Nice White Parents - Ep. 1: The Book of Statuses
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I started reporting this story at the very same moment as I was trying to figure out my own relationship to the subject of the story, White parents in new york city public schools. I was about to be one of them. When my kid was old enough, I started learning about my options.

Ed, many, there was a zone public school in berkley. Or I could apply to a handful of specialty programs, a gifted program, or a magnet school, or a language program. So I started to look around. This was five years ago now, but I vividly remember these tours. I'd show up in the lobby of a school at the time, listed on the website.

Look around and notice that all or almost all of the other parents who shown up for the eleven middle, the workday, early in the shopping season, school tour or other weight parents as a group, we'd walk the holes following a school administrator, almost always a man or woman of color. There are school full of black and Brown kids. We'd peer in the classroom windows, watch the kids sit mccracken on the rug, ask questions about the lunch menu, homework, policy discipline.

Some of us would take notes and the administrators would sell. The whole thing was essentially a pitch. We offer steam.

We have a partnership with linking center. We have a dance studio. They were pleading with us to please take part in this public school.

And I think i've ever felt my own consumer power more visually than I did shopping for a public school as a White parent. We were entering schools that people like us had ignored for decades. They were not our places, but we are being invaded to make them hours.

The whole thing was made so much more awkward. The fact that nobody on those tres ever acknowledge the obvious racial difference, that roughly one hundred percent of the parents in this group did not match, say, ninety percent of the kids in this building. I remember one time being guided into a classroom and being told that this was the class for gifted kids, and noticing, oh, here's where all the way kids are.

Everyone on our tour saw this, all of us parents, but nobody said anything, including me. We walked into the hallway. A man raised her hand and said, I do have one question i've been meaning to ask.

And the group got quiet. I was thinking, okay, here comes. But then he said, do the kids here play outside every day?

I knew the schools were segregated. I shouldn't been surprised by the time I was touring schools as a parent. I'd spent a fair amount of time in schools as a reporter.

I done stories on the stark inequality in public education, and I looked at some of the many programs and reforms we've tried to fix our schools, so many ideas. We've tried standardized tests and charter schools. We've tried smaller classes, longer school days, stricter discipline, loser discipline, tracking differentiation.

We've decided the problem is teachers. The problem is parents. What is true about almost all of these reforms is that when we look forward to broken for how our schools are fAiling, we focus on who they're fAiling, poor kids, black kids and Brown kids.

We ask, why aren't they performing Better? Why arent they achieving more? Those are not the right questions. There's a powerful force that is shaping our public schools.

Arguably the most powerful force is there even when we pretend not to notice IT, but gone that full tour. If you want to understand why our schools aren't Better, that's where you have to look. You have to look at White parents from serial productions and planet jeffy. Well, this is nice weight parents, a series about the sixty year relationship between my parents and the public square down the block.

I need to take you inside a public school building and uterine, ordinary, squat, three stories, new ork city public school building, not far from where I live. This isn't one of the schools I told, and my own kids don't go here. They're too little.

This is a middle in high school called the school for international studies. S I S, the story want to tell you, spent decades in this one school building. But i'm going to begin when I first encountered S I S.

In the spring of two thousand fifteen, right before everything changed, in two thousand and fifteen, the students at S I S were black latta o and middle stern kids, mostly from working class in poor families that year, like the year before. And the year before that, the school was shrinking. The principal, e jillian june was worried.

Yeah so last two years we had a thirty students in our six great class and so we really have room for hundred. Um so numbers, I think um are hard.

Miss human started to reach out to families from neighbourhood, invading them to please come take a luck. Parents started showing up for tours of S, S, mostly groups of White parents. Miss human was thrilled and relieved.

SHE asked parents to the building saying, start me anytime. If anyone has any questions, really anything, I want you to feel comfortable. Masterman says they did have questions mostly about the poor test scores that was fair.

Masterman expected those questions. SHE did not expect the other set of questions. You got a lot from .

parents is their weapons is there you are you scanning? Are you scanning school? Because kids are dangerous .

and their web weapons? I've heard.

