New York City is in the midst of two new standoffs over school rezoning that stir the embers of race and class. Recently, parents at public schools on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Brooklyn’s DUMBO and Vinegar Hill neighborhoods have held tense meetings over rezoning efforts to move mostly white and middle-class students in one overcrowded building to nearby schools with more room that serve more poor and minority students.

Parents are afraid their child’s education will fall prey to the needs of bureaucracy. But more than that, we are a city segregated by race and income. It makes us suspicious and fearful of each other.

But public schools are the place to challenge that. They can and should be part of the solution.

Research shows that school integration has major benefits, lifting achievement for poor children and broadening the social skills of middle-class students. Children have a way of forming friendships and establishing ties across racial and economic boundaries. Children teach each other how to navigate the tricky fault lines and expand their cultural knowledge. The adults should encourage that.

Looking at the history of racial integration in U.S. schools, David Kirp, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, wrote in a recent editorial, “By itself, racial mixing didn’t do the trick, but it did mean that the fate of black and white students became intertwined.” Once they were intertwined, life took its course. Resources began to flow more equitably to white and black students, to the poor and the financially secure. Classes got smaller. Offerings were better. Performance gaps narrowed.

A nationwide trend toward integration was reversed in the early 1990s. New York City now has one of the most racially segregated school systems in the nation, with charters the worst offenders.

In New York City, relentless gentrification, residential building booms and waves of immigration have upended planning and caused serious overcrowding at certain schools. But we can handle it.

In successful rezoning, there is something for everyone: better facilities, special programs, extra resources that call to families willing to take the gamble on sending their children to a place they hadn’t planned on. Schools can be the place where we find out how we can all get along.