Despite New York City's progressive self-image, our dirty secret is that we have one of the most deeply segregated school systems in the country. But with gentrification forcing the issue, school integration is back on the table for the first time in decades. How do we not totally screw it up? And what does this mean for the long struggle for Black self-determination in Central Brooklyn?
We’ve spent a lot of time on the past. In this episode, we look to the future.
CREDITS
Producers / Hosts: Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman
Editing & Sound Design: Elyse Blennerhassett
Production Support: Jaya Sundaresh
Music: avery r. young and de deacon board, Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot Sessions
Featured in this episode: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Felicia Alexander, NeQuan McLean, Mica Vanterpool, Virginia Poundstone, Al Vann, Cleaster Cotton, Matt Gonzales, Jitu Weusi, Fela Barclift, Fabayo McIntosh, Shana Cooper-Silas, Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Dr. Lester Young, Chancellor Richard Carranza, Sufia De Silva.
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 Brooklyn Brownstone School.
transcript
OPENING
MARK WINSTON GRIFFITH: This is a tale of three neighborhoods and two schools.
MAX FREEDMAN: First, overlooking the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge, there’s Brooklyn Heights: a predominantly white, old-money enclave of stately brownstones. Brooklyn Heights is home to P.S. 8.
MARK: Just east of Brooklyn Heights but a world apart, there are the Farragut Houses: a complex of ten brick public housing towers populated mostly by low-income, Black and Brown folks. Across the street from Farragut is P.S. 307.
MAX: In between Brooklyn Heights and Farragut, almost like a hinge, is a neighborhood called Dumbo. For decades, Dumbo was mostly industrial. But the warehouses were turned into lofts, glass high-rises started sprouting up like weeds, and Dumbo now has the most expensive housing in Brooklyn.
MARK: Dumbo used to fall within the school zone for P.S. 8, in Brooklyn Heights. So as Dumbo filled up with upper-middle class families, P.S. 8 became wildly popular -- and severely overcrowded. By 2014, the school was enrolled at 142% of its capacity.
MAX: Meanwhile, P.S. 307, like so many schools across Black Brooklyn, had plenty of space. So, in the summer of 2015, the DOE announced a plan to redraw the school zones, moving Dumbo out of the zone for P.S. 8 and into the zone for P.S. 307.
MARK: If you were a parent in Dumbo, with a child too young for school, you may well have bought a home in that neighborhood because you believed you’d be entitled to a seat at P.S. 8. This rezoning would have taken that away from you.
MAX: So when the city held a public hearing, Dumbo parents came out in force to protest, to make it known that they were not happy to be rezoned into a school that primarily serves “the projects.”
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: They called our school dangerous. They talked about fires and things that they said happened at the school that never happened at the school. Of course they talked about test scores.
MARK: Nikole Hannah-Jones is a parent at P.S. 307. She also happens to write about race and schools for the New York Times.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: They talked about lack of resources, even though our school is a magnet and gets a million dollars in additional funding every year. Even though our school had a mandarin program and theirs didn’t. Even though our school offers art and music and their school doesn’t. They said we were deprived. And their kids would then be deprived. But the main thing that kept coming up was concerns about safety. Which of course is always a dog whistle, it’s an elementary school, it is not unsafe. I clearly would not have my daughter in a school that I felt was unsafe. And they talked a lot about their community and wanting their kids to go to school with children from their community, which clearly was a very small community of people who are just like them.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: And so after all of that I was very emotional because I felt. You’re talking about my kid, you’re talking about kids just like my kid, you’re talking about children. Like. These are kindergarten parents who are afraid of other kindergarten children being around their kid. Never walked in the school. Never visited it. And these are all very good liberal people who proud public school supporters and live in Brooklyn because they think Brooklyn’s so cool and diverse but have created this complete bubble of whiteness and wealth that they were going to protect and didn’t seem to care that there were parents in the audience whose children they were insulting.
MARK: I imagine the DOE was not surprised by this resistance from the privileged, mostly white, parents who wanted to go to P.S. 8. But they were caught flat-footed when the mostly low-income BLACK parents at P.S. 307 raised holy hell as well.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Because it’s 307 parents are black and latino parents who live in a federal housing project. And everyone’s used to running them over and doing what they want with little resistance.
MAX: This rezoning plan was not designed to integrate 307; it was designed to relieve the overcrowding at P.S. 8. But integration was a possible side effect, if those parents from Dumbo were to actually enroll in their new zoned school. So after decades of doing basically nothing on school integration, maybe the DOE expected the 307 community to be… I don’t know, grateful.
MARK: But to a lot of 307 families, this felt like just one more example of the city bulldozing through their lives.
MAX: And they raised enough of a ruckus about this that the DOE was forced to postpone a final vote on the rezoning for months.
MARK: In the meantime, this rezoning mess attracted a ton of press, and laid bare just how much anger and fear was bubbling under the surface of this community.
MAX: A vote on the rezoning by the District 13 Community Education Council was finally held in January 2016. I was there. The first voice you’ll hear is Faraji Hannah-Jones, Nikole’s husband, who was co-president of the PTA at P.S. 307.
FARAJI HANNAH-JONES: All that we will get if this plan goes through is another PS8. A school that the lower income black and brown folks built only to lose all the stake in ownership.
DEBORAH STEWART: I am tired of better things being brought into the community and the community members being denied those better things.
ED BROWN: Gentrification. It's here. It's not going back to the old Brooklyn that we remember. Those times have passed.
AMY SHIRE: And what happens is people I think are unnecessarily polarizing each other and looking at each other only as a demographic. And I think that that's harmful.
FARAJI HANNAH-JONES: We feel disrespected and looked over.
ED BROWN: There are people here who have been there who will fight.
PARENT: We are not against diversity. It should happen. Does it need to happen right now. I'm going to say no.
DAVID GOLDSMITH: Voting yes to this rezone doesn't mean that we are blind to the fact that we have very big work to do. Voting yes means that we refuse to live as victims of the past.
FARAJI HANNAH-JONES: But I want to remind you all that we are not fools.
