Gentrification is reshaping cities all over the country: more affluent people, often but not always white, are moving into historically Black and brown neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant.
But even as the population of Bed-Stuy has been growing in numbers and wealth, the schools of District 16 have been starved for students and resources. That’s because a lot of people moving into the neighborhood either don’t have kids, or send their kids to school outside the district.
In this episode, a group of parents who are new to Bed-Stuy try to organize their peers to enroll and invest in local schools, only to find that what looks like investment to some feels like colonization to others.
CREDITS
Producers / Hosts: Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman
Editing & Sound Design: Elyse Blennerhassett
Production Support: Jaya Sundaresh, Ilana Levinson
Music: avery r. young and de deacon board, Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot Sessions
Featured in this episode: Shaila Dewan, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Matt Gonzales, Virginia Poundstone, Felicia Alexander, Mica Vanterpool, NeQuan McLean, Rahesha Amon, Tanya Bryant, Natasha Seaton, Liz DiPippo, Anika Greenidge.
School Colors is a production of Brooklyn Deep, the citizen journalism project of the Brooklyn Movement Center. Made possible by support from the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Photo courtesy of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee.
TRANSCRIPT
SHAILA DEWAN: So when I moved here I was pregnant.
MARK WINSTON GRIFFITH: Shaila Dewan moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn in 2012.
SHAILA DEWAN: And I talked to everyone I met on the bus on the subway eventually on the playground about the schools here. Where do you send your kid to school. Where does your kid go to school and.
MAX FREEDMAN: Shaila is a journalist who covers criminal justice. So she approached the schools in Bed-Stuy like the investigative reporter that she is.
SHAILA DEWAN: I was trying to educate myself about this huge system of options that we have in this city and no one I talked to ever answered that they sent their kid to school in this neighborhood.
MARK: Instead, they were taking advantage of this huge system of options: going to public schools in other districts, charter schools, or even private schools. It didn’t sit well with Shaila.
SHAILA DEWAN: I thought. Why do why can't Bed-Stuy have what other neighborhoods have. Why am I going to take my kid to Clinton Hill or Fort Greene or to lower Manhattan. My God I mean there are parents here that take their kids to the Lower East Side for school. And I. That just outraged me. That just outraged me. Like this is not insurmountable. Like we should be able to have here what everybody else has.
MAX: And so Shaila, along with a number of other parents in the neighborhood started an organization called the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee.
MARK: Almost immediately, the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee would become a lightning rod for controversy. And at the center of the storm was Shaila Dewan.
SHAILA DEWAN: I've spent so many nights in tears. Just. Crying over this like. How did I get to a place where I was trying to help. And I became public enemy number one. How did this happen.
MARK: This is “School Colors,” a podcast from Brooklyn Deep about how race, class, and power shape American cities and schools. And it’s impossible to talk about how race, class, and power shape American cities right now without talking about gentrification.
MAX: In cities all across the country, more affluent people, often but not always white, are moving into low and moderate-income, historically Black and brown neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy.
MARK: Gentrification is often perceived as a kind of takeover: The hardware store becomes a coffee shop. The church is subdivided into condos. The brownstone gets a gut renovation. And the price of everything goes up.
MAX: On the other hand, gentrification also means that at least on paper, you have people of different backgrounds and identities living side by side — which is pretty dramatic in a country that’s been so deeply segregated for so many generations.
MARK: But even though gentrification has been sweeping across Central Brooklyn for a few years now, the schools here are actually more segregated than the neighborhood is. Even as the population of Bed-Stuy has been growing in numbers and wealth, the schools have been starved for students and resources.
MAX: That’s because a lot of people moving into the neighborhood don’t have kids — like me.
MARK: And as Shaila Dewan discovered, those new families who do have kids — white and Black alike — have found ways to avoid the local schools.
MAX: If the schools of Bed-Stuy’s District 16 are going to survive, they need students. Everybody knows that. So in this episode, we’ll see what happens when newcomers to the neighborhood that’s famous for “Do the Right Thing” try to do what they think is the right thing: organize their peers to enroll and invest in neighborhood schools.
MARK: But in Bed-Stuy, what looks like investment to some feels like colonization to others.
TANYA BRYANT: Every minor change was an issue.
NATASHA SEATON: Y’all just want to make the school something that isn’t.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I am white but I am no dummy. I know what Bed-Stuy means.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: You have two rows of black people in a black people sitting in the back and the white people sitting in the front. All kinds of crazy nonsense.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: What is going on?
LIZ DIPIPPO: Like hey where’s the money?
NATASHA SEATON: Oh, this is racism? Damn.
When long-time residents and new-comers begin to collide in school hallways, their exchanges might seem petty at times, but don’t get it twisted; the stakes couldn’t be higher. As they always have been in Central Brooklyn, fights over schools are proxy wars for bigger, deeper questions: Who is a legitimate member of the community and who gets to call the shots? And what kind of community are we trying to build anyway? It’s a preview of how Bed-Stuy will manage the change that’s not only coming, but already here.
MARK: This is Mark Winston Grifith.
MAX: And Max Freedman.
MARK: Welcome back to “School Colors.”
Gentrification
MAX: I live in a brownstone in Bed-Stuy. A couple of years ago, I was walking up my stoop one afternoon when a car pulled to a stop in front of my building. The driver, a white man in his thirties or forties, rolled down the window and called out to me. “Do you own or do you rent?” I think I was too surprised by the question to have the presence of mind to just tell him to fuck off, so I answered him: I rent. “Are you looking for an apartment?” No, I’m good. “Do you have any friends who are looking for an apartment? I have apartments.” I said no, and he drove away. I sort of wish I had asked him, “Are you asking anybody who is Black on this block?” But I already knew the answer.
MARK: The word “gentrification” has been around for more than 50 years. And it feels like Central Brooklyn has long been primed for it: property values were brought down so that developers could buy up land at a lower price, move the people out, and sell at a profit. When I moved back to this neighborhood 30 years ago, it felt like places like Harlem and Bed-Stuy were going to be Black forever. But then developers started looking at Brooklyn and licking their chops, and there was an intentional effort to create a “new Brooklyn,” by exploiting what they saw as undervalued real estate: from Downtown Brooklyn, through Atlantic Mall and the Barclays Center, and eventually, moving further and further east, Bed-Stuy.
MAX: In the 30s and 40s, all it took was a handful of Black people for the powers that be to decide — and enforce through redlining — that a neighborhood was unsafe for investment. Now, all it takes is a handful of people like me for the powers that be (or some white dude driving around in his car) to decide that a neighborhood is safe for investment.
