Opinion: Student leaders teach Long Island a lesson at ERASE Racism conference

By Elaine Gross

Long Island’s two counties have 125 school districts, a nonsensical number from the standpoint of cost-effectiveness that prevents students across the region from knowing one another and benefiting from friendships that are now obstructed. Fortunately, certain schools and their students from Nassau and Suffolk counties are taking matters into their own hands, overcoming the obstructions to learn from one another.

In March, about 150 students from both counties took part in ERASE Racism’s Long Island Leaders of Tomorrow Conference, which took place at Hofstra University. The annual gathering convenes students in grades nine to 12 to engage in interactive dialogues and workshops and provide them with tools to become leaders in their schools and communities.

ERASE Racism organized the conference because the region’s many school districts lead to residential segregation that has made Long Island one of the 10 most racially segregated and fragmented metropolitan regions in the nation. With the geographic boundaries of the school districts seemingly intractable, other ways are needed to enable Long Island students to benefit from the experiences, insights and friendships of one another.

This year, the event connected students across 16 school districts, as well as racial and socioeconomic lines. I have attended these events for years, and what moves me is how genuinely excited the students are to meet and learn from one another. They experience new perspectives, challenging discussions and intriguing circumstances. It’s as though a new world has been opened to them.

Even at a time when the federal government discourages discussion about structural racism — the historical and ongoing discriminatory policies and practices that are instigated and perpetuated by government — the students want to talk about it: its history and its contemporary reality. They relish the opportunity to share their experiences. They also want to discuss their plans for reducing structural racism in their schools and on Long Island more broadly.

The director of guidance at one of this year’s participating school districts remarked after that “the students returned with such enthusiasm for the experience” that she “needed to bring it to the attention of the principal’s cabinet.” She said that the students “had opportunities to meet with students that they had never known, and that they feel that they will be in touch for life.”

That concept of making close, long-lasting friends through efforts to overcome the restricting barriers of school districts is not new to ERASE Racism. It happens across our student leadership initiatives, including our Student Task Force and our Student Leaders for Equity Internship.

Alli Alvarez, an alumna of our Student Task Force and of Mepham High School, wrote about it recently: “One of the best parts of the task force was getting to meet students from across Long Island with diverse backgrounds whom I never would have met otherwise. One such friend was a student at Baldwin High School at the time and is now at Columbia University. We still get together during college breaks.”

Long Island’s 125 school districts are a prime example of the structural racism that remains in force in the region. They reflect a long history of residential segregation that includes laws that redlined neighborhoods and banking and real estate practices that reinforced the discrimination. Changes have been made to the laws, and certain practices are changing. Even now, though, racial segregation in Long Island’s school districts is growing.

A recent ERASE Racism report — “Unequal Resources for Long Island Students Based on Race”— revealed that the number of intensely segregated school districts (90–100% non-White) has grown. There were five such districts in the 2003–2004 school year; in 2019–2020, there were 11 such districts. The percentage of Black and Latino students in these districts also grew in this period, from 28 to 37% for Black students and 13 to 36% for Latino students.

Long Island’s students are right to look for ways to overcome the wasteful and discriminatory barriers imposed by the region’s 125 school districts. The friendships they make in the process may well provide a new generation of leaders to move us forward.

The author is founder and president emerita of ERASE Racism, a regional civil rights organization based on Long Island.