I heard there's fights and you know those kinds of things. I don't I don't know what school you're talking about. I have never heard of that incident ever happened, ever. So the fears of what this building is and what this building has represented has come transcended itself. We only weak at where there's a different story of international studies outside this building.

How much of that do you think is racism?

I think our entire society is fearful of the unknown.

ExcEllent principal answer. Principal human is black, by the way, he needed these parents. Schools get money per student.

A shrinking school means a shrinking budget. Miss man was worried. If this continued, the middle school could be in danger of being shut down by the city. S A S is in couple hill, brooklyn, leafy streets, Brownstones. It's a wealthy White neighborhood that's got ten wealthy and waiter in the last decade. But why families were not sending their kids to si s miss jump told these parents choose S I S, or turning things around, or in the process of bringing a new, prestigious international bachelor oria curriculum, renovating the library, here's the new gorgeous yard is an excEllent school. The parents seemed interested, but I believe that may have had just as much to do with what was happening outside of the school as what they were seeing inside the building.

sure. So my name is rob hand and i'm a parent. So we were the middle school process is um interesting.

Rob lives nearby S A S. But he had never heard .

of the school .

in his district. Rob could choose from eleven middle schools. The majority of weight families sent their kids to the same.

Three schools robs weight. Those were the schools he heard of, and those were the schools he toured. But they were packed. There were too many wealthy weight families in the district to continue climbing into just three schools.

There's a couple of city wide ones where we went and we stood online for like an hour and a half and then joined the an auditorium and full of parents and then had them announced that they were accepting fifteen students in the following .

in the coming class.

And we've been running tourists all day.

Most cities have some amount of school choice like this. Tours and options near the city, though, is an amped up version of what happens elsewhere. The level of competition, the level of wealth, the diversity of people sorting into different schools, everything is more intense.

Rob found this process frustrated, although rob is very even tempered, even when he's frustrated his canadian. When he gets especially hat, he starts calling things interesting. And this whole middle le thing was very interesting.

He asked their parents on school tours, what are we gonna do? Someone said, have you got heard of S I S that building down the black? Rob hadn't.

The other hadn't. They decided to all go check IT out together. I walked away.

And lots parents walk away from those tourists in wow. You know people are jamming up into some schools and and you you're leaving sixty or seventy seats empty, empty all you thirty kids that does that's spread them out around IT and that's a big school. Then all of a sudden you're sort of like way to second, what's there's nobody here .

as rob toward as A S he had an idea that night. He emailed principled jw man and he ask, would SHE be open to starting a dull language french program at s say they had one at the elementary school, rubs kids went to and everyone loved IT sure, principal juan was open. So rbs started spreading the word.

Saf is starting a dull language french program. We should all go. Reb says there was interest, but a lot of people he talked to have this question, wait, are other people going and .

the families have that kind of fear? Like what if I you know, if I look around, nobody else came with me and um and I came for something that's not here because nobody so it's a collective .

action problem. Why is a collective? why?

Why do you need a collective just on the I think overall there is a collective action issue. But if you you're interested in this in part because of the french to a language part of IT, um if if you're the only one to show up, there's no french teacher for one student. But there's a program if fifteen come, if twenty come. But we all have to then take one step forward to exactly the same time. Division requires people to come.

And what if nobody comes? When I came time to choose, middle ols parents are supposed to rank their top choices right before they did before everyone chose their schools. Rbs, into survey, out to the families you've been talking to, to try to ensure that a group of them would choose S I S.

together. IT was a simple survey monkey. If enough people said, yes, they are rank S I S as one of their top pics and they would be able to act as a collective.

People said, yes. The numbers were stunning. In two thousand and fourteen, there had been thirty six graders at S I S.

In two thousand and fifteen, there would be one hundred and three. That two hundred percent increase was almost entirely weight. kids. Did you think about yourself as integrators?

Or did you think my boss was because I was trying to think if that had gone through my mind didn't no no. The um not integrators um participants in the school there was was gonna hopefully be diverse but he had not I that's not a framing or way of thinking about IT that IT would have occurred to me at the time.

Nobody attacked you for, as I asked, Carry dress, what was happening there as integration. But here's why integration was on my mind. The new york city department of education was where their schools were segregated.