MARK: What makes this especially painful is that generations of Black folks in Central Brooklyn have worked hard to beautify their blocks, reduce crime and attract new businesses. Ironically, in showing so much pride in their neighborhood, they have paved the way for making Central Brooklyn so desirable.
MAX: The first waves of gentrifiers are not necessarily wealthy — even if they tend to have more social capital than their neighbors. When I moved to Bed-Stuy, I was a 24 year old aspiring playwright and this was where I could afford. But prices keep going up and up and up. Rent in Bed-Stuy has risen by over a third since 1990. Home values have tripled just in the last fifteen years.
MARK: Many longtime homeowners (like me) have been able to hang on; others have cashed out; while others have fallen victim to predatory lending and deed fraud.
MAX: And for renters, it’s pretty rough out there — especially because of Bed-Stuy’s iconic brownstones, many of which have too few units to be eligible for rent control.
MARK: But when we talk about gentrification, we’re really talking about two different kinds of displacement: physical and cultural. In other words, you’re either forced to leave, or you stay long enough to no longer recognize the place.
MAX: For better or worse, while gentrifiers seem to be willing to take a risk on an “up and coming” neighborhood, they seem not to be willing to take a risk with their children’s education.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: I think that middle class parents don’t choose to go to neighborhood schools, and I think the reasons for black middle class parents versus white middle class parents are very different.
MARK: Nikole Hannah-Jones writes about race and schools for the New York Times Magazine. She also happens to live in Bed-Stuy.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: For most black middle class parents they are just one foot into the middle class themselves and this is not something they can risk. And for most white middle class parents I think that they have a lot of fear about putting their kids in school with poor black kids.
MARK: And when middle class families do choose local schools, they cluster.
MATT GONZALES: They don’t make rational choices based on like programming, they like do what their friends say, and we have segregated you know friend groups, and so.
MAX: Matt Gonzales is the Director of the Integration and Innovation Initiative at the NYU Metro Center — which, full disclosure, is a funder of this podcast.
MATT GONZALES: When you have a neighborhood gentrifying, you know. Folks are gonna send their kids to a school, they’re gonna choose a school that gonna become this enclave or boutique school in a sea of Black and Latino students.
MAX: Which is exactly the kind of thing the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee would be accused of doing — whether or not that was their intent.
The Bed-Stuy Parents Committee
MARK: Shaila Dewan, founder of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee, is actually not white, although she’s well aware that she presents as white to most people: her mother is white and her father is from India. She grew up in Houston, Texas.
SHAILA DEWAN: You know I went into this with no organizing experience whatsoever. And I I just followed my instincts. And so I was talking to all the parents that I knew of kids of a similar age and then I started accosting strangers who I didn't know if I saw somebody with a stroller basically like they were going to get a flyer from me or I was gonna tell them about our next event.
MAX: Virginia Poundstone was one of those strangers. She has a very clear memory of being with her son in Fulton Park in Bed-Stuy for a toddlers-playing-soccer thing, when:
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: Shaila fully like ran up to me and was like hi I'm Shaila I want you to come to this meeting. And I was like whoa lady who are you. Geez Louise alright.
SHAILA DEWAN: I thought everyone with a small child is gonna be interested in this. everybody wants to walk two blocks to school. Right?
MAX: She put up flyers in laundromats and on telephone poles —
SHAILA DEWAN: You know in the fancy cafes and the not fancy cafes and
MAX: She used Yahoo Groups and built an email list —
SHAILA DEWAN: And I mean this was part of the problem right is that I was really good at talking to my own cohort. People were really excited.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I do remember getting an e-mail from Shaila being like okay we need to name ourselves. Does anybody have any ideas. What should we call this. And then the next email I got was the logo with the name.
MARK: When she first heard about this new group, Felicia Alexander from the Community Education Council for District 16 was not pleased.
FELICIA ALEXANDER: You coulda called yourself anything else. But it really galls me that you decided that you're the Bed-Stuy parent committee. Like you're not born and raised here. You're not do or die. You just came here because it's the popular destination.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I have lived in New York City since 1995 since I graduated high school. I am no dummy. I am white but I am no dummy. I know what Bed-Stuy means and Bed-Stuy is a black neighborhood. You know to call it Bed-Stuy parents committee when the vision of the entire organization is about diversifying schools. That's not what Bed-Stuy is. You know. And so I was always very self-conscious about it But didn't have a better solution.
MAX: So the name was… potentially problematic, but catchy.
MICA VANTERPOOL: I typed in parents organizations in Bed-Stuy like right and so that popped up I was like oh my god there's something here.
MARK: Mica Vanterpool is Black, and she grew up in Bed-Stuy, but she was moving back with her family after many years away and looking for community.
MICA VANTERPOOL: I do admit that I thought I was going to be meeting more. You know folks of color or whatever. And I got into this room. And I think there was like one. Black person. Right. And so you know I was like oh this is the new Bed-Stuy parents committee.
MICA VANTERPOOL: And then I went to talk to my mother in law who you know she goes to church in the community And so I asked her if she had heard anything and she had been hearing some words and so I started to ask some of my other friends and it clearly the message came back fast and furious that this was like a white group that was here for a takeover.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: This is a historical Black community.
MAX: NeQuan McLean is the president of the Community Education Council, the official representative body for parents in the district.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: We are very tied to our beliefs. Our religions. So I use as a metaphor. What they’ve done is they went into a church started a choir. And did not speak to the pastor. There was already a parent group in the community.
MARK: If it’s not clear… the parent group he’s talking about is the CEC. Which makes him the pastor. I think.
MAX: In some ways this is the original sin for NeQuan: they did speak to the pastor, but not until after they had already started their own group. But at the first meeting of what eventually became the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee, they really didn’t know what the group was going to be about. Should they start a new school? Join an existing school? Pretty quickly they realized they needed to start by getting more information.
MARK: So they started reaching out to local stakeholders. One of whom was me. Shaila came to meet with me at the Brooklyn Movement Center because she read the report on District 16 that we had written. The first thing I noticed was her missionary zeal - which I figured would not play well among folks who have been in the game for a while. My instinct was to get her to slow her roll. But as long-time organizer in Bed-Stuy myself, I didn’t want to be just another gatekeeper telling her to toe the line and “show some respect.” God knows I’ve been on the receiving end of that myself, and the district in 2015 was due for a good shake up. So I shared my own experiences and did my best to warn her about the sharp elbows she was likely to face. I felt like her attitude was like “All right, bring it on,” so I wished her godspeed and let her use our space to meet.
MAX: The Bed-Stuy Parents Committee held their first official gathering in June 2015. In November, they organized their first big public event: at which they invited NeQuan and the superintendent to speak. Shaila says they were just trying to figure out how the system works, what the schools’ needs were, and how they could help to meet those needs.
