Led by parents, the NYC Coalition for Educational Justice is organizing a movement to end the inequities in the city’s public school system. We are a collaborative of community-based organizations and unions whose members include culturally diverse parents, community members, students and educators. We are motivated by the urgent need to obtain a quality and well-rounded education for all students. We will mobilize the power of parents and the community to affect policy change and create a more equitable educational system.
Member Organizations:
ACORN is a national membership organization of low- and moderate-income families with a thirty-year history of organizing for social change. The NYC ACORN Schools Office was established in 1990 and has developed new public schools and issued policy studies demonstrating racial and economic inequities in the school system. ACORN has been organizing for school improvement in the Bronx and Brooklyn for the last ten years.
Contact: Donnett Davis at 718.246.7900
Cypress Hills Advocates for Education (CHAFE) was formed in 1997 by a group of parents and neighborhood residents who were concerned with the quality of public education in Cypress Hills Brooklyn. Supported by and affiliated with the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation (CHLDC), CHAFE has used outreach, advocacy, education, and community organizing to fight for neighborhood schools that provide all children with a quality, safe, and modern education. CHAFE’s major victory has been winning a 700-seat new school to relieve school overcrowding in Cypress Hills. CHLDC operates after-school programs in eight schools in the neighborhood, and has collaborated with New Visions for Public Schools and National Council of La Raza to develop two model schools: a dual-language K-8 school, Cypress Hills Community School, as well as Cypress Hills Collegiate Prep High School. In 2005 CHLDC began to organize high school students. This group, the Future of Tomorrow, successfully campaigned to redesign and modernize the cafeteria at Franklin K. Lane High School and is currently working on the creation of a Student Success Center at Lane.
Contact: Julia Watt-Rosenfeld at 718.647.8100
Highbridge Community Life Center has been providing a wide range of educational and social services since 1979, including job training programs and entitlement assistance to families living in the Highbridge neighborhood. Most recently, it helped parents to establish United Parents of Highbridge.
Contact: Chauncy Young at 718.681.2222
Make the Road New York is a major force for social change in Bushwick, with more than 3,000 members who lead the organization in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Make the Road New York offers a variety of services and strategies for neighborhood improvement, including organizing for civil rights and economic justice, legal services, educational programs, and youth development.
Contact: Manuel Castro at 718.565.8103 or Placida Rodriguez at 718.418.7690
New Settlement Apartments owns and operates almost 1,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing in the Mount Eden neighborhood and provides educational and community service programs to area residents. It initiated and provides organizing support to the Parent Action Committee.
Contact: Lauren Morse at 718.716.8000
New York Civic Participation Project is a collaboration of labor unions and community groups organizing and mobilizing union members in the neighborhoods where they live. The member organizations – SEIU Local 32BJ, AFSCME DC-37, HERE Local 100, the National Employment Law Project, and Make the Road by Walking – represent hundreds of thousands of workers and decades of success fighting for immigrant and worker rights in New York.
Contact: Eva Kartzian at 212.388.3209
Queens Congregations United for Action is a coalition of faith-based institutions that are working together to empower and unite the community to achieve social justice through organizing. QCUA has organized and won victories on traffic safety, sanitation, neighborhood services, affordable housing and education issues in the Corona and Elmhurst neighborhoods of Queens.
Contact: Nancy Rivera-Laboy at 718.426.6564
UFT Brooklyn Parent Outreach Committee works to strengthen home-school collaborations and increase parent involvement and responsibility.
Contact: Betty Zohar at 718.722.6936
1199 Child Care Fund has established the Public Education Advocacy Project to organize Hospital and Health Care Workers Union members, many of whose children attend public school, to participate in school-improvement activities. Thousands of Local 1199 members live in Central Brooklyn districts.
The Community Involvement Program of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform has supported community organizing for school reform in New York since 1995. It provides a wide range of strategic support to the collaboratives, including data analysis, research, and training.