[ An activist, community organizer, school leader, novelist, and
academic, Fruchter was on the front lines of some of the most pivotal
social and educational battles of the past half century in the five
boroughs and his native New Jersey.]
[[link removed]]

NORM FRUCHTER, LEADER IN NYC AND NEWARK EDUCATION EQUITY MOVEMENT,
DIES AT 85  
[[link removed]]


 

Michael Elsen-Rooney , Reema Amin and Alex Zimmerman
January 5, 2023
Chalkbeat
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ An activist, community organizer, school leader, novelist, and
academic, Fruchter was on the front lines of some of the most pivotal
social and educational battles of the past half century in the five
boroughs and his native New Jersey. _

Norm Fruchter, a towering figure in the education equity movements in
New York City and Newark, died Wednesday after being struck by a car
in late December., Courtesy of NYU Metro Center

 

Norm Fruchter, a towering figure in the education equity movements in
New York City and Newark, died Wednesday after being struck by a car
in late December, a spokesperson for his family confirmed.

Fruchter was hit by a car while crossing the street near his home in
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
[[link removed]] on
Dec. 22, and died from his injuries at NYU Lutheran Medical Center in
Brooklyn on Jan. 4, said Michele Cahill, a friend of the family. He
was 85 years old.

An activist, community organizer, school leader, novelist, and
academic, Fruchter was on the front lines of some of the most pivotal
social and educational battles of the past half century in the five
boroughs and his native New Jersey. He was active in the civil rights
movement, fought for parents to have real power in running schools,
and led the progressive push for small public schools. For decades, he
helped spearhead efforts to increase diversity and desegregate city
schools.

“Every important, major education initiative in New York City, Norm
was part of it, and in very deliberate but very quiet ways,” Lester
Young, the chancellor of New York’s Board of Regents, told
Chalkbeat.

Fruchter’s long and varied career took him from stints as a
community organizer and activist in Newark, New Jersey, where he
founded an alternative high school, to the academy, where he started a
major academic institute at New York University. He also had roles on
multiple New York City school boards and in the philanthropic world. 

The throughline connecting all of those pursuits was a profound
commitment to educational justice and community empowerment, said
Cahill, a former high-ranking official in the city education
department and close personal friend of Fruchter.

“Norm lived and breathed justice and education equity,” she said.
“He’s an enormous, enormous intellect, and he applied it in
different contexts at different times.”

Fruchter’s curiosity, creativity, and passion didn’t end with
education: He authored two novels and produced films. He was a loving
partner to his wife, Heather Lewis, devoted father to his kids and a
doting grandfather. 

“He was a wonderful, caring person with such appreciation for
community,” Cahill said.

Civil rights activism spurs education work

Fruchter was born in 1937 in Camden, New Jersey, where he attended
public schools and went on to Rutgers University, graduating in 1959.
After college, Fruchter moved to England on a Fulbright scholarship to
teach high school before returning to New York City, where he joined
Students for a Democratic Society and became deeply involved in the
civil rights movement.

Fruchter’s organizing work took him back across the Hudson River to
Newark, where he worked in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods
fighting for tenant protections and protesting police brutality. As an
outgrowth of that work, Fruchter in 1970 co-founded and led Newark’s
Independence High School, a groundbreaking institution for students
who’d dropped out of traditional high schools. It served as a model
for “transfer schools” that eventually sprung up in New York City.

In 1983, Fruchter was elected as a member of the community school
board in Brooklyn’s District 15, which includes the Park Slope
neighborhood where he’d lived with his first wife Rachel and two
kids since the early 1970s.

The district was then, as now, a microcosm of some of the city’s
thorniest education debates.

Fruchter recalled getting a pitch from a group of parents dissatisfied
with the largely segregated local public school in their neighborhood
and pushing to open a new one.

“I shared the parents’ vision of a small school driven by
progressive instruction, project-based learning and a parent choice
lottery admission process designed to ensure a diverse and
representative student population,” he later wrote
[[link removed]],
even though he had some misgivings about the idea of starting a new
school. That push eventually led to the creation of Brooklyn New
School, a progressive elementary school that remains a popular choice
in District 15.

Dorothy Siegel, who served on the school board with Fruchter, said he
used his perch on the school board to challenge an “old boys
network” that installed almost all white, male principals in
district schools, going to other parts of the city to recruit Black
and Hispanic administrators. 

“He went up against anything that wasn’t good for education,”
she said. 

It was during his years on the District 15 school board that Fruchter
met Carmen Fariña, then a teacher in the district who would go on to
become schools chancellor under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“He encouraged me to really push forward my notion of social
studies, which was all based on multicultural education,” Fariña
told Chalkbeat in an interview. Later, when she became superintendent
of District 15, “he was there to offer advice.” When she became
chancellor, Fruchter served on her parent advisory council, “and
would make sure the voice of people who weren’t being heard was
being heard,” Fariña said.