MARK: Ultimately, local politicians all condemned the process but supported the result. And the rezoning was approved.
MAX: Watching all this unfold, I felt like what was happening in Dumbo was like a postcard from the future. I thought… is this what’s coming to Bed-Stuy?
MARK: This is “School Colors,” a podcast from Brooklyn Deep about how race, class, and power shape American cities and schools.
MAX: The fight over P.S. 8 and P.S. 307 wasn’t really about school zones. It was about generations of racist policy and planning coming home to roost. It was about who the city serves, who our country values, and who gets to control what tomorrow looks like for them.
MAX: These are vitally important questions that touch all of our lives. We should be talking about them all the time. But instead, it takes a crisis like this rezoning to open the floodgates. Everybody shows up for their two minutes at the microphone and goes home feeling bruised, and nothing fundamentally changes. Is that the best we can do?
MARK: We’ve spent a lot of time on the past. In this episode, we’ll look to the future. Despite our aggressively progressive self-image, New York’s dirty secret is that we have one of the most deeply segregated school systems in the country. So now, with gentrification forcing the issue, it seems like school integration is back on the table for the first time in decades. What do we have to do to not totally screw it up? And what does this mean for the long struggle for Black self-determination here in Central Brooklyn?
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.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I think that the boogeyman has been wrongly assigned.
MICA VANTERPOOL: It feels like you’re in the twilight zone.
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.
MARK: This is Mark Winston Griffith.
MAX: And Max Freedman.
MARK: Welcome back to “School Colors.”
BED-STUY PARENTS COMMITTEE
MAX: In the last episode of “School Colors,” we told the story of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee: an organization started by parents who were mostly new to the neighborhood, mostly (but not exclusively) white, and basically all middle-class.
MARK: They started out wanting to find a place for their own children in District 16. But along the way they ruffled some feathers. First, with the name of the organization.
FELICIA ALEXANDER: You're not born and raised here. You're not do or die. You just got here.
MAX: Then, by aiming their activities at the parents of children who were not yet in school.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: Oh so they want to make sure the schools are right before their kids get there. No we want to make sure the schools are right because students are there already.
MARK: Then, by choosing two focus schools that they would support by fundraising and encouraging enrollment.
MICA VANTERPOOL: The message came back fast and furious that this was like a white group that was here for a takeover.
MAX: When Mica Vanterpool and Virginia Poundstone took over as co-presidents of the group in late 2017, they knew that if they were going to continue organizing, they had to fight back against this narrative, zoom out from the focus schools, and prove that the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee could live up to its name.
MICA VANTERPOOL: We had a meeting. Holy smokes like everybody is white. We have to go back you know go find a friend bring a friend we had another meeting and we had 10 percent black and so we were constantly measuring. We wanted the organization to reflect the existing community both racially as well as economically as well. Well we were looking forward to the day that it felt more like Bed-Stuy.
MAX: After going underground for a few months to regroup, they reemerged in the spring with an event that was well-attended.
MICA VANTERPOOL: And that was the first meeting that we said. Look we're at least at 50-50 or more we were probably more families of color than white families and that felt really good to us. So we were riding high off of that.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I think that first generation of the tours and enrolling was really a much more proselytizing and like come join me.
MICA VANTERPOOL: Rally the troops, yeah.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: And the second round was much more like go see where you fit in. Go see where you feel welcome. Go see what works for you.
MARK: They also took steps to start serving parents already enrolled in schools. They were going to do workshops for parents to know their rights, how to cut through the DOE bureaucracy, how to run a functional School Leadership Team. This is exactly what BMC had tried to do a few years earlier.
MAX: And they kept on hoping they could work with local stakeholders, especially the Community Education Council, or CEC.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: An alliance between us would have just really really been like amazing because we are far more flexible than the CEC can be. And if we were able to really collaborate which occasionally there were moments and then it would just disappear because of who knows. if we had really been able to work together our organization wouldn't be closing right now and a lot of work would be going on. But it just wasn't us.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: Ultimately the reason that we realized like this is a dead end. We've hit a dead end. Is that after two years of trying to build Mica and I really needs some more energy and building with the community then building the organization and realizing we weren't getting fucking anywhere. And we and there was nowhere else to go. So all of our energy was spent on trying to be good community members and get along with the stakeholders that didn't want us there.
MICA VANTERPOOL: And then just when we felt like okay maybe there's some light at the end of the tunnel. some rumor would resurface about asking for all white classroom from three years ago. We're like dude like we. It feels like you're in the twilight zone just circling back around year after year. It's like I can't like.
MAX: This is the rumor that just won’t die: that some parent affiliated with the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee asked some administrator in the district for an all-white Pre-K or Kindergarten class. Mica and Virginia still don’t know if it’s true.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: Even if it's true. As a leader your job is not to stoke more fear. Your job is to find paths towards healing.
MARK: Right.
MICA VANTERPOOL: Yeah.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: But instead of trying to find paths toward healing the method has been stoke more fear create more division keep parents from organizing.
MARK: Why. I'm curious.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: Because we're talking about the DOE.
MARK: Well no go further because like what would be the reason for stoking that kind of division.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: Power. Remaining power like not giving power to the people. Keeping it so that it's easier to manage. People are easier to control and manage if they're not organized.
MARK: And you feel like the fact that Bed-Stuy Parents Committee was organized.
MICA VANTERPOOL: It created a threat. It created a threat to the principals. It created a threat to existing families in the schools. It created a threat to leadership on all different levels.
MARK: If you’re involved in civic life in any neighborhood, you’ve probably run up against what Mica and Virginia did: a network of individuals and organizations who act as gatekeepers.
MICA VANTERPOOL: it feels like there was always this pervasive sense of this is our space And if you weren't with them then you were against them. You know this is my space. My parents were here my grandparents were here. My great grandparents were here. I feel as much ownership to Bed-Stuy as anyone else should feel. But I was not. And I did not operate as a part of that. Group or that clique. And so I was certainly on the outside.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: We weren't invited into the clique because we weren't trusted and we. I understand why we weren't trusted. I absolutely understand why people wouldn't want to hang out with us and why we would be distrusted. No doubt. There's people being pushed out of their homes and we represent that. This was like a place where white people didn't go and so like it was like a it was a black space that is feeling no longer black and that is a huge loss that like that is like an extremely painful loss. And then here we are sort of representing that so I understand why there wouldn't be trust and then we're already at a. Who are you and what the fuck are you doing. And then we come out and we're like we are here to fix some schools. And then it's like. Pff. What are you talking about. And then we're like Oh God sorry. Oh big mistake.