MARK: But they did not make a very positive first impression.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: Got a little hostile because it was like a attack us situation but we we held our ground and we said what we needed to say and we.
MARK: The people in the audience were very critical?
NEQUAN MCLEAN: Very critical very you know of the system and the District and.
MARK: And so he sat down with Shaila and another parent from the group a couple weeks later to set them straight.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: At the time is when I told them the whole church and the choir. I said the best way to deal with this community order is not to come with the attitude that you're coming to fix something because there's been people here fighting for years to make sure we have quality education to make sure that the DOE is providing everything that they're supposed to for our children. So when you come with that attitude you're gonna get resistance. Me as a parent and a parent leader. I don't know you. Why am I going to listen to you.
SHAILA DEWAN: I mean these schools don't have a healthy level of enrollment. Right. You just you can't. You don't have money if you don't have kids.
MAX: So Shaila felt like she and NeQuan had the same mission: to get families to at least consider District 16.
SHAILA DEWAN: I mean NeQuan. Told me when we first met you know the most important thing you could do is send your kid to a District 16 school. And that was our our biggest push you know educating people about why a test score is not the be all and end all measure of a school. And telling people you've got to go in the school and see how it feels to you.
MAX: So the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee promoted something called the “two-tour pledge,” which basically said: before you decide where to send your kids to school, commit to touring at least two neighborhood schools and see what’s happening there.
MARK: So far so good… except that some of the schools in District 16 were not at all prepared to receive these parents.
MAX: Some of them wouldn’t respond to emails. One parent told me that she called up a school and asked if they offered school tours. Whoever picked up the phone straight-up said no and hung up.
MARK: So in addition to organizing parents, the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee tried to work directly with the schools to help them market themselves and organize school tours.
SHAILA DEWAN: But there's also a very big sense of “we can do this ourselves. Thanks a lot.” And sometimes it's like people don't want what you have to offer which you may think is so great.
MAX: And even when parents did manage to get a school tour… they were not always met with open arms, says Virginia Poundstone.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: The principal wouldn't greet me. And I just remember being like this is weird. Why won't she greet me. And so that was my very first feeling of the DOE was I am not welcome here. And that's my zoned school that's where I'm like every. Every everything around me is telling me that's the school I'm supposed to go to if I'm being a proper civic person and that school does not want me there. Whether it's because I'm white or because I am empowered or because I like I don't know I think it's all mixed up in there.
MAX: Virginia thinks she understands why a parent like her wouldn’t necessarily be welcomed by a longtime principal in this district.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: You're getting families that are working too hard and don't have any time or don't have an education themselves I mean I have a hard time understanding and deciphering the DOE and I have a graduate degree. they set up this system that is impossible to navigate if you don't have a lot of time and a lot of resources to figure it out. And so if if a principal sees someone like me walk in who has obviously already begun to figure it out and I don't even have a child in school that is like no thank you. I don't want to deal with you I know you're going to be like a lot of you're going to be a lot of work.
MARK: Like Virginia, most of the parents involved with Bed-Stuy Parents Committee had children who were still too young for school. So word on the street was that the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee was exclusive: only for some Bed-Stuy Parents, not all.
SHAILA DEWAN: There was no policy. All of our meetings were public but we just sort of said like hey this is particularly aimed at you if you're the parent of a kid who's age 0 to 4 meaning you wouldn't be placed in the school yet.
MAX: And Shaila says that messaging was strategic: their goal was to encourage families who would otherwise not choose local schools to choose local schools. So if they spent their limited energy and resources trying to talk to parents of older kids, those parents would already have gone outside the district — too little, too late.
MARK: That doesn’t hold water with NeQuan.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: Oh so they want to make sure the schools are good at the schools are right before their kids get there. No we want to make sure the schools are right. The schools are good because students are there already. We gonna do what's best for all students not just yours not just Johnny. Not just Samantha. But Shequana that lives in Brevoort. We gonna make sure she has a good education too.
MARK: What NeQuan is speaking to is the same fear of a takeover that Mica had heard from her mother-in-law in church. And the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee, whatever their intent, fed this fear with the most polarizing decision they ever made: they chose two “focus schools”: two schools where the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee would encourage their members to enroll, and that the organization would then raise money for.
MICA VANTERPOOL: Parenting is anxiety inducing we want to get it right. We want the best for our kids. And there were a large cohort of families, white families even that wanted to put their kids into local schools. But a part of it is also like and who else will be there with me. You know like you want to build a community You know like if you go into a school and you have people that you already know we already know five or six people. It makes it less scary. And so a lot of our families were just asking Tell us what to do.
MAX: There was a process of “natural selection.” Bed-Stuy Parents Committee parents toured every school in the district, and there were two schools that rose to the top: Brighter Choice Community School, and P.S. 309.
MARK: But Virginia had a bad feeling about this from the beginning.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: Originally it was. The discussion was like OK let's announce that we're adopting these schools. And I was like Yo no no we are not adopting anybody. And then the term became focus schools and then I was like But why do we have to announce that. A different way would have been to never announce that and just enroll. You know whatever. I lost.
MARK: Even as the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee kept on trying to get people hyped up about the district — they even made t-shirts that said I Heart D16 — the local rumor mill went into overdrive.
MAX: The most persistent and destructive rumor has been that parents from the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee requested an all-white kindergarten class.
SHAILA DEWAN: If you even wanted that. Which we don't. Why would you go to a 97 percent people of color school district and ask for that. Like it just doesn't make sense right. But that's one of the that's one of the huge rumors that people people actually seem to think that it might be true.
MAX: If it’s not true, where did this story come from?
SHAILA DEWAN: The discourse has never been direct. There's never been a forum for really talking about this where people um come to us and tell us to our face what they have a problem with. It's all been rumor sometimes extremely vicious rumor sometimes rumor that has been repeated and amplified by people who should be leaders in this community um and have been very divisive instead.
MARK: So when we visited Superintendent Rahesha Amon in the district office, we asked her directly if anyone ever came to her to ask for an all-white kindergarten class.
RAHESHA AMON: I've I've heard lots of interesting things. Lots of interesting things.
MARK: And it would include that.
RAHESHA AMON: I've heard lots of interesting things at this table from a variety of people regarding race. I really have I mean yeah.
MARK: I’m genuinely confused. Why didn’t she just answer that question?
MAX: I think she did answer the question. Maybe she was trying to be diplomatic by not saying Yes, this happened — but really, by not saying no, isn’t she just saying Yes?
MARK: I don’t know if I’d go that far. At the very least, it raises more questions that it answers.
MARK: You know one can make the argument that you as a leader of this district is part of your role is to help mediate some of this this discord. Did you ever feel that that was your role at all.
