School Segregation is Everyone’s Issue—A Q&A with Hartford Director of School Choice Enid Rey

May 18, 2016

By: Mary Madda

Source: edsurge.com

Enid Rey is no stranger to controversy. A lawyer by training, she’s currently the head of the School Choice Department in Hartford, Connecticut’s public school system. In a city like Hartford, where most people of socioeconomic background and race don’t mix neighborhoods, Rey’s job has been, at least recently, to market magnet schools to parents and students from both neighborhoods, encouraging them to integrate. Her responsibilities came to prominence when she was interviewed for the Peabody award-winning podcast “The Problem We All Live With,” created by This American Life.

When it comes to issues of equity and diversity, it’s everyone’s problem—like the title says, it’s a problem that we all live with. EdSurge had the opportunity to sit down with Rey at NewSchools Venture Fund’s 2016 conference to hear how she proved innovative in her approach to segregation, and to ask what it really takes to turn efforts in one district into a viral movement.