MAX: As much as they understand, they also don’t think it’s entirely fair that people’s frustrations about everything else going on in the neighborhood were taken out on the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I think that the boogeyman has been wrongly assigned and I think that the focus should be on the actual boogeyman um instead of small little individual boogie people.
MARK: And who’s the actual boogeyman.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: The actual boogeyman are the systems that the culture has created. And so attacking small things is is not going to help the cause if we're not attacking the larger system. That was that has been in place. You know to uphold white supremacy and all of those people working for that system. And that's part of I think what my idea of Bed-Stuy Parents Committee could do is collectively fight that system. But what ended up happening was we couldn't get above the individual boogeyman-ness. And so we were never actually able to effectively. change the system. Because the system made sure that we were not able to get there organizationally.
MICA VANTERPOOL: I always say the system fights to maintain itself.
MAX: When we spoke to Mica and Virginia a few months ago, they still hadn’t actually announced that the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee would be shutting down. And they weren’t planning to.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: I just don't want to be another news gossipy news story. Like let's just disappear slowly and then we're. Then people are done talking and they're like they've moved on and hopefully they've moved on to like great stuff.
MAX: The Bed-Stuy Parents Committee now exists only as a Facebook page. Their website, bedstuyparents.org, has expired.
MARK: Yeah, that’s hard to hear. I give them a lot of credit for sincerely trying to learn from and correct their missteps. And the need for building parent power in District 16 is real.
MARK: But I can say from personal experience, when you have white supremacy coming at you, even from good people with the best of intentions who have something constructive to offer… that’s not an easy position to be in. You can acknowledge those intentions but shut it down. Or you can be more forgiving, give the benefit of the doubt, and extract what is good. Either way, having to make that call, time and time again, wears you down.
THE GATEKEEPERS
MARK: On one level, the fall of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee seems like the Black community flexing its muscle. From another angle, it feels like an acknowledgement of how powerless we actually are. I mean, it’s not like the forces responsible for school under-enrollment or gentrification were beaten back.
MARK: In the end, it’s often hard to distinguish between defending your community and protecting your turf; between actively pursuing change and low-key resisting it. And I know this all too well from my thirty five years of organizing in Brooklyn.
MARK: The social activism of the 60s and 70s in black New York gave way to a non-profit civil society that emphasizes direct social services like housing, small business development, and elder care. While Central Brooklyn has its share of block associations and civic groups, few of them actually challenge state or corporate power. Most direct confrontation happens in times of perceived crisis, like incidents of police brutality or when a senior is being stripped of their home.
MARK: The truth is, a generation of Black activists in Central Brooklyn -- including some of the heroes of Ocean Hill-Brownsville, like legendary firebrand Al Vann --
AL VANN: My name is Albert Vann I call myself a Black man. In America.
MARK: They did what social and political strivers are supposed to do. They went from challenging the establishment to becoming part of the establishment. Once they got on the inside, they stayed not for years, but for decades. And it wasn’t in their best interest to cultivate a culture of direct democracy that might turn around and challenge them. It’s a trajectory that’s as old as the exercise of politics itself.
MAX: When I asked Al Vann about his legacy, what he was proudest of having achieved, here’s what he said:
AL VANN: My entire tenure in. The assembly and the city council. It was to make sure that policies reflected our needs throughout. Things will never be known because when you're negotiating fighting within your party you get something in a particular bill that becomes a law. It's not something that the public ever gets to know about because those are internal fights and struggles. But you know you don't say “Eh you know you wouldn't have that if I hadn't done. If I hadn't argued if I hadn't cornered somebody if I hadn't you know raised hell.” Those things will never be known.
MARK: At this point I should disclose something: in 2009, after many years of activism and running organizations, I ran for office myself. In fact, I ran for the seat on the New York City Council that Vann was set to retire from because of term limits. But then term limits for the City Council were essentially overturned by Mayor Bloomberg, who was looking to grab an extra term as Mayor for himself. So I was already in the race when Vann announced he wasn’t going anywhere, which is how we ended up going head-to-head.
MARK: In the end, I lost the election. Maybe that means you will question my motives and credibility when I talk about Bed-Stuy’s political order. But look, I’ve worked for and with many of these establishment figures over the years. They’ve been on the front lines of this neighborhood’s survival, and I know how much they love this community, I know how they’ve taken body blows for us.
MARK: What I’m talking about goes beyond Central Brooklyn or even Black people. For ANY disenfranchised community to move forward, there needs to be a cycle: you agitate, you get on the inside, and then a new crop of people come along to agitate, mobilize and generate a newer, more evolved status quo, and it keeps going on and on and on. In Bed-Stuy, It feels like that cycle has been on pause for thirty years.
MARK: Of course, there have been many dynamic Black people brought into the inner circles of political and civic influence in Bed-Stuy -- but there’s been very little going on outside of electoral politics to hold local leadership accountable.
MARK: Which is why after narrowly losing my City Council bid, I co-founded the Brooklyn Movement Center: as a way of renewing Central Brooklyn’s tradition of popular organizing.
MARK: BMC’s first big project was actually that study of District 16, which I’ve talked about before. The whole point of the study was to make a case for District 16: to get foundations and other stakeholders to invest in the district, and to invest in parent organizing.
MARK: But even when we scrupulously kissed the rings and approached people in a completely deferential way, what we thought was constructive criticism was still seen as a threat. So when the report was done, we got crickets: crickets from funders, crickets from the DOE, downright hostility from the district, and even crickets from local leaders in Bed-Stuy who had never forgiven me for running against one of their own, and assumed I was just using BMC as a platform to run again. Look, I’m obviously biased, but I still think this is one case in which defending their territory edged into defending the status quo.