“I think he was really one of the first people to put equity and
diversity on people’s minds,” she added, noting that some of his
ideas about alternative education were ahead of their time and have
since become more widely accepted.

Fruchter took his deep knowledge and core educational beliefs in the
power of small schools, progressive educational practices, parent
involvement, and diversity to the philanthropic and academic worlds.
He headed the Urban Education Program at the Aaron Diamond Foundation,
where he helped propel the growth of small schools in New York City,
and founded the Institute for Education and Social Policy at NYU.

The institute played a central role in the landmark Campaign for
Fiscal Equity lawsuit that resulted in a judicial decision mandating
more funding for city schools. It also served as an incubator for the
ASD Nest program, an innovative initiative for kids with autism, said
Siegel, who worked at the institute and created Nest. 

“If it wasn’t for him none of it would have happened,” she said.

A ‘thinker’ who city leaders turn to for advice

Multiple mayors and chancellors sought his counsel, even when they had
conflicting political views.

He was known in leadership circles “as a thinker,” Fariña said.
“I don’t think there was any mayor who didn’t bring him to the
table at least to hear what he had to say.”

Fruchter served as a member of de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory
Group and a member of the Panel for Educational Policy, the entity
that replaced the school board after the shift to mayoral control of
city schools under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

As a member of the PEP, Fruchter was attentive to the perspectives of
community members, parents, and educators, said Isaac Carmignani,
another mayoral appointee at the time.

He helped push the education department to proactively include parent
leaders and other panel members in discussions about policies that
could impact schools well before they made it to contentious public
meetings, Carmignani said.

“It made it a smoother process,” Carmignani said. “He listened
to everybody, he insulted nobody. It didn’t matter if he agreed with
you or disagreed with you. We need more of that style.”

Fruchter also had an independent streak. In 2015, the education
department sought approval to place students from a Success Academy
charter school in the same building as three struggling middle schools
that were part of the mayor’s school turnaround program. Fruchter
was one of two mayoral appointees who voted against the proposal,
bucking the policy of the mayor who selected him — a rare move
that raised eyebrows at the time
[[link removed]].
(The proposal still passed.)

“He wasn’t caving into the unspoken social contract: Whatever the
city put on the table you should vote ‘yes,’” said Lori
Podvesker, who served on the panel with Fruchter. “He stood by his
principles.” 

Inspiring the next generation of activists

Fruchter also nurtured and encouraged a new generation of education
advocates and activists.

Zakiyah Ansari met Fruchter about 20 years ago through a community
advocacy program housed at NYU, when she was just starting her
education organizing work. By then, Fruchter had become a highly
influential education advocate, but Ansari — now the advocacy and
New York City director for Alliance For Quality Education — said he
was too humble to talk about his many accomplishments.

“You learned about these stories from other people … ‘Did you
know that Norm’ this, that and the other,” Ansari said.
“Whatever it was, it always came from other people who, because of
the relationship they had had with him, they just wanted to kind of
share, ‘Do you know who’s in your presence?’”

Ansari worked with Fruchter on the early stages of a national
organization called Alliance to Reclaim our Schools. Through that and
other community organizing work, Ansari said Fruchter was always an
important resource. When Alliance for Quality Education was first
trying to learn about community schools, which serve high-needs
students by providing extra wraparound services, she turned to
Fruchter to explain how the model worked. He helped the group “hone
our messaging and narrative,” which she credits for helping to
secure more state funding for the city’s sprawling community schools
program. 

Besides his deep historical knowledge that spanned multiple city
mayors and chancellors, as well as national issues, Fruchter had a way
of connecting with people and getting his point across to anyone,
Ansari said. When he wanted to interview Ansari about her journey as a
parent and activist, Ansari was initially hesitant, but Fruchter
persuaded her that her story mattered. 

“He had this way of convincing you to do things — not forcing you
in any way but explaining it enough that you understood the
importance,” Ansari said. “I’m so grateful that he convinced me
to do that and that I had him in my life.”

In recent years, Fruchter served as a senior adviser to the Metro
Center at NYU, produced a film about parent activism in New York City
schools, and moved to Bay Ridge with his second wife, Heather Lewis, a
professor at Pratt Institute. 

Fruchter’s first wife, Rachel Gillett, was killed in 1997 after
being struck by a car while cycling in Prospect Park.

Fruchter is survived by Lewis, his son Lev, an educator, and daughter
Chenda, who works in New York City government, along with
grandchildren Zoe, Ella, Jack and Benjamin, adult step-children Jesse,
Alina, Shayna and Josh, and six step-grandchildren.

_Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering
NYC public schools. Contact Michael
at [email protected]_.

* Norm Fruchter
[[link removed]]
* Public Education
[[link removed]]
* Equity
[[link removed]]
* community organizing
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]