IT was also aware that desegregation is the most effective way to close the gap and achievement between black and weight students, but IT did not want to Mandate racial integration through zoning or school placements. The city was trying to make integration happen through choice, hoping to lure weight families into segregated schools. The school tours I went on for my own kids, those Sparkly programs and amenity, that was the new approach to integration. But can this work for weight parents to opt in to integration, not because we have to or because it's the right thing to do, but because it's a selling point, because we get a dance studio and stem and a school that was hopefully diverse integration without talking about race.

The kids at S, A, S, though they do talk about race immediately for two thousand and fifteen, the first few weeks of school, a senior named ed Christian leaned over to her classmates ris and mumbles, there are little way kids in the school. And Chris says, oh yeah, a teacher warned me about that over the summer.

told me there is gonna a lot of White kids coming, and french weight kids from upper economic attest, prepared for them.

Christine nods, yeah, I guess we were prepared. And then he turns to me to say, I should have been ready for that. We saw the parents on the tours last year.

We would see them walk to the house. But we never knew I was so serious that, like a whole group of coke would come in like you would be so diverse, but like such a big change, like that a big party, anything. But I noticed, like the big change, high schools are more high spending. S and bags with a few the occasions, and like the new group that they came in all the occasions, like they tried to make IT.

So diverse, diverse. This was a word I heard over and over in the first few weeks of school diversity.

I love diversity. So IT doesn't like. So when I just see, like, other wake is unlike.

So diversity seem to have two different definitions. Weight families would talk about all of the diversity at S. I.

S. And they were talking about black in the spanning kids. When kids of color noted the diversity, they were referring to the new weight kids.

For a lot of kids of color, this looked a lot like something that had already seen happen in their neighborhoods, White families showing up in large numbers, taking over stores, familiar spots. There's a word for that. It's gentrification.

But I noticed that no one was using that word about the school. What was happening here was diversity. That's how the adults talked about IT.

Diversity is a good thing, something you're supposed to be OK with. But the most part the kids were IT was different for the parents. Some of them are specific advantages to the diversity. Like kenya blunt, the code vice president of the pta sa. He was excited having .

the new parents coming in. And the diversity that particularly may be comes from the the new, as I called the new neighbor od. The way that things are changing in neighbor od is that we have a gentleman who is profession is fun.

Raising rob hanson, the dad who started the survey, monkey rabb, raises money for nonprofits and foundations for a living over the course of the year. I'll here rab hanson referred to as todd hanson, ted manson, mister hanson. Kenya was the only one who went with the gentlemen whose profession is fun.

Raising the most common was just the guy who gets the money, rab told the P. T. A.

He was eager to raise money for the school to kenya. This meant more resources at his own kids school. His boys and all the kids could benefit. He has .

brought on the chAllenge and taken IT upon himself to raise fifty thousand dollars five zero with three zero s after that yes fifty thousand dollars um which again again goes back to the whole, i'll say diversity thing in new people who are thinking outside the box as our PCA. I don't think that we were thinking that big.

They were definitely not thinking that big because the P. T. A was run by amy hernandez and her co president, Susan moscot.

Amy is not a gentleman who fund raises. She's a social worker. The first time I meet amy, SHE was wearing A T shirt that said, i'm not spoiled.

My husband just loves me. She's porter ikon group in brooklin. Her husband Morris is porter, ian and black and really does a door.

Her the group in bricklin, too. They've one daughter, one people, one person, cat. In one school.

I make IT my business to stick myself in .

her school for I, me, the new diversity. He gave her pause.

Like when I saw in september the population, they came. And I like that a little frighting .

and even the stripped.

I saw a lot of White people with very high socioeconomic backgrounds, you know, they have money and that's great, but money tends to scare people. And i'm one of the people scares. I'm one of the people.

It's scared because IT twists everything around. And I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that.

I'd rather have a dinner where people of different cultures bring their food and we share together, then have somebody else, cato IT, like, that's how I feel. You build community on a social worker. That's my background, and that's what I believe in.

