Giving Compass' Take:

• At a recent conference, educators from across New York State sat down with housing officials to talk about ways they can work together to integrate schools. This effort, coupled with a small pilot program in New York City that will help low-income families find housing in more affluent neighborhoods, which also tend to have higher-performing schools, could also bring more diversity to classrooms.

• How can this plan be executed successfully? How can donors be of help in conversations such as these?

• Learn more about bringing diversity into more schools. 

On a recent morning in Brooklyn, principals, parents, and education leaders from across the state gathered to drill into the root causes of school segregation and develop plans to spur more diversity. Joining the discussion was someone unexpected: a representative from the state’s Fair and Equitable Housing Office.

“We want to see within your districts, what your challenges are, what your ideas are,” said Nadya Salcedo, the office’s director. “You can’t talk about integration and segregation without talking about housing.”

It is often taken as a given that schools are segregated because neighborhoods are. Yet the twin challenges of integrating where children live and learn are rarely tackled in tandem. In New York, two recent moves have the potential to address both.

Read the full article about the connection between housing and schools by Christina Veiga at Chalkbeat.