RAHESHA AMON: To mediate a beef between adults. No. If it's not in service of children.
MAX: So without a more definitive answer from the superintendent… there is another possible point of origin for this rumor, and it stems from what happened at one of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee’s two focus schools, P.S. 309.
MARK: Of the first class of Bed-Stuy Parents Committee families who actually enrolled their children in the district in the fall of 2016, six went to Brighter Choice and six went to 309. The parents who went to Brighter Choice were a mix of Black and white.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: And then the parents that went to 309 were only white. So it was six white families that went there and they were the only white people in the school. And then all of the white kids got placed in one class except for one. So all. So there were six white kids in the school five of them were in one of the pre-ks. And so then the rumor became they asked to all be together.
MARK: We asked the principal at P.S. 309, Tanya Bryant.
MARK: Did that actually happen.
TANYA BRYANT: All? No. There were a few requests um but we do have one teacher here that is really beloved. So it's not uncommon she's been here a really long time.
MARK: So you interpreted that as a request for a teacher as opposed to we want all of our students to be in the same class.
TANYA BRYANT: Yes. Yes. I don't believe. I do not believe it was. Um. We want all the white children in here together. I don't I don't believe that that was it. No.
MARK: Nevertheless, that’s how it shook out.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I remember very clearly when that happened and all of the parents freaked out that their children were all in the same room and didn't want that and protested but there was nothing that could be done.
TANYA BRYANT: A couple of them said that and I said to them move the kids over well not my kid you know so they wanted the class broken up but not their kid to be moved.
MAX: But why did the white parents choose P.S. 309 over the other focus school, Brighter Choice, in the first place?
MARK: Mica Vanterpool has a theory: Brighter Choice was opened during the Bloomberg era, and in 2016 was still led by its founding principal, with a strong school culture. The leadership at P.S. 309, on the other hand, was in transition.
MICA VANTERPOOL: What I thought. Like when I made my own personal assessment is that the families that chose brighter choice they were going to be a part of an existing school community. And the parents that chose 309 were going in because they felt there was space to create a school culture or school community. And I don't think it was racially based. It looked racial but I think it had more to do with um with what parents were looking for.
MARK: And maybe what parents were looking for was informed, consciously or unconsciously, by race.
MAX: But which parents went to which school, and which children were in which class at that school, was only the beginning of the problems at P.S. 309. P.S. 309 was where the shit really hit the fan for the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee.
MICA VANTERPOOL: That’s where it felt really hot and heavy.
MARK: After the break.
MIDROLL BREAK 1
ANTHONINE PIERRE: Hi! This is Anthonine Pierre from the Brooklyn Movement Center. If you’ve made it all the way to Episode 7 of this podcast, you must really like us. Now that we’ve made it past the awkward getting to know you phase and you’re pretty invested in the powerful work we’re doing… are you ready to get serious?
Take your relationship with School Colors to the next level -- head to brooklynmovementcenter.org and click on “get involved.” If you’re in Central Brooklyn, become a BMC member, which means you can do hyperlocal journalism like this, or join one of our organizing campaigns on food justice, policing or housing! If organizing isn’t your thing or you live somewhere outside Central Brooklyn, you can make a recurring donation.
School Colors may be over soon, but we in it for the long haul, boo.
P.S. 309
MARK: When the first cohort of six families from the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee arrived at P.S. 309 in the fall of 2016, the president of the PTA was Natasha Seaton, known by everybody in the school as Miss Tasha.
NATASHA SEATON: I lived in Brooklyn all my life. I was born here in Bed-Stuy but I moved to Staten Island like six years ago.
MARK: If you’re thinking, “wait, this sounds familiar” that’s because in the course of our reporting, we met not one, but two PTA officers who bring their children to school in Bed-Stuy every day from Staten Island: Crystal Williams at P.S. 25 and Natasha at P.S. 309.
NATASHA SEATON: I didn't feel comfortable in the schools in Staten Island actually stepping in there talking to a principal. I always felt at home in Brooklyn. So I was just like you know what. I'm gonna keep her in school in Brooklyn but for the cheaper living I'll be in Staten Island.
MARK: It’s a two hour commute, each way, every day.
NATASHA SEATON: Shoot we get up at 5:00. We're on the 6:40 ferry. And we're here at 7:30.
MARK: But she loves 309 and she loves Brooklyn.
NATASHA SEATON: Something about Brooklyn. That just brings out just the life of me when I when I step off the train I'm smiling.
MARK: Her daughter loves Brooklyn too.
NATASHA SEATON: You know just her being her with our friends dancing outside. You know not being looked at all strangely you could be in a park and you can just like have a good time. So that's why I like Bed-Stuy.
MAX: When the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee rolled into town, Natasha had been PTA president for three years. She basically spent all her time in the building.
NATASHA SEATON: If they needed help in the cafeteria, I was there. If they needed help in the classroom putting up a bulletin board, I was there.
MAX: She was a chaperone on field trips. She made sure every kid in the school had some kind of birthday treat.
NATASHA SEATON: Not a lot of parents wanted to join the PTA. I knew the parents at that school I knew that parents counted on me to you know let them know what's going on.
MAX: Eventually she even got a job in the building, working for the nonprofit that runs the after-school program.
NATASHA SEATON: Long days. I was there from 8:00 in the morning till like 7 o'clock at night.
MARK: The principal, Tanya Bryant, quickly came to appreciate how hard Natasha was working — and how much trust she had from other parents.
TANYA BRYANT: She was the mayor of the community. Even when it came to me. I remember my first two months here if something would happen and parents would come up here and they would be upset no no no no no no no no Miss Bryant loves the children. I'm sure that's not what happened. Talk to her. Let me figure it out. She was the mayor. Gotta be careful with the mayor. You know.
MAX: One of the new parents at P.S. 309 was the founder of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee, Shaila Dewan.
SHAILA DEWAN: We really didn't want it to be this kind of like “we are going to pick one school and go in there and take it over.” I mean we were really trying to avoid that dynamic. We did not want that.
TANYA BRYANT: Shaila was really for the kids. You know she moved into the neighborhood and she um. Just wanted to be a full part of the community. I don't want to just live here. My kid’s going to go to school here. I want to partner with you guys.
MAX: But right away, there was conflict between the new parents in the school and Miss Tasha.
NATASHA SEATON: It's not the color I love white people like I love them, you know, it's the way that they came in trying to, like regulate everything. You know, I want this program for this.
MAX: Shaila and the other new parents at 309 put their social capital to work: they held a book sale, they staged a mock election on Election Day, They even arranged for subsidized music lessons. One of them worked for the Department of Transportation and figured out the permits to hold a Touch-a-Truck event for the kids in the street outside the school.
