NEW YORK — New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels faced intense scrutiny on Tuesday night from investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and a crowd of approximately 800 students, parents, and advocates over his administration’s delay in rolling out a systemwide school integration plan.
The town hall, held in Manhattan, was sponsored by the student journalism nonprofit The Bell and the school integration advocacy group New York Appleseed. The event brought the debate over public school segregation to a head, fueled in part by a widely discussed essay published last month by Hannah-Jones regarding her decision to enroll her daughter in a majority-Black, low-income school.
During the session, Hannah-Jones challenged Samuels to explain why the city has yet to fully implement key recommendations issued by the city’s School Diversity Advisory Group in 2019. Among those recommendations is the elimination of selective admissions screens, which advocacy groups argue serve to perpetuate segregation within public schools.
Addressing Samuels directly, Hannah-Jones pointed to the current governance structure of the city’s educational system, which remains under mayoral control despite campaign promises from Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She emphasized that accountability rests squarely with current leadership.
“Now you are the head of that system, a system that despite what Mayor Mamdani promised during his campaign, remains under mayoral control, and so there is no buck to be passed now,” Hannah-Jones told the chancellor to a swell of applause from the audience. “You have the system. So while I appreciate the work you have done today, we want to talk about the work you will do. I don’t think anybody here tonight came to hear platitudes or vague proclamations.”
Samuels, who was appointed chancellor by Mayor Mamdani and previously spearheaded school mergers as superintendent of Brooklyn District 13, defended his strategy. He argued for a community-driven approach rather than sweeping top-down mandates, pointing to working groups currently developing proposals that balance integration with academic rigor.
“I don’t believe the best way to integrate schools is by large proclamations,” Samuels said. “We’ve seen that happen before and we’ve seen that that hasn’t necessarily worked because you have an organized resistance against that and so on. So what I believe is that we have to work with communities.”
The chancellor explained that the administration is laying necessary groundwork by engaging local neighborhoods, establishing structures for dialogue, and building the capacity of superintendents to lead the initiative. However, his focus on process failed to satisfy Hannah-Jones, who accused him of dodging direct questions about concrete timelines and policy changes.
Samuels denied the accusation and maintained that parts of the administration’s approach are already underway.
The exchange grew especially sharp when the discussion turned to academic admissions screens. Hannah-Jones questioned the rationale behind allowing individual communities to maintain policies that foster racially or academically homogeneous student populations at the expense of broader equity.
“Why should a community get to decide that they get to create a homogeneous learning community?” she asked.
Samuels defended the screens by arguing that they establish environments where students perform at specific academic levels, a remark that drew boos from the audience. He added that dismantling admissions screens by itself would not solve systemic segregation and insisted that reforms must be formulated alongside local stakeholders.
Throughout the evening, Samuels did not offer a firm timeline for the implementation of a comprehensive integration plan.
The heated confrontation reflects mounting pressure on Mayor Mamdani’s administration to articulate a detailed strategy for addressing racial and socioeconomic segregation across New York City public schools, which remain among the most segregated in the nation. That pressure intensified following Hannah-Jones’s recent essay, which detailed her experiences in Brooklyn’s District 13, where Samuels previously served as her daughter’s superintendent and provided additional classroom support when requested.
