My dissertation examines the unique contribution of school district boundaries – over and above municipal boundaries – in the suburban context, which can tell us more about how today’s multiracial suburbs came to be structured and stagnated in such residentially and educationally segregated ways. Specifically, this dissertation aims to provide insight into how school districts are a compelling structural force in social and spatial hierarchies and explain why we need to build a deeper understanding of their unique role in the self-perpetuating segregation we find in suburban spaces.
This study focuses on Westchester County, NY at key inflection points from the 1800s to 2023, including phases of suburbanization, diversification, and legal contention over housing access. This suburb north of New York City is a study of contrasts in many ways, as it has evolved into a profoundly racially and economically stratified county with extreme differences in wealth and demographics across its highly spatially fragmented landscape.
This study is informed by a theoretical framework that takes a critical spatial approach to the study of local bordering practices. This dissertation demonstrates the need to take seriously the spatial dimensions of education, which point toward systems of power that shape our understanding of “good” and “bad” schools. Utilizing GIS mapping, municipal and school demographic data, legal documents, and real estate marketing data, I analyze the unique spatial impact of school districts on housing policy in a range of spatial contexts. Focusing specifically on publicly subsidized affordable housing, this research highlights the unique history of debates over segregated housing in Westchester, making it an ideal case study for understanding the relationship between school district boundaries, affordable housing access, and social reputation.
I contextualize my analysis throughout with historical archival and demographic materials demonstrating how educational spaces have shifted through time. Centering the interconnected spatial relationships of educational and residential boundaries fills the gap in our understanding of the unique contribution of educational borders as powerful spatial structures that can create, reproduce, and interrupt society through their influence on collective individual action.
The findings throughout this research shed light on the complexities of the relationship between school districts and municipalities in diversifying suburban spaces and emphasize the critical need for a more spatially aware research agenda in the study of the school-housing nexus.
This dissertation demonstrates that school district boundaries shape children’s educational opportunities in a number of profound ways. My findings on next-door inequality emphasize how living on one side of a school district boundary or another can mean tens of thousands of dollars in difference in per-student spending and vastly different demographics in student populations. The racial and economic separation that is happening between school district neighbors in Westchester is only exacerbated by the extensive fragmentation of small districts that have been treated as sacrosanct for decades without consideration of any broader benefit to their reorganization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/j7hh-bf53 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Keener, Abbey |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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