MARK: But nothing came easy.
TANYA BRYANT: Every minor change was an issue. For example. How about the PTA sell flowers. Oh we don't sell flowers here.
SHAILA DEWAN: Some people wanted to have committees. And I remember at one point the PTA president said we can't have committees.
TANYA BRYANT: But I think it became almost like territorial right. We were here. My kid has been here since pre-school and we just don't do it that way.
SHAILA DEWAN: The district person showed up at a PTA meeting and said You can have committees like you can't just not have committees if people want to have committees they can.
MAX: So but somebody must have called the district people and said she's not letting us have committees.
SHAILA DEWAN: Yeah that was probably me. That was probably me who did that. Yeah.
TANYA BRYANT: Newer families though had done their homework. It behooved them to research and find out how do public schools run. Oh let me read the Chancellor's regulations so they would come in and say but there's nothing wrong with selling flowers according to Chancellor's regulation you know stating policy and I think the older family don't come in here stating that policy like everything was like a challenge.
SHAILA DEWAN: I'm like the little like rule stickler who will be like you can't do that because the rules say blah blah blah. You know like let me call in the referee.
TANYA BRYANT: And I think it's hard it was harder for some of the other parents because they no longer could afford to live in the community right. So now I've moved out. I'm in a shelter or I've temporary housing or I've been forced to move to other areas of the city and I'm a native of Bed-Stuy and now here you are you're living in Bed-Stuy and now you want owner you took my home and now you want my school too.
MAX: Even these little things — starting committees, selling flowers — were signals to Natasha that these new parents were trying to turn P.S. 309 into a replica of one of the most highly prized schools in brownstone Brooklyn, P.S. 11: still a mostly Black school, but with a growing white minority.
NATASHA SEATON: You want it to be P.S. 11. Yes P.S. 11 can bring in twenty five thousand dollars. I know where their location is. Yes I know the parents. Remember where our school is. Remember what parents we're dealing with and the money that they have in their pocket. Relax. You're trying to quote unquote shit on them. And forget about the parents that have been in the school that are struggling. You think everybody's rich. No.
MAX: You say like they wanted to turn it into something else. If you had to. What did they want to turn it into.
NATASHA SEATON: For me to talk real their white school. They didn’t want no black kids in there.
MARK: Even Shaila could see that what was happening had a racial dimension. She says she tried to be proactive about addressing it.
SHAILA DEWAN: People didn't want to have a conversation about race. So. Not at that point in time. You know. And it may be like. Why should we have a conversation about it. You go have a conversation about it. It's it's just really hard to know what the right forum is.
TANYA BRYANT: She kept wanting to push the issue. Let's talk about this race and gentrification and how it's affecting and I remember saying to her but you're not ready for the truth you know. And then yes I am yes I am.
NATASHA SEATON: Yes they work they have their nice prestigious jobs. Nobody's mad at that. I mean to stay in the school. You know so I don't feel like you know. You're talking to me any kind of way like oh like you're higher than me. You know I chose to do what I wanted to do. Yes I'm smart. I graduated from York college. I have my bachelors and so forth. I did psychology and social work. I just don't want to do that. I want to be in the school.
MARK: To hear Natasha tell it, the microaggressions were constant.
NATASHA SEATON: How y'all come off like this like I thought we were all parents. And I didn't want it to be like your angry black person. Like you don't know how to be in a setting you know like. I shouldn't have to like get out of my character and be like oh like this Brooklyn chick is like getting all like crazy like no I can talk just like you all. They just did stuff differently.
SHAILA DEWAN: I remember there was a lot of frustration trying to deal with Natasha because you’d think you had agreed on some way of proceeding with something and then the next time you saw her the story would be different. We would say things like well you want to have a Thanksgiving raffle do you need parents to come at a certain time and help sell tickets to the raffle. Like what do you need. And it would just be like No no no we don't we don't need anything. Thanks.
NATASHA SEATON: So oh well if you're mad at me oh well this is volunteer. Ha. So we don't get paid for this so you know what. Accept it and work with me. Or I know that you're not for the kids.
SHAILA DEWAN: As people came up against finding her actually trying to block them from contributing to the school. However they wanted to do it. At that point like it's true. People were looking for a way to get her out because she was viewed as so obstructionist.
MAX: Eventually, some of the new, white parents tried to stage a kind of coup: Natasha says they tried to force her to either quit her job in the after-school program, or quit the PTA.
NATASHA SEATON: You work for the after school program you cannot be you know volunteer in the school I don't work in the school. I was volunteering at 309 so I can work for an after school program.
MAX: Shaila says she wasn’t a part of this… but it sort of didn’t matter. All the white parents were lumped together and branded with the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee.
MARK: No matter who was trying to get her out, Natasha was right: working for the after-school program was not the same as working for the school. So to use a contemporary analogy… when these parents failed to impeach Natasha, attention turned instead to voting her out of office.
MAX: Enter Liz DiPippo and Anika Greenidge. When they decided to run for the PTA at P.S. 309 in the spring, Anika and Liz were blissfully ignorant of all this drama. In the fall, Liz had been occupied having her second child.
LIZ DIPIPPO: I wasn’t at the school I wasn’t hanging out in the school. I wasn’t feeling like the the rejection from the school community I felt like it was totally great. And so then it was a bit of a surprise yeah it was a surprise.
MAX: Liz grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. She’s lived in Bed-Stuy for eight years, and she knew Shaila socially from the neighborhood. But Liz had never been to a meeting of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee and basically wanted nothing to do with them.
MARK: We’ve mostly been talking about the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee in terms of race. But Liz is white, and her aversion to the group had more to do with class.
LIZ DIPIPPO: I have. I mean personally often had that feeling of being like I'm not rich you know I'm excluded from this so like screw them I'm not going to join them. But then I'm like oh wait but maybe there actually we need to ride the coattails of these rich people because they're going to make the schools better and I don't want to send my kid to school out of district. In the end I was committed to that. You know I really felt strongly about that my kid needs to go to school in this neighborhood as long as we're able to live here.
MAX: Just to be clear you don't identify as a rich person.
LIZ DIPIPPO: Yeah. Which is I get something you never get rid of right from your old life. Because it really just dawned on me recently we are not poor. But when you grow up poor maybe you never get over that. You never you know I mean like we have a pretty nice life here in Brooklyn. But I didn't feel that I identified with specifically with homeowners new homeowners in Bed-Stuy. And I was specifically turned off by what I saw as like a huge group of people who were not comfortable sending their white kids to school with black kids without a bunch of other white kids I was really weirded out by that.
