New York City just restarted school integration after years of stalling, and two of the five districts it picked to lead are right here: District 13, covering Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights, and District 16 in Bed-Stuy. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels is launching working groups to build what he calls “academically rigorous, safe and integrated schools,” reviving a fight that set off some of the ugliest public meetings in the city around 2019 and then mostly died.

The five districts running working groups are District 13 (Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene), District 16 (Bedford-Stuyvesant), District 25 in North-Central Queens, District 3 on the Upper West Side and West Harlem, and District 7 in the South Bronx.

The word “integration” does a lot of work, and people hear very different things in it. What is launching is narrow. These are working groups, not a busing order or a rezoning. Each one is made up of teachers, principals, parent leaders, and community organizations, convened by the district superintendent, meeting monthly through the year to write a custom plan for their own district’s inequities. Nothing is being imposed from above yet. The whole design is to have each neighborhood draw up its own version.