MARK: So Mica and Virginia weren’t imagining things: there really is a clique. It’s hard to do much of anything in this neighborhood unless you have spoken to the right handful of people. You go to three or four meetings at different places about different issues, and there’s a good chance you’ll see the same folks presiding over those meetings. I guess if you’re on the inside, this is what Black self-determination looks like. But where does that leave everyone else?
MAX: Boys & Girls High School, “the Pride and Joy of Bed-Stuy,” is the oldest public high school in Brooklyn and arguably the most important physical icon of Black education here. At its height, there were 4000 students at Boys & Girls. Now there are 400-something.
MAX: Boys & Girls had been on a state list of persistently struggling schools for some years, to the point where it might have been closed. So members of the political establishment here created an advisory committee to fight for the school to stay open, and eventually, finally, the school came off of that state list. So they threw a party in the gym to celebrate: It was called “The Return of Academic Excellence to Boys & Girls.”
MAX: Everything was decked out in the school’s colors, red and black. We snacked on cocktail shrimp and chicken wings and smoked salmon and sliders. Behind a temporary dais, there were preachers and executive directors, politicians and judges, some people we’ve met on this podcast: Annette Robinson, Dr. Lester Young. And at the podium stood Al Vann.
AL VANN: Thank you. I'm sort of the emcee really the facilitator. I just want to move this along.
MAX: He’s 84 years old.shaved head with a grey goatee and an earring, in a black suit with a pink shirt and bright red tie. He’s retired now, but he’s still a resident dignitary after having served 38 years in office.
AL VANN: We are blessed to have a very very talented young people who are going to perform for us at this time. Please stand for the Negro National Anthem. The Noel Pointer Youth Orchestra.
MAX: For nearly three hours, they gave speeches recognizing each other, the school, and its principal. There were a handful of students there at the beginning, some of whom got certificates, but they got out of there pretty quickly.
MAX: When the youth orchestra started playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” I couldn’t help but think back to 1969, when Al Vann was elevated to acting principal at Junior High School 271 in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. For two or three weeks, American flags were replaced with the red black and green Black liberation flag. Cleaster Cotton remembered it well.
CLEASTER COTTON: In the morning we used to just have the Pledge of Allegiance and nobody would just be into it.
VERONICA GEE: That stopped.
CLEASTER COTTON: No. What happened was they did the Pledge of Allegiance. But then they did lift every voice and sing. And you could hear the whole school singing that. The sound of that song went through the whole school every morning and I get goosebumps thinking about it.
MARK: That was fifty years ago. The world has changed. And it’s impossible not to detect a faded glory amid the ceremony. As we’ve highlighted throughout this podcast, the forces that have shaped District 16 are vast and complicated. There are so many institutions and policy makers that have to answer for the condition we’re in, but at some point we as a community, do have to own our shit.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: One of the things that frustrates me about this district the more I go around it. There is a lot of high powered education leaders. That live in this district.
MAX: NeQuan McLean, president of the Community Education Council for District 16.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: and I don't understand how they allowed this district to go to hell in a handbasket. Like it's a lot like union heavy people like people that have power that live here. I just don’t understand.
MARK: The hard truth is, the empowerment of the political establishment hasn’t always translated into high achieving schools. And the Black Central Brooklyn they consider themselves the guardians of, it’s disappearing. After the break.
MIDROLL BREAK
ANTHONINE PIERRE: Hi, it’s Anthonine Pierre from BMC. As you know, this is our last episode of School Colors. We’re gonna miss telling this story as much as y’all are gonna miss listening. But this doesn’t have to be the end of our relationship. We’ve heard from a lot of people who want to figure out how to use School Colors as a teaching and organizing tool. If that’s you, we wanna hear from you! Hit us up at contact@brooklyndeep.org.
ANTHONINE: In the meantime, we’ve got one more opportunity for you to meet us in person: join Mark and Max at the Brooklyn Public Library on December 17th for a panel moderated by Chalkbeat, and featuring a special guest whose voice you may recognize, NeQuan McLean. That’s Tuesday night, December 17th. Refreshments at 6pm, discussion at 6:30. At the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Byeeee.
DIVERSITY PLAN
MARK: If you can just paint a picture of like what what the ideal District 16 looks like in diversity terms.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: I don’t know.
MARK: When it was first suggested to NeQuan McLean that the district should have a Diversity Task Force, he was… skeptical.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: When they first came up with this I was like what. When they. So what ended up happening is one of the members of the bed-stuy parent committee went to some forum that she went to and she sent me an e-mail. I probably still have the e-mail saying oh you they I went to this forum we need to do this we need to have a diversity task force. I said at that point I think we even sent a e-mail to them like we don't see a need for diversity like we're diverse what are we going to bus poor kids to poor schools like what like what what what what are we going to do.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: You have to see I got to find that email I remember that email because I was hot and I was saying what do they mean what are we going to. We got 3 percent white kids in our schools. What are we going to split the 3 percent up. We not busing our kids out. Them white folks ain't busing their kids here. So what is going. What we're gonna do.
MATT GONZALES: So when I say anything about integration on facebook or something, people are like “are you talking about busing people?” and I’m like no.
MAX: Matt Gonzales was the School Diversity Project Director for New York Appleseed, and in 2016 he was invited to District 16 by the superintendent at the time to facilitate the creation of a Diversity Task Force. But he understood that there might not be much of an appetite for this in Bed-Stuy.
MARK: There can be resistance to school integration in Black and brown communities, and for good reason.
MATT GONZALES: The way that integration desegregation has been framed, has been very white-centered, so that has in effect de-centered the the the interests and the necessities and the priorities of people and communities of color. So that folks are all just like “oh we just need to import white students into this black school or import black students into this white school and the white kind of savior complex will manifest naturally.” And I think that that’s been part of the problem and why we have a why I’m pushing back on this kind of narrative that I think is racist and classist.
MATT GONZALES: The other piece is that if we look at the history of desegregation kind of around the country it was done on the backs of black students it was done at the expense of black educators in the south.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES Most black folks have never been dying to like. Be in majority white settings. What they want is the education that white kids get.