MAX: So even though she enrolled her son Max at P.S. 309 at the same time as several members of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee, and she was friends with a couple of them, she never felt like she was a part of their group. She chose the school because she liked it.
LIZ DIPIPPO: I just thought it was great. Seemed like really small and and the teachers seemed really loving it was like a really nice place.
MARK: By this time, Anika Greenidge had already been at P.S. 309 for a minute. We met Anika in the last episode: she’s a Bed-Stuy native who first put her son in a charter school, then took him out because she said he was being picked on by his teacher.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: You're not gonna belittle me and you're definitely not going to belittle him. So At that moment I was done. I was literally mentally done. I was like he's going. And then I went to 309.
MARK: But she found some of the same problems that she’d had at the charter school. Her son was struggling academically and the teachers were not helpful.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: They have tenure at this school and they let you know that. They had an after school program that sucked.
MARK: And it was Anika’s dissatisfaction with this after-school program that motivated her to start going to PTA meetings.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: if I put myself into the PTA program maybe I can see what's going on from the inside instead of just saying I want help and maybe I could be part of the help.
LIZ DIPIPPO And so we were like mom friends and then we went to a PTA meeting together. And I said you know the current PTA president. It's her last year.
MAX: Actually, It was not Natasha’s last year in the school — her daughter was in 4th grade - but there were supposed to be PTA term limits.
NATASHA SEATON: Like I wish I could have ran another year but they was so on it. I was PTA president for three years. Like they wanted to stop everything like no she cannot be president again. This cannot happen.
MARK: And they were encouraged to run… by Shaila Dewan.
LIZ DIPIPPO: You know we were friends for sure. We are friends we are friends. Yeah so she encouraged us. She encouraged us. We were encouraged.
MAX: Again, Anika and Liz say they were totally unaware of what had been going on up to that point between Natasha and other new parents in the school. So they were totally unprepared for the response to their PTA campaign.
MARK: When they had first started going to PTA meetings, the meetings were pretty sleepy.
LIZ DIPIPPO: It was just you know maybe six of us. And me and Anika would be two of them. So we're like Let's do this. Like why not we'll build something we'll build this little organization.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: We put it out there that we were going to run and everything then that PTA meeting was packed.
MARK: But in order for Liz and Anika to run together as co-presidents, the PTA bylaws had to be changed. Which is how, even though Shaila wasn’t running for the PTA herself, she got caught up in this messy election.
SHAILA DEWAN: There was so many shenanigans like you know what do our bylaws say well there is no copy of the bylaws. OK you finally get a copy of the bylaws. And then it's like somebody shows up on your election night and says these are not the bylaws. And so then you go to the DOE and you're like umm so what bylaws do we use. And they say oh no those are the bylaws. Those are the bylaws. So you go back to your PTA meeting you say well we've been told these are the bylaws and then the district officials come and say Actually no those are not the bylaws and we're not going to go by them. I mean just became like this like lawless kind of wild west thing.
MAX: Once the bylaws had finally been rewritten and approved, Anika and Liz wound up running against two candidates who they believe were basically handpicked by Natasha to run as her proxies.
MARK: 40-50 people showed up to vote in the election. CEC president NeQuan McLean was there to observe.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: It was basically really like the whites against the black. You have two rows of white people. You have two rows of black people in a black people sitting in the back and the white people sitting in the front. All kinds of crazy nonsense.
MAX: Principal Tanya Bryant.
TANYA BRYANT: Many of the families here were not actively involved and they were OK. They trust the school to kind of do what they do. If you need me call me I'll help you but I trust the school to kind of do what it does. But when it was time for a PTA election some of these people would come out of the woodwork. You've never seen so many people in your life you know just to make sure that certain people didn't get elected or so it's a very interesting dynamic. You know I don't necessarily want it but I don't want you to have it either because you're just getting here. I may not have all the time in the world um to dedicate to the school but I'm here too and I still want my voice heard. And I'm afraid that if you get the position that my voice I'm not going to be represented here. So.
MARK: Anika & Liz won by one vote.
LIZ DIPIPPO: It did not feel good. But at the end the room empties. And who's there but us. Yeah. And the other two women who ran against us and it was like they were so nice and they both were like We're here for you. We want to help you.
MAX: So the real problem was not the parents.
LIZ DIPIPPO: It became clear after we won that we would not be supported by the school.
MARK: But whatever happened next, Shaila Dewan wouldn’t be around to see it. Over the summer, she made a difficult decision.
SHAILA DEWAN: So PS 56 is in District 13 and my kid just got into a program that is not offered for kindergartners in District 16. So that was a big discussion in my family and um.
MARK: I can imagine.
SHAILA DEWAN: Which I lost. And but he's going to the closest place to our neighborhood that offers it. So.
MAX: What's the program.
SHAILA DEWAN: Gifted and talented.
MAX: The reason Shaila’s son had to leave the district for Gifted and Talented is because NeQuan and the CEC had voted for the program in District 16 to start in 3rd grade — based on evidence that fewer Black and brown kids would qualify for G&T if it started in kindergarten.
MARK: But just because Shaila had left, didn’t mean things would go smoothly at P.S. 309 the following year.
MAX: For one thing, Natasha Seaton was still on the PTA — as the secretary.
NATASHA SEATON: So I was just like all this work that I done. No I'm not going without a fight.
MARK: After the break.
MIDROLL BREAK 2
ANTHONINE: Hi, it’s Anthonine again! So we’ve been asking y’all to write reviews and we’re so grateful to hear about how essential this story has been to you as teachers, parents and just people. We know there’s more of you out there with something to say about how this podcast has impacted you, so talk to us! Tweet at us using #SchoolColorsPodcast. If you’re having conversations offline, tell us about them! Write to contact@brooklyndeep.org. Thanks!
A DRAMA-FREE YEAR
MARK: Newly-elected PTA co-presidents Anika Greenidge and Liz DiPippo received an omen of the difficulties they were going to face when they went to open a bank account for the PTA at the local Bank of America.
LIZ DIPIPPO: We were like Yay we took like a selfie to send to the PTA we did it we opened a bank account and then they just the B of A rep was like Good luck. Let's hope for a drama free year ladies. And we were like Why. She's like 309. I know that school.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: I was like what is going on..
MARK: They did not have a drama-free year.
LIZ DIPIPPO: All the hostility from the year before was now on me like I was representative of that new white group of parents and so it was like this relationship was irreparably damaged and I was now the new spokesperson for that relationship.
MARK: The hostility was particularly jarring for Anika as a Black woman born and raised in Bed-Stuy.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: I felt like I was caught in the middle. I felt like this is basically a predominantly black school and because I was more inviting and welcoming and I actually became friends with one of the new parents.
