or to appeal to the school if their kids don’t make it in. The same thing goes for high school AP classes. There are certainly black and Hispanic students who are just as qualified if not more qualified than the white students to take those courses, but the white students have an unfair advantage.

 

The racial gap only widened as I got older. In elementary school I had black and Hispanic friends from my CILA class. Once Kaleidoscope began, some of those friendships changed. At IEYMS my friends and I began eating lunch in our Biology teacher’s classroom because fights often broke out in the cafeteria. At NRHS the cafeterias are clearly racially segregated; most white students eat in the newer House 4 cafeteria and students of color eat in the older House 1 and 2 cafeterias. Again this is a result of the separation that is reinforced by the school district as soon as kids begin kindergarten. For all of these reasons, I believe that the Princeton Plan is a very logical solution.

 

Daviel Schulman NRHS Class of 2021