When Henry Zymeck \u201982 finished speaking, it felt like all of the air had left the room. The next day, the calls and e-mails from the press (looking for a story) and parents (looking for an explanation) started.<\/p>\n
Then he found out about the video.<\/p>\n
Zymeck didn\u2019t expect reporters to be at the April 24 meeting. It was a public forum for parents and school officials to discuss a proposed plan to desegregate the schools in New York\u2019s District 3, which covers a section of Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side. Zymeck, a principal at the sixth through eighth grade Computer School on West 77th Street, supported the plan and attended to hear the community\u2019s feedback. It wasn\u2019t all positive. In the footage, taken in a school cafeteria, an impassioned Zymeck proclaims:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are kids [who] are tremendously disadvantaged. To compare these students and say, \u2018My already advantaged kid needs more advantage! They need to be kept away from those kids!\u2019 is tremendously offensive to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since he made his statement, he\u2019s brought the issue of school integration to light for many, appearing in several TV news broadcasts and a New York Times Op-Ed.<\/p>\n
According to the plan, which was recently approved by NYC\u2019s Community School District 3, each school is required to set aside 25 percent of its seats for students who are both economically disadvantaged (based on free and reduced lunch numbers) and had test scores below the state standards. \u201cThat makes all schools accountable for providing educational opportunities for kids across the academic sector,\u201d Zymeck says. \u201cIt isn\u2019t just about racial diversity or ethnic diversity, but also economic and academic diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zymeck has long lauded diversity in schools, believing New York City is a sea of cultures and backgrounds, and geographic location or financial circumstances shouldn\u2019t factor into a student\u2019s education. As the neighborhood surrounding The Computer School became more gentrified over the years, he reached out to schools serving economically disadvantaged students in other parts of the district, including charter schools. It shows in The Computer School\u2019s numbers.<\/p>\n
At Zymeck\u2019s school, 48 percent of students are white, and 47 percent are Asian, black, or Hispanic, but that\u2019s not the norm for selective schools in District 3. At Stuyvesant High School, the top-rated school in the city, fewer than 5 percent of students are black or Hispanic. \u201cMy feeling is that intelligence transcends racial and ethnic divisions, so a citywide school should reasonably represent the diversity of the population,\u201d Zymeck says. \u201cAnd if it doesn\u2019t, there\u2019s something wrong with the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
So he stood up and said his piece. He did it for the kids whom he felt would be disadvantaged by not having a diverse peer group.<\/p>\n
He also did it for the old Henry.<\/p>\n
When Henry Zymeck, the 16-year-old kid from a packed school in the Bronx, opened his car door in Hamilton in 1978, the rural, open feel of Colgate was an escape. He was an economics<\/a> major and part of the University Scholars Program (now the Office of Undergraduate Studies<\/a>), which began in part to strengthen the University\u2019s commitment to diversity.<\/p>\n Moving from a lower income high school to an elite institution gave Zymeck access to different points of view and a more wellrounded education. \u201cI personally benefited from the notion that schools should be open minded and proactive when it comes to admissions,\u201d he says. Now, 37 years after leaving the hill, he\u2019s working to give students in both The Computer School and District 3 a similar opportunity during their formative years.<\/p>\n When Zymeck first arrived at The Computer School in 1992, there were three goals written on the wall: Kids first. High expectations. No excuses.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, this is really about all three of those things. I felt that we weren\u2019t putting kids first. We were putting some kids first.\u201d Zymeck seeks to change that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A viral video of Henry Zymeck speaking to parents planted him in the center of a hot topic in New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1222,"featured_media":1730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[375,262,383,382,100,384],"coauthors":[168],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-spotlights","category-alumni-updates","tag-education","tag-justice","tag-office-of-undergraduate-studies","tag-ous","tag-race","tag-undergraduate-studies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-rT","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/05\/010819_Henry_Zymeck_MDD_465.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1929,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}