MARK: Who was White.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: Who was white that they were like oh you know like we don't like her we're not gonna like her either.
LIZ DIPIPPO: Personally my interactions with the teachers were mostly very very good. Totally fine. The office staff horrible. Janitorial staff horrible. Security team horrible.
MAX: They interfered with Liz and Anika in lots of petty ways.
LIZ DIPIPPO: Oh here you have to file for every permit for every PTA meeting you're gonna have for the rest of the school year. Awesome. That'll secure us a spot every month and then. Oh no no no no none of those permits that you filed are meaningful or valid.
LIZ DIPIPPO: We couldn’t do anything. We were absolutely paralyzed.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: Had our door locked.
LIZ DIPIPPO: Yeah the door locked.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: Oh you can’t get into the PTA room.
LIZ DIPIPPO: We couldn’t get a key can we get a key. Oh in October here’s the key. Stuff like this so it was like every single you know one giant leap was the.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: The door’s supposed to be closed when we’re not there. When we come. The door is already open. We’re like what who was in here.
MAX: They couldn’t get a key to the PTA room, but they say Natasha, the crossing guards, and other staff were let in whenever they wanted.
LIZ DIPIPPO: We went in and cleaned out the room it was gross. I mean just tidied it. And she you went through my stuff my personal stuff. She bought a padlock and put it on a filing cabinet and.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: We were like this is not your personal home. Like.
NATASHA SEATON: And they threw away all my kids books but you never called to say, you know, this is what we're going to do. You just took it amongst yourself to do what you wanted to do. And not let me know. Now since you're touching my stuff, now you know what, I'm going to take my certain things and just put aside and this cabinet is mine.
MARK: And there was also some confusion and conflict around money.
NATASHA SEATON: Sometimes I would actually use my own money because PTA, we didn't have a lot when we started off with. So I would take my money I will go to the corner stores or I will go to Family Dollar and buy like chips, icees so forth. And I will sell them either at lunchtime or after school to raise money for parents who couldn't afford the cap and gowns.
MARK: Natasha says all this money was carefully accounted for. Liz says… not so much.
LIZ DIPIPPO: Two dollars here three dollars here. Like I don't know if that's such a big deal. I think like the tendency for privileged people to sort of say like hey we need this infrastructure we rely on the rules because they serve us like that's what a lot of that stuff is wrapped up in. But what I think is significant is the larger amounts of money.
MAX: But when Liz and Anika tried to ask about some of this stuff, it didn’t go over so well.
LIZ DIPIPPO: There were meetings where she would stand up and cry and say oh you know we're a family we're a family at this school and like this kind of rhetoric and then people would say well you know OK but I'm just you know you still ask your family where'd the money go. Like hey where's the money.
MAX: Did. People try to say like, where. Miss Tasha where's the money.
NATASHA SEATON: Oh, no, not to me. Not to me.
LIZ DIPIPPO: And then it was like No you're attacking me crying crying and then gathering up the forces like these people are after me and they hate me and are you my friend do you love me like will. And she was powerful in that way she really got that she had the love she had the love of the community.
NATASHA SEATON: You know they had a problem like oh Natasha doesn't have to sign. Why do I have to sign in. Do you forget the amount of years that I've been here like yes I got my little my little kudos. Yes I don't have to sign in at that moment. Yes you have to sign Anika. And Liz it's not a problem. Just sign in and go.
MAX: We asked Natasha directly if she had rallied the school staff against Anika and Liz. She said no — but she has an idea as to why the staff may not have been so nice to them.
NATASHA SEATON: Your attitude stinks. You come in here and you don't say good morning you don't say anything you have this nasty demeanor about you you know what if I worked there too I was like yeah give me your ID. Let me I'm going to make your life a little difficult too because you're making my life difficult always.
MAX: Liz and Anika say they felt like they were being bullied by Natasha and her allies. But what was even more demoralizing was that they felt like the school leadership didn’t have their back.
MARK: The last straw was in November, when a rumor started to circulate that Liz had filed an official complaint against Ms. Bryant with the DOE. Anika heard it first.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: I called her immediately and I was like there's this rumor around that you filed a complaint about the principal and da da da da da. And she's like What.
LIZ DIPIPPO: And you said I'm assuming. This is not true. I’m like yeah that's not true. I didn't file a complaint with the superintendent against anybody I would. That's insane.
ANIKA GREENIDGE: She was almost near tears and she was like You know I'm done. And she was like I tried I'm done.
MAX: They didn’t show up to the next PTA meeting, in December.
LIZ DIPIPPO: And then we both pulled our kids out of the school in January and we just like didn't show up and I never told anybody at the school I just just left. I just like yeah.
MAX: Liz says it felt like a really extreme decision. But it also felt like:
LIZ DIPIPPO: Everyone hates me here. Like I'm still his mom. How can I send my kid to school where he's around these people. So many hours a day and it's. People are going out of their way to start rumors about me that I'm like doing this stuff to mess with the principal like this is a bad scene. I gotta get out of here.
TANYA BRYANT: With every stage of change comes conflict. And a lot of the newer families the change didn't come quickly enough for them and the conflict became unnecessary to them because they felt like they had other options.
NATASHA SEATON: I see some of the parents now. And it's just like Oh hey yeah hey but we could have had a good time at 309 and you destroyed it. And for you to all just leave and then leave the kids like y’all left PTA crap. you know like y'all fought for the PTA and none of you are on the PTA so what was all this fight for.
MAX: That’s a good question: what was all this fight for?
MAX: In the three months that you were PTA president how much money did you raise.
LIZ DIPIPPO: How much money did we raise. Four hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah.
MAX: And what was it spent on.
LIZ DIPIPPO: Oh who knows.
MARK: Even after Anika & Liz were gone, Natasha felt targeted by the other new parents in the school. She felt like they treated her like a problem. All the time.
NATASHA SEATON: So it was like for my whole fifth grade I was stuck in the PTA room. I couldn't be with the kids. I couldn't help out. Couldn't do nothing.
NATASHA SEATON: It was like I was watched on. Don't let me come into the cafeteria say good morning to the kids because they've been watching me from the um. The windows in the yard. Is she in there.
NATASHA SEATON: I couldn't take the kids down the hallway anymore. Nothing. That stopped because they didn't want me touching their white kids. My brown hands on their white kids.
NATASHA SEATON: Oh this is racism. Damn. I never never living in Staten Island still. Never. Never had to feel the way I felt for them last two years.
NATASHA SEATON: You know I had to hold my composure at many many many many many times. So I says You know what. I'm glad I'm getting out of there.
LIZ DIPIPPO: I kind of regret taking my son out of the school really because I think he really loved it there.