MARK: Nikole Hannah-Jones.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES The problem is, never for a single day in this country have we provided all-black schools the education that white kids get. So when I’m arguing for integration It’s a very practical matter. That white folks will never allow for their children the schools that we allow for black children and the only way for us can get that is to be in the same buildings as them.
MAX: There are so many different ways that the disparity between majority white schools and majority Black schools manifest. In New York City, one of the most glaring is PTA fundraising. Last year, the median white kid attended a school that raised $65 per student. The median Black kid attended a school that raised just $4 per student. Remember P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights? They raised one and a half MILLION dollars last year. Many schools raised less than a thousand.
MARK: But this isn’t only about money. It’s about power and opportunity. To keep using P.S. 8 as an example… They are far from the only overcrowded school in this city. Overcrowding is most common in schools that serve primarily Latinx immigrant students. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it was the families at P.S. 8 who had the influence to get the city to build them an annex, and when that didn’t do the trick, to rezone.
MAX: The DOE caters to wealthy and white parents in much the same way that the city caters to wealthy and white people in general, and for much the same reason. At every level, our policymaking is dictated by the fear that these people will leave -- and take their money with them.
MARK: Nikole explained that there are high-poverty, mostly Black and brown schools, like her daughter’s, that serve kids well, despite all their challenges.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: But the difference is: who in that school writes the recommendation to Harvard? Who in that school says oh you’re interested in journalism I can get you an internship at the New York Times because I work there?
MAX: But the Catch-22 of integration is this: obviously, segregation reinforces white supremacy by separating children of color from resources and power. But integration can reinforce white supremacy, too -- by telling children of color that they have to be in proximity to whiteness to get resources and power.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Integration does not mean simply recreating the power dynamics that exist outside of the school within the school. That simply getting white kids into the building with black kids does not bring equality and integration and that’s not what we’re looking for. I think this is why i’m saying it has to be carefully managed, it has to be well thought out, it has to be done in a way that ensures that when you have parents who are coming in. I mean the income disparity between Dumbo and the Farragut houses I think it was um that they made more than 10 times the income of parents uh in Farragut. So to just bring them in and think that that is somehow going to be a great environment for those students if we haven’t been very thoughtful about how that happens I think is naive.
MARK: New York City seems to now be taking school integration seriously for the first time in generations. And thankfully, the discourse has come a long way in the last few years to reflect the true complexity of the issue.
MAX: A lot of credit for this actually goes to a group of high school students with an organization called IntegrateNYC, who developed what they call the “5 R’s of Real Integration.”
MARK: Race and enrollment.
MAX: Every public school should reflect the diversity of the city.
MARK: Resources.
MAX: Every public school should be equitably funded.
MARK: Relationships.
MAX: Every public school should invest in curriculum, pedagogy, and school culture that honor the identities and backgrounds of all students and families
MARK: Restorative justice.
MAX: Every public school should address the disproportionate and punitive discipline used against students of color in segregated and integrated spaces.
MARK: Representation.
MAX: Every public school should hire faculty and staff that reflect the identities of their students.
MARK: The idea is that effective integration requires all of these, working in conjunction.
MAX: Bowing to public pressure, the city created a School Diversity Advisory Group that began to meet at the beginning of 2018. One of the members of the School Diversity Advisory Group was NeQuan McLean. And when the advisory group presented their first set of recommendations a year later, they explicitly used the 5Rs as a foundation.
MARK: In June, the city announced that five districts would each get a two hundred thousand dollar grant to craft their own diversity plan. One of them is District 16. The process is meant to be hyperlocal, which means they’ll have to start by defining what diversity means for District 16.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: What does a fully integrated school look like. What do we consider integration. We have schools that are diverse. we have students that are from different parts of Africa. We have students that are from different parts of the Caribbean. Why aren’t we looking at those and making sure that we’re pouring resources into that to make sure that they can see their selves in pedagogy. That they can see their selves in the classroom so that is what we will be focusing on.
MAX: So of the 5Rs, Race and Enrollment -- the “butts in seats” approach that most of us probably think of when we think of integration -- is not going to be NeQuan’s top priority as this process of diversity planning goes forward.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: We need to focus on our students in temporary housing. We need to focus on our students that are um English Language Learners. We need to focus on our students with IEPs.
MARK: IEP stands for Individualized Education Program: the official document for each student with special needs.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: Do they have quality IEPs. Should they have IEPs. Why do we have so many students with IEPs. Like those are the things that we need to focus on.
MARK: NeQuan wants to make sure that these students are having their needs met, and that they’re not being concentrated in just a couple of schools.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: As our community continues to gentrify quickly I want to be very clear that you know we make sure that people don't think that we're trying to fix schools for white folks. We want to make people understand that we want to fix schools because it's the right thing to do.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: You know we are going to look at conflict resolutions. We are we are going to bring experts to talk about how you know what does a gentrified school look like but that is not going to be our focus. Our focus is not. We're not gonna spend a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to figure that out.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: We're going to do what's best for all students. New students are welcome but it won't be focused around the new students. It'll be focused around the families that stayed and to make sure that we have stable schools.
MARK: NeQuan can also use the process to do what they’ve been wanting to do for years, undertake a serious study of where families who leave the district are going, and why -- and how District 16 can get them back.
MAX: But one carrot that is frequently used to attract middle-class families that NeQuan is not interested in is Gifted & Talented. In fact, even though several years ago he fought for a new G&T program in District 16, he now stands behind the recommendation of the School Diversity Advisory Group: that Gifted & Talented programs are biased, divisive, and ineffective, and they should be phased out in favor of universal school-wide enrichment.
MARK: NeQuan has very publicly stuck his neck out on this one. Which has brought him into conflict with some of our local Black elected officials, who continue to champion G&T in the name of Black families having equal access to supposedly “advanced” educational options.
BRIGHTER CHOICE
MAX: As District 16 considers how to plan for integration and diversity, one school they might look to is Brighter Choice Community School.
