Another Brown v. Board needed?

by Naeisha Rose

Associate Editor

The Student Improvement Association, led by community activists Raymond Dugué and Michael Duncan, is prepared to sue the city and state education departments for their alleged failure in providing quality education to students in School District 29 some time later this year.

Duncan and Dugué held several rallies over the summer and have started a petition that they hope will get 20,000 signatures to raise awareness about the city schools in Southeast and Eastern Queens, which have students struggling to pass mathematics and English language arts state exams.

“The strategy is to piggyback off of Brown v. Education,” said Dugué in a Zoom meeting.

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1954 and 1955 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which also included Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (Va.), Bolling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel, declared that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and later said that all states had to create ways to desegregate their public schools, according uscourts.gov.

It was Chief Justice Earl Warren who pushed for the other justices to make a unanimous decision on the case.

“‘We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,’” said Warren in 1954. And in 1955, he asked for states to submit their desegregation plans with “‘all deliberate speed.’”

The case was argued before the Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall, who would later become an associate justice in 1967, with the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund. The case went to the Supreme Court in 1952 after a threejudge panel ruled in favor of the school boards prompting an appeal. In 1953, Warren replaced Chief Justice Fred Vinson who had died earlier that year.

Queens activists argue that predominantly Black schools dramatically underperform compared to schools that are predominantly non-Black.

“Every state is required to provide an education to its citizens,” said Dugué. “The state is going to argue that it did provide an education. I don’t think anyone can look at the results and tell us that there was an attempt to educate.”

In a community forum on May 19, the pair presented information virtually to parents in Laurelton, Rosedale and Springfield Gardens, which depicted only 37 percent of Black elementary and middle school students being proficient in ELA and 28 being proficient in math based on 2019 data. During the meeting, Dugué said that high schools were not faring better as 65 was considered passing, but only 51 percent were passing English and 49 percent were passing math for the Regents exam.

In June, the pair held a rally in Hollis outside PS 35.

“We are charging the DOE with the miseducation of our children, and brothers and sisters, we are ready to go to court,” said Duncan at the rally.

The city DOE said it is working to improve schools.

“We’re supporting our District 29 families, teachers, and staff and firmly commit to expanding on the improvements we’ve seen so every child and family has a positive, rigorous and high-quality experience,” said Sarah Casanovas, a DOE spokeswoman to the Chronicle via email earlier this year.

Over the summer, the city offered the Summer Rising program, a free K-to-12 academic, arts and recreation initiative, which was open to over 200,000 kids, added Casanovas on an email on Aug. 23. The city schools will continue to partner with community-based organizations for fall afterschool programs.

During additional rallies throughout Eastern Queens in July, Duncan collected over 1,000 signatures. The lead attorney on the case against the city and state’s education departments will be Courtney Smith, a trial attorney. “We want Black students to have an education that will allow them to compete with kids in other communities,” said Smith. “I forget how many specialized high schools are in New York, but it is as if our kids are not given the opportunities to get into these schools.”

There are eight specialized high schools, considered among the best in the city, with performance on one test used for admissions. Black and Latino students are wildly unrepresented in these schools.

This year eight Black students were admitted to Stuyvesant High School, there is one student in the Staten Island Technical High School, 12 at the High School for Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at City College, 14 at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, 64 at Brooklyn Technical High School, 21 at Bronx High School of Science, 23 at The Brooklyn Latin School and 10 at the Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, according to data from the city Department of Education. The 153 offers to Black students accounted for 3.6 percent of admissions.

“Black parents are not told about this,” said Smith. “I had a neighbor who came from India who already knew how to get their kids into the specialized high schools,” said Smith.

Smith believes that Black students are being ushered into a school-to-prison pipeline.

“When you look at the prison population, you hear that 70 percent of the people on Rikers Island cannot read above a sixth-grade reading level and that some inmates are functionally illiterate,” said the trial attorney. “When you look at the numbers that show an overwhelming majority of inmates in New York State prison system come from New York City with poor reading scores and poor math scores, it seems they are here to feed the prison system.”

Education is the best cure for crime, added Smith.

“We are going to have to show an example of a curriculum and a system where 70 percent of the kids can read and write and are doing great,” said Smith. “There may be some requirement that where we present this to the DOE and show them what can work, what has worked, present it to them, give them the opportunity to implement it, but if they don’t we have the right to take them to federal court.”

In a Correctional Association of New York 2019 report, data from the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision depicted that prisoners were 97 percent male and 49.5 percent Black, and 48.5 percent came from the Big Apple among an overall prison population of 48,000 in 54 facilities.

Nearly 85 percent of juveniles in the court system are illiterate, according to literacynewyork.org.

“The numbers say that if you can’t read by the fourth grade, you can’t be saved,” said Smith. “I’m amazed as a trial attorney how many defendants I get who can’t read if you put them on a witness stand who are from the city public education system. They will be destroyed by a prosecutor with the English language.”

Volunteering on the case is lawyer Jason Clark, one of a dozen candidates who ran for

City Council in District 27. “It’s tragic that where a child’s ZIP code is can be the sole determinant to a child’s success,” said Clark. “If we are committed to make a difference, if we are committed to making sure they have a real shot, we have to Dream Chasers do a better job to make sure they have access to programs, access to classes and access to program enrichment that they are entitled to.” In 2017, Clark put his money where his mouth is by co-founding Dream Chasers, an afterschool program that offers free tutoring and mentorship on Fridays and Saturdays for more than 300 hours over the course of the year. The program is geared toward getting predominantly Black and other minority children into specialized high schools and other topnotch schools in New York City, and one of the partners is the SUNY Queens Educational Opportunity Center. “We match the kids with mentors who were able to be successful and that look like them so that the they can see that and do the same to achieve their dreams,” said Clark. In its initial year one of the 10 Dream Chasers students was accepted at Stuyvesant High School, which is considered the top specialized high school of the elite eight. “This year only 21 students were accepted in Bronx Science; two of those students came from our program,” said Clark of his current 25 students. “Our students also got into Brooklyn Tech, Townsend Harris and other great schools.” To learn more about Dream Chasers visit dreamchasersnyc.com. Q

Raymond Dugué at a rally in Hollis outside PS 35.

PHOTO BY NAEISHA ROSE