MARK: Her son Max now goes to P.S. 56 in District 13 — the same school Shaila’s at. And she says she will never, ever be on the PTA again.
MAX: Natasha, on the other hand, joined the PTA as soon as she arrived at her daughter’s new school — still in District 16 — M.S. 35. When we called the school and asked to speak to Natasha Seaton, we got her on the phone in no time. When we arrived at the school to interview her, they sent us to find her in the PTA room. It was clear: everybody knows “Miss Tasha.” Her daughter is now in 7th grade and in some ways, things are back to normal. She has since actually stepped down from the PTA because she got a job in the school as a classroom aide.
NATASHA SEATON: I'm glad yeah that I'm out because that was like my year of fifth grade. Fourth and fifth grade. Was what a year. What a year. What a year. I'm telling you. What a year.
Toxic
MARK: Maybe inevitably, there was a conflation between what happened at P.S. 309 and the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee as an organization. The Bed-Stuy Parents Committee didn’t control any PTA in the district, and the actions of individual parents didn’t necessarily reflect the mission and values of the group.
MAX: But their reputation was badly damaged.
SHAILA DEWAN: I mean our confidence was just just obliterated.
MAX: Shaila tried to clear the air with the CEC and other local stakeholders, but it was always like one step forward, two steps back.
SHAILA DEWAN: As I understand it the CEC told the superintendent not to have any conversations with us. And then the CEC also told us that they would not have any conversations with us.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: Every time that we have opened our arms or try to work with them they have tried to do something undercut or go behind our backs and we don't have time to waste like that.
SHAILA DEWAN: It may be that you know like we just didn't CC the right person on the right email. There's no book that tells you who to CC. But when we make that mistake of not CCing the right person you know it just is a complete conflagration sized disaster.
MAX: Shaila continued to believe the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee was doing really positive things. But they were clearly not being seen that way.
MARK: And for Shaila, it felt very personal.
SHAILA DEWAN: It's it's been really. Hard. I mean I've gone to public meetings where people will not say hello to me.
MARK: People who you know.
SHAILA DEWAN: Yeah people who I've met. Yeah. People who I say hello to will not say hello to me. It's like I'm completely toxic in my own community and neighborhood.
SHAILA DEWAN: I am a pariah. And um. You know I resigned from the Bed-Stuy parents committee not because of that not because I didn't want to fight the hard fight but for other reasons. And I also just felt like gosh maybe this will help like. Maybe it will help the group to move on into a more productive relationship.
MARK: After Shaila resigned in the summer of 2017, Virginia Poundstone and Mica Vanterpool took over as co-presidents of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee and decided to put things on pause. Here’s Virginia:
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I think I had a gut feeling as a human being about what the the behaviors of my fellow white people being really negative. But I didn't have the skills to really articulate exactly why what they were doing was bad and why the way they were speaking was bad the way they were behaving was bad. Their internalized superiority you know like I didn't have those words at that time. I have those words now but I didn't at the time and that was absolutely playing out there.
MAX: So they brought in anti-bias consultants. They re-assessed their mission, built a five-year plan.
MICA VANTERPOOL: And so we've been working really hard to reach out to all of the families of Bed-Stuy. So that way when that name says Bed-Stuy parents committee that it truly truly represents more than just a specific group of families.
MAX: But it hasn’t been easy.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: It's difficult for us to continue organizing parents because we are constantly managing new drama to thwart us. We were a volunteer organization. No one is paid for this work. We all have other jobs that we're having to do But because this whole neighborhood is under attack because of gentrification because of large systemic citywide nationwide policies. The level of attack is that everyone is on 10. And to do the work we need to be on like four in terms of our emotional maxed out ness. And when we're all at 10. No one can move forward. And I not harmed by that. And Mica is not harmed by that. And that's where it gets heartbreaking.
MARK: You say you’re not harmed by it but it you are obviously affected so when you say you're not harmed by it and other people are what do you mean by that.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I have options. I am white. I am middle class. I can figure it out.
MARK: So my last question is. So this door over there it leads to the past.
SHAILA DEWAN: Oh yeah. Cool.
MARK: And if you walk through it it takes you back right before you started Bed-Stuy parents committee. Would you still start Bed-Stuy parents committee. And if so what would you do differently.
SHAILA DEWAN: It's such a good question because I've spent so many nights in tears. Just. Crying over this. How did I get to a place where I was trying to help. And I became public enemy number one. How did this happen. What did I do wrong. What are the things that I said wrong.
SHAILA DEWAN: I mean one one of my personality traits is just like I can get up and keep going in a way that I think made me the right person to to try it but maybe not the right person to keep doing it. Like my force of personality which is you know maybe partly privilege it was partly just personality. It was like. Good for starting something and good for galvanizing and it. It was probably well. It was evidently not good. For building community relationships.
SHAILA DEWAN: So would I have done it if I knew what. Know now. I mean that's not the way the world works right. You know you you just do what you do because because you don't know any better.
MAX: So… what happens next?
MARK: What happens to the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee? Can they survive to fight another day?
MAX: Advocates like to say that our schools should reflect our neighborhoods, but what does it mean for Bed-Stuy and District 16 when that’s actually true?
MARK: Is there still a role for Black self-determination in Central Brooklyn and its schools?
MAX: And what does the story of Central Brooklyn tell us about the future of New York and urban America?
MARK: Next time… on the final episode of “School Colors.”
FABAYO MCINTOSH: There’s a fire there’s a history in Bed-Stuy that is Black. And I don’t think we should lose that.
FELICIA ALEXANDER: I think that every time minorities have something good it gets taken away from us. And I’d like be able to hold onto something.
RICHARD CARRANZA: Things are on the move in District 16. These schools are doing something great.
LESTER YOUNG: What’s happening by default is that the district is going to disappear.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: So your fundamental question is how do you change racial dynamics in this country. Because that is what what it is.
CREDITS
MARK: School Colors is written and produced by Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman. Edited by Max Freedman and Elyse Blennerhassett. Engineering, mixing, and sound design by Elyse Blennerhassett.
MAX: Production support from Jaya Sundaresh and Ilana Levinson. Music in this episode by avery r. young and de deacon board, Chris Zabriskie, and Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Suzanne Cope and Toni Smith-Thompson.
MARK: School Colors is a production of Brooklyn Deep, the citizen journalism project of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a black-led community organizing group in Bed-Stuy. You can become a member or make a recurring donation at brooklynmovementcenter.org.
MAX: School Colors is made possible by support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.
MARK: Visit schoolcolorspodcast.com for more information about this episode, including a full transcript. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @BklynDeep.
MAX: You can help spread the word about School Colors by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, sharing on social media, or telling a friend. Till next time —
MARK: Peace.