New York City Council members will soon call on the city’s Education Department to broaden access to newspapers and journalism at high schools across the five boroughs.

Council members are expected to pass a resolution on Thursday that will urge education officials to address stark inequities in journalism opportunities — calling on the Education Department to provide support for student newspapers at every high school. The push follows efforts by the New York City Youth Journalism Coalition earlier this year to garner support for expanding school journalism programs.

As of 2022, roughly 73% of the city’s high schools did not have school newspapers or student-run websites, according to a study by Geanne Belton, a journalism professor and director of the high school journalism program at the City University of New York’s Baruch College.

Students’ access to a journalism program broke down on racial and socioeconomic lines. More than three-quarters of the schools with the highest concentrations of white and Asian American students had student publications, while only 8% of schools with high concentrations of Black students and 16% of those with large shares of Latino students, according to the study. Schools with higher rates of poverty were far less likely to have a student publication.

Those inequities mirrored trends in the broader industry. A 2018 survey found that journalists of color made up just 22% of the workforce.

“There’s always been an absence of Black and brown bodies in telling stories — people are always telling our stories,” said Council member Rita Joseph, chair of the council’s education committee and the primary sponsor of the resolution. “This is an opportunity for students across the city to know what it’s like to tell their own stories.”

Joseph wants to see the Education Department provide further support to high schools seeking to establish journalism programs, including rolling out curriculum, training educators, and facilitating the creation of journalism clubs. She’s hopeful, too, that council members will use discretionary funds in the coming years to support journalism programs in their local district schools.

Read the full article about school journalism programs by Julian Shen-Berro at Chalkbeat.