Parents of a $45,000 a year private school in Manhattan are not happy after a new plan was announced.
Little Red School House, which is a favorite of some celebrities, plans to segregate minority students by placing them in the same homerooms in the fall, reports Daily Mail. Parents learned of the new implementation last month. It was said that Director Philip Kassen already put the rule into effect for 7th and 8th-grade students in the 2017-18 school year. He hoped to apply the practice to 6th-grade classrooms in September. According to Daily Mail, David Schwimmer, Christy Turlington Burns, and Sofia Coppola all have children who attend the $45,485 a year school.
There are about 40 kids in each grade with two homerooms for each grade level. Students spend about 30 percent of their day in homerooms.
In a report by New York Post, parents expressed their unhappiness about this new policy. One father of a girl who recently graduated from the middle school said that the school was not very transparent about the plan. His daughter was in what he referred to as the "minority class." He told the Post, "It was my daughter who immediately noticed that all the kids of color were in one class. If you’re going to have that policy, you need to be upfront."
He added that the segregation went as far back as kindergarten. When he brought up his observation to other parents in 2016, they did not believe him. The Post reports that the policy was made public in early June. On June 12, Kassen emailed parents explaining that the proposed policy would be reviewed. The following week, he said the plan would be nixed, but the school would continue to keep "race as a critical, but not primary, determinant."
