City schools to implement anti-hate lessons

Before the city's public school students begin their summer break, they're going to get one additional lesson about tolerance.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced Monday that he sent a memo to all city principals advising them to create and implement anti-hate lesson plans by the end of the school year.

Walcott, who made the announcement with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, said in light of the increase in violent hate crimes in the city, it was important to teach kids the value of diversity.

"We cannot tolerate this at all," the chancellor said of Saturday's murder of Marc Carson, 32.

Quinn, a mayoral candidate, said each school will determine how exactly they will send the message to their students with assemblies, in class lessons or other programs. The speaker said she hopes the lessons taught by the initiative will spread outside the city's youth.

"When they talk to their parents, or grandparents . . . about what they learned that day in school . . . it will cause those ripples in education to spread out to people older than school age," she said.

Walcott added that the Department of Education will continue to do similar programs at the start of the next school year.