In answering critics of his efforts on school integration, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has largely blamed New York City’s residential patterns for the problem, because most children go to elementary school near their homes.
But District 1, which includes parts of the Lower East Side and the East Village, is different. There, families choose where their children will go to elementary school, and in 2016, 84 percent of families got one of their top three choices for kindergarten.
But their choices still added up to segregation.