What to Know: Concerns and Issues
Important Terms
Busing - A term used to describe moving students to more distant schools to advance a policy agenda. First applied in the era following Brown v Board of Education.
Change Agent - is a person from inside or outside the organization who helps an organization transform itself by focusing on such matters as organizational effectiveness, improvement, and development. In D28, this could be a combination of non-profit organizations, working group members, other advocacy groups, etc.implemented to distract from the questions at stake.
Community
Controlled Choice - process by which certain demographic sub-sets are given admissions preference before others. The D15 Plan relies heavily on this mechanism in an attempt to advance socioeconomic quotas.
Dezoning - removal of address-based connection to particular schools in favor of other admissions criteria like quotas/“controlled choice.”
Delphi Technique - a method originally intended for use as a psychological weapon during the cold war which is now commonly used to implement public policy changes (i.e. workshops for the Diversity Plan) to manipulate a meeting toward a predetermined end through the use of a 'Facilitator' and/or 'Change Agent'. Read more here on way you can resist being manipulated.
Facilitator - a 'neutral' person or company used to help a group of people to understand their common objectives and assists them to plan how to achieve these objectives; in doing so, the facilitator remains "neutral", meaning he/she does not take a particular position in the discussion. However, in the case of D28, WXY as the facilitator was hired behind closed doors by the DOE (NOT a neutral) with a hidden contract and scope of services (NOT transparent).
Forced Transit - Commute imposed on students when they are only offered admissions to school outside walking-distance. In NYC, for 6th grade and up, this entails use of public transportation (MTA buses and subways).
Safety
Test scores
G&T
Rezoning - Drawing new address-based connections to particular schools as admissions criteria.
Woke - refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. Woke' is increasingly used as a byword for social awareness.
'Zoned' school - depending on place of residence, a student is guaranteed admission to their zoned school without any restrictions. Most elementary and about half of the middle schools in D28 are "zoned."