Amy was in her second year at the school, the year before SHE put on community events, teacher appreciation, a spring carnival with face painting and hot dogs there. There is some money here in there, but I means vision for the pta wasn't really about fundraising. The new parents, though, they wanted to be active in their new school, and they were accustomed to supporting their kids schools by fundraising, the two approaches came face to face at A P, T, A meeting, october.

three more minutes and. Then go home, go home.

So they're .

about a dozen grown .

ups sitting on small plastic chairs around the classroom table. The P. T. A executive board principal dream man is year too.

Am is leading, and the principal jumpin SHE said SHE wants a minute to share how much the new fundraising committee had raised so far. Emi looks confused. Principal demand goes on to say the new founders and committee has had a lot of success.

but total, they they have made, according to rob, about eighteen thousand dollars. And then we just had a donation from a family a couple weeks ago who want to be anonymous that they're going to give you their five to ten ten ground in december. So this is, this is big money. People seem .

unclear what to do with their faces. This is good news, right? But so we what's the founders in committee? I turns to her husband, maris, a retired cop.

Morris is also the treasure of the P. T. A, because when he retired, his wave told him he couldn't just set around at home. Morris drugs that amy doesn't seem to know anything about this new money, amy turns back to principle, do man, so can we we use that money?

Was the, I can have access to this money because I know already like.

but what is the P. T. A? So that's that's for the question that he is going round for this eighteen thousand dollars rob has raised under the umbrella of P, T, A.

That's principle human. Okay.

so I think .

but who's like, who is a .

member?

Don't bad. It's so.

you know so how can I be access goal .

mori asks, how can that money be access for mr. Negro, who wants new gym uniforms or mr. Love to get microscopes? I I mean.

I got less driving, more power to him. Yeah, but he's not an official member, right? So I think that makes a confusing a list for me.

Now he is A P, T, A member because he's a parent, but he's not part of the executive words. I think that what makes IT that's probably truth yeah makes IT a tRicky. I mean, again, an principal .

human repeats that SHE wish his rob had been able to make IT SHE was hoping everyone could be here and get on the same page about money. But rab is sharpener inning, a six grade overnight trip. They are late getting back one mom, a weight woman who came in with a new group of six raters. So look, I know rob.

He means, well.

b feo took .

IT as he's initially .

money .

the fundraising yep. And I think that's great.

but that I don't he should communicate with. And my impression is I don't think he's meaning to offending.

No.

I think he's out of some ways of that he's not thinking .

about and he's amazing he really .

had that's principal jew man. At this point, everyone seems to feel a little weird about how long theyve spent talking about a fellow parent who is not present. And anyway, it's money for the school ball for that we just need Better communication. I mean, says, yeah, it's just usually many areas by parents goes to the P T. A, so we can all talk about where to spend IT.

Yeah because then we have to decide who has .

the same because if it's to collect.

there he is.

Rab was into the room. He just got back in the six grade trip. He sits down and they all said to talk, we need to sort out some questions about money. Then a mom from the funding committee says she's worried about me recording and asked me to stop.

So I do being requested, but we don't know they.

they let me stay. Though I take notes, rabb apologizes and then explains a group of them have been meeting to raise money for the school. The new doll language french program is expensive, and they promise the principle they'd help raise money to cover IT.

They were just eager to help, rab says. So they formed a committee. He's really sorry.

He should have communicated and coordinated Better with the P. T. A. But good news is it's going great. Someone has a contact with the french embassy, a guy at the cultural services ARM in new york, and he says he wants to help cover the cost of new french teachers and books. They've already kicked in around ten grand at this point.

In my note, I wrote lots of looks, big money, rab says the embassy suggested we do a fundraiser, an event they can help here I wrote, looks confused, mad, nobody really talking. Amy says this funder er will be at the school though, right? And free for everyone.

Rabbit is, yes, good, good. SHE asks one more time, free. I just want to make sure everyone can go lots of nod's robb says, totally, this is a community event for our community.

After about twenty minutes, emi says we're out of time, guys. I can't tell if this is out of a professional commitment. Amy has to stick to the schedule or a personal commitment to getting out of that room.

Before I came to sis, I never thought much about the role of P. T. S.

ever. And I say us early on, I had this feeling of, oh, A P. T is actually critical to the