MARK: If there’s one individual who represents the lineage of Black education in Central Brooklyn, it’s the founding principal of Brighter Choice, Fabayo McIntosh. To understand why, let’s rewind a few episodes (and decades).
MARK: The public face of community control in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, alongside Al Vann, was a social studies teacher named Leslie Campbell, later Jitu Weusi.
JITU WEUSI: I felt I was part of the freedom struggle of Black people. I was part of the ongoing struggle of the Black community to obtain self-determination to obtain dignity and to obtain liberation.
MARK: After the strike was over, Jitu started his own school: Uhuru Sasa Shule, or “Freedom Now School” -- part of a pan-African cultural center called the East.
MAX: One of the first teachers at Uhuru Sasa was Fela Barclift.
FELA BARCLIFT: It was about the black experience it was about revolution. And we were to create our own way of delivering that message to the young people that we served.
MAX: And Fela Barclift went on to start a school of her own: Little Sun People.
MARK: And one of the first students at Little Sun People, when it was still operating out of Mama Fela’s house, was Fabayo McIntosh.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I grew up on Greene Avenue between Bedford and Franklin which in the early 80s was not the place to be but in my mind. I loved everything about my experiences growing up.
MAX: Fabayo went to Little Sun People and then another Afrocentric school in the neighborhood, Shule Ya Mapinduzi.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: So we we would like. Let's say we were gardening and we were walking around the block. While we're walking around the block. We have to shout and sing these songs. And like it's embarrassing as a child you're like we are marching outside and we're singing songs. But in retrospect like how amazing is that.
MAX: What was the song.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: We have done black things today and we're gonna do black things together tomorrow.
MAX: How does it go.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I cannot sing but what I will say it's like we have done. Do you know this song Mark. We have done black things today and we're going to do some black things together tomorrow. And then the chorus would be like will you. Yes I will. Will you. Yes I will and it went on to some other words.
MARK: These schools were strong not just on culture, but on academics, too.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: Coming out of little sun people and mapinduzi and uhuru sasa most of us came out way above grade level.
MAX: When she entered the public school system, she went to P.S. 243 The Weeksville School, which is located at the same intersection where Colored School #2 had been more than a hundred years earlier, when Weeksville was still a thriving independent Black community.
MARK: In fact, Fabayo was named “The Weeksville Girl” for 1988.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: Always had great teachers. I always had people that encouraged me. I was really fortunate where I always had teachers that partnered with my mother. Like I feel that the system did right by me. And so I wanted to transfer and give that back.
MAX: She became a teacher, starting her career in District 16. And fast forward a few years, when she was invited by the DOE to open a new school in the district, she jumped at the chance.
MARK: When Brighter Choice got the green light, they were given a building that was home to a school that was being phased out.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I went up to visit one day. No one know who I was. I was just trying to eyeball some stuff and it was like craziness like I mean craziness. Parents arguing with teachers like it was just chaos. And so I knew that I wanted to bring in another way. I wanted to show people what's possible. I wanted to show especially you know people of color that it it doesn't have to be chaotic. We don't have to yell at children to you know help them listen.
MARK: She wanted to create a loving, joyous, and rigorous learning environment.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I greeted you know families at the door which is very simple. You think like hey somebody should greet the kids before they walk in. But at that time that was like unheard of. Parents were fascinated with the fact that I knew students names. How do I see you every day and not know your name.
MAX: Still, the early years were tough.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I had to knock on doors to get kids to come into the building. I literally walked scavenged the neighborhood the projects and everything knocking on doors the police were like Miss you're crazy you're not like Don't do this. But at that time I needed students. I went from doing that to starting tours where we'd be like 30 parents on a tour. I was just like what is going on.
SHANA COOPER-SILAS: Brighter Choice to me felt like the perfect mix of progressive and rigour. Um the perfect mix of free spirit and structure.
MARK: Shana Cooper-Silas was a board member of the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee, a Black woman originally from South Florida who was part of the first cohort of families from the group to enroll her child at Brighter Choice.
SHANA COOPER-SILAS: I came in the building and I was blown away. I immediately probably within 20 minutes in the building knew that this was going to be where I was gonna send the girls.
MARK: If other schools in the district had a reputation for being unfriendly to more middle-class, empowered parents, that was not Fabayo’s attitude at all.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I was never intimidated by New Brooklyn as I will call it. I was never intimidated by a savvier parent. I liked it.
MAX: In the last episode, we talked about how things kind of spiraled out of control at the Bed-Stuy Parents Committee’s other focus school, P.S. 309. On paper, Brighter Choice was even more ripe for conflict: the same year that Shana and her cohort arrived, Brighter Choice was merged with another small school in the building. So you had legacy parents from that school, legacy Brighter Choice parents, and new Brighter Choice parents.
MARK: It’s not that there was no drama at all. Shana ran for PTA president her very first year in the school, which she admits was a… bold move. But Fabayo would step into mediate, stopping small arguments from turning into big fights.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: So I consider the brighter choice pioneer families as the families who were down before a buzz or name came attached to brighter choice. Those are my families sometimes that didn't know they had choice. Some of them you know lived across the street in the NYCHA housing some of them are transient families from the local shelters. And it's how do I bridge that world the pioneers with my new people that are coming in.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: As the leader of a school you sit with many organizations and you find how you both can work together. But it's not me conceding my power as the school leader to you because you're new in the community and you think you have the answers. I think I have the answers too.
LEADERSHIP
MARK: If there’s one thing basically everyone we’ve talked to agrees on, it’s that the most important ingredient to a school’s success, academic or otherwise, is leadership.
MAX: That’s why under Mayor Bloomberg, the system did everything they could to empower principals, for better or worse.
MARK: That’s why CEC President NeQuan McLean has been so frustrated at his inability to do much about what he calls “principals of concern” in the district.
MAX: That’s why, when superintendent Rahesha Amon stepped down earlier this year, NeQuan intervened in the process of hiring her replacement.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: They wanted to put someone here and we did not agree with. We just think it won't be right for the district. If this would have been 16 a couple of years ago. At the at the dinner last week when they wanted to make the announcement the announcement would have been made.
