Chancellor Carranza Talked to Students About What Matters to Them

As the new schools chancellor continues his meet-and-greet across New York City, students and parents have started to bring the heat. Richard Carranza has referred to himself as the “new guy” since he took office in March.

At a town hall at Brooklyn Technical High School on Monday, a group of students, many of them still in school uniforms, asked Carranza how he’ll handle some of the most vexing issues that confront him as chancellor of the country’s largest public school district, from alleviating the entrenched segregation in schools to the high numbers of metal detectors in schools where black and Latino students are the majority.

Carranza told students he’s looking into how best to address those issues as he begins his third week on job. 

Robina Afzal, a junior at the Urban Assembly School for Criminal Justice in Borough Park, asked what the chancellor would do to address the disproportionately high rate of disciplinary action against students of color in schools.

Carranza said he would make sure more teachers and administrators receive bias training. But he also told students that they have a role to play. “What I would ask you to do is to make sure that all cultures are respected in the school,” he said.

As an example, he asked students if they’d ever studied the literary devices in rap songs.

The majority of them nodded or mumbled yes under their breaths, and a couple of those who had rested their heads on the table raised them.

"By the way,” Carranza said, “does anyone know who Dirty Bunny is?”

Students burst into laughter. “Bad Bunny!” a couple of them called out, referring to the Puerto Rican rapper.

“See, I messed it up,” Carranza said bashfully, adding that he’d run into Bad Bunny and his entourage at an airport recently.

The point, he said, is whether students see themselves represented in their lessons makes a difference in how engaged they are in the classroom.

Carranza said he would start listening to Bad Bunny.