MARK: Leadership also might have something to do with the success of P.S. 21. You might remember P.S. 21 from our very first episode -- it’s the school that was led by Dr. Adelaide Sanford for twenty years.
ADELAIDE SANFORD: I knew the power that a liberating education could provide for people who had been oppressed and depressed and and isolated.
MARK: Since Dr. Sanford, P.S. 21 has had an unbroken chain of leadership: each new principal has been trained by the one before. This is extremely rare, and that continuity might help to explain why, even though enrollment at P.S. 21 has declined along with the rest of District 16, it still has the most students of any school in the district, by a lot.
MAX: Contrast that with what happened at Brighter Choice last year, when Fabayo McIntosh stepped down to take a job at the DOE. A number of parents left the school -- either because were either so discouraged that Fabayo was gone or felt so disrespected by the way the DOE went about the process of hiring her replacement.
MARK: But that’s not a knock on the new principal himself. He’s a white man, but one Black parent leader told me that if you have to have a white man leading the school, he’s the one. The school has an Equity Committee, and they’re taking concrete steps to build bridges between families while centering the needs of the most vulnerable students.
FEAR OF TIPPING
MARK: Brighter Choice once called itself “Bed-Stuy’s Best Kept Secret.” But it’s not such a secret anymore. And that brings us to THE central dilemma of gentrification. Can we have nice things? Is it possible to improve the neighborhood and make it more desirable without accelerating displacement?
MAX: For example, if Brighter Choice becomes like P.S. 8 or P.S. 11, one of these hot schools that middle-class families are climbing over each other like crabs in a barrel to get into. The school may be “integrated” at least numerically for a few years. But over time, the legacy families may lose access -- whether that’s because the school is overcrowded or because they simply can’t afford to live there anymore. I suggested this possibility to Fabayo, the founding principal.
MAX: So maybe this this question seems like a long way off. But on the enrollment I mean Brighter choice is one of the only schools in the district where enrollment is going up.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: Mhm.
MAX: And I wonder if you if there's any concern there that with enrollment going up with the reputation of Brighter Choice in particular among people who are coming in from you know the new Bed-Stuy as you put it. That that is going to send up property values in the zone which is going to make some these problems.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: Never even thought of that.
MARK: I don’t think it’s totally fair to put all that on her.
MAX: Of course not. But somebody should be thinking about it. Planning for it.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: That can be a side effect of having a school in a neighborhood that people want that's in high demand that can make everything else around it prosper. So. Um. I guess we'll have to wait and see how that one plays out.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: I remember when I was writing the piece about my daughter and my editor said Well you seem to be saying conflicting things like.
MAX: Nikole Hannah-Jones.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: You want them to come in the school, but then you’re afraid of them coming into the school. And you want them to come into the school but then you don’t want too many of them to come into the school and I’m like yes it’s all of those things because. You need integration happen in a thoughtful way it needs to be planned it needs to be prepared for, it needs to be in a way where you don’t have a dominant population taking over.
MAX: So how do you integrate without it turning into a takeover? How do you improve performance and enrollment without contributing to gentrification? How do yoru stop a school from tipping?
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: So your fundamental question is, how do you change racial dynamics in this country? Because that is what it is. White parents attract white parents, period. When I hear people say you can’t integrate NYC public schools schools because it’s only 16% white, then I’m like that’s making the assumption you can never expect white parents to be a minority in the school. Because if that’s not your assumption then you can integrate the schools. Why can’t you have a school that’s 16% white? So how do you change the fundamental way that white people live and experience and expect race to work for them and I can’t answer that. That’s something that white folks are gonna have to deal with on their own. But the school system certainly can stop catering to those needs so much. And can do things to make sure the schools don’t tip. And namely you’re going to have to do set-asides.
MAX: Set-asides: meaning a school can, with permission from the DOE, set aside (for example) 50% of seats for students living in poverty, no matter how many middle-class parents are trying to get in.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: We have a 70% low-income school district, low-income set-asides will work.
MARK: And it’s possible we’ve been exaggerating the risk of tipping -- at least in the short term. Enrollment is inching up at Brighter Choice and a couple of other schools in District 16, but those are the exceptions. Most schools in the district are still on the decline.
MAX: And Brighter Choice, P.S. 309, even P.S. 307 in Dumbo, which was rezoned four years ago now -- they’ve all seen a similar phenomenon: middle-class parents are coming, but they’re not staying. They’ll enroll for Pre-K and Kindergarten, and then they find someplace else to be.
MARK: So all this concern about a school becoming so popular that it becomes overcrowded and contributes to rising property values, etc. etc. -- at this point, that might seem like a good problem to have.
MAX: Dr. Lester Young began his teaching career fifty years ago at P.S. 21 in District 16, under the leadership of Adelaide Sanford. He’s been observing the shrinking district from his position on the New York State Board of Regents.
LESTER YOUNG: You have to have certain number of kids just because of the funding formula to be able to offer a a a program and so it's going to reach a point where the the number of students won't generate the resources to run a real school. And so then what's going to happen. And I think what's happening by default is that the the district is going to disappear
MAX: Not to downplay the urgency of the enrollment issue, but it would take a lot for District 16 to actually disappear. Redistricting would inevitably be a highly politicized public process, and I think there’s very little appetite for that among the higher-ups.
MARK: And the stigma long associated with District 16 is starting to fade. For example, when the Mayor and Chancellor of Schools held a Town Hall for parents across Brooklyn in January 2019, they held it at Boys & Girls High School in District 16. Here’s what the Chancellor, Richard Carranza had to say:
RICHARD CARRANZA: And while test scores aren't the only and sole determinant of our school is doing. I will tell you last school year District 16 in English language arts and math had the highest percentage of gain of any district in the city. Thank you. Now why is that important. Because when the conversation in the local bodega and the conversation in the local coffee house. And the conversation at the dinner party then happens about why shouldn't we send our kids to District 16 schools. Let's go find somewhere else. There is now a counter conversation that is happening and saying hey watch out. Things are on the move in District 16. These schools are doing something great. Maybe you should take a look at what's happening in your local school.
MAX: Okay, so it’s part of the Chancellor’s job to blow smoke like that. But for a district that was basically written off by a lot of people for a long time, perception counts for a lot. CEC President NeQuan McLean, for one, is optimistic.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: I'm excited. I'm excited to the next level that we're going and I'm happy that District 16 is on the map.
MARK: You know, we’ve held up NeQuan as the avatar of parent power in District 16. And as a volunteer, he’s probably done as much with his role as anyone possibly could -- including working behind the scenes to give the CEC a little more authority. But not even NeQuan is talking about ending Mayoral Control.
MAX: And… this is an uncomfortable question, but we have to ask: who does he really represent? At the moment, he’s elected only by the top three PTA officers at each school in the district, and even then -- half the students in District 16 school buildings are in charter schools, which are neither represented by nor accountable to the CEC.
MARK: It’s a far cry from the ideal of community democracy that they aspired to in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Somehow the CEC feels like a metaphor for how inadequate all our institutions are to contend with the forward march of gentrification.
MAX: Fabayo McIntosh, former principal at Brighter Choice Community School.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: While the neighborhood is changing. There's a fire there's a history in Bed-Stuy that is black. That was brought up on you know the struggle of black people. And I don't think we should lose that.
MARK: Felicia Alexander, former president of the CEC.
FELICIA ALEXANDER: I would hope that the neighborhood would not be predominantly white. I would hope it would stay. Because right now I think it's getting towards that 50 50 mix and I'm hoping it doesn't shift to the point where we are the minority in our minority community.
MARK: Bed-Stuy is still majority-minority, so to speak. But as of 2018, it is just 46% percent Black, down from 75% in the year 2000.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: I have no problem with folks moving into the community. I think part of why gentrification is a bad word is that as new people move in old people have to move out. And so if we want to have a community that is inclusive and respectful of one another just making sure that if there is policy that's created in terms of housing that there has to be something that's affordable around here because I don't even see like who's gonna be able to afford Bed-Stuy ten years from now.
FELICIA ALEXANDER: I think that every time minorities have something good it gets taken away from us. And I'd like to be able to hold on to something. Like I'm holding out hope that maybe in 2030 that we can still be bed stuy do or die. Not like out there shooting each other and literally dying. But just to have us still be here a part of the culture.
CIRCLE OF LIFE
MARK: The tensions between integration and self-determination, between individual interests and the collective, have always been here, and always will be. Yet it does feel like we’re at a unique moment in the life of Central Brooklyn, a tipping point of some kind or another. And it’s discouraging that in many ways we’re still fighting each other for crumbs.
MAX: So as we look towards the future, is there anything we can steal from the past?
MARK: The vision of the community control experiment in Ocean Hill-Brownsville was that schools could be a petri dish for racial and economic justice.
MAX: It was deeply rooted in place, led primarily by Black and brown Central Brooklynites with a deep connection and commitment to their community and its culture.
MARK: Parents were mobilized, activated, and powerful, they had a role in decision making and policy -- and schools got better.
MAX: There were parents and teachers working together, and Black and white people working together, under Black leadership.
MARK: They all understood intuitively that their movement was not just about education, but housing and health and poverty -- they were all intertwined then, and they still are.
MAX: But… I don’t know. We ask public schools to solve all the problems that we’ve created, to correct all the inequalities baked into our society that we seem to be mostly unwilling to unbake by other means. You know, teaching is hard enough. When you have all these kids with different learning styles and needs and you don’t have enough supplies and you have to deal with testing… I feel a little ridiculous for suggesting that schools should do even more than that.
MARK: There’s nothing ridiculous about it. Extraordinary things happen in schools every day.
MAX: Brighter Choice has an after-school theater program. When I found out they were putting on “The Lion King, Jr.” I had to be there. Once a theater kid, always a theater kid.
MARK: You know, we’ve been talking to adults for three years and hearing from adults for eight episodes. But it’s easy to forget that this is actually all about children. So as we wrap this up, we thought it only right that these kids provide the soundtrack.
FABAYO MCINTOSH: These are all children. We all live in the same neighborhood. At the end of the day your children are going to play together.
VIRGINIA POUNDSTONE: This isn't part of our culture. This is not part of American culture to work across difference. And so it's a huge stretch for anyone. If you are doing this work and you really mean it and you're not doing this just for you and just for your family then you have to put the time in to learn how to do it because it's absolutely counterintuitive to everything we've ever been taught it’s counterintuitive to every single structure that’s been established.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: A tremendous amount of resources and complexity went into creating this system and we want the answers to be simple. They are not simple.
MATT GONZALES: We are are trying to articulate something that doesn't even really exist yet.
NEQUAN MCLEAN: We have become a a a community of reacting to situations and what we need to do is become a community of being proactive.
SUFIA DE SILVA: People think that they can't make changes especially people in the ghetto. They think they can't make changes but you can. But you've got to be willing to fight for them and that's what we did.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: It may feel like you’re going against the tide you’re trying to hold back the tide. But we’re not even trying. And I would much rather see us trying to do something about it than simply saying it’s too hard and we can’t do anything.
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. Music in this episode by avery r. young and de deacon board, Chris Zabriskie, and Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Harold Anderson, Alex Brunner, Jeremy Daniel, Lurie Favors, and of course, Faraji Hannah-Jones.
MARK: Extra special thanks to Anthonine Pierre for always holding it down at BMC. To the Joa-Griffith posse for enduring my late nights and my time away.
MAX: And to my parents, Jean Kauffman and Robert Freedman, without whom this would not have been possible, for a hundred different reasons.
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 dot 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. Write to us at contact at brooklyndeep.org.
MAX: Don’t forget you can join us at the Brooklyn Public Library on Tuesday night, December 17th, for a conversation with Chalkbeat featuring special guest NeQuan McLean.
MARK: And just because this is the last episode, doesn’t mean School Colors is going to disappear. It’s never too late to help spread the word by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, sharing on social media, or telling a friend.
MAX: Thank you to everyone who shared your stories with us.
MARK: Thank you to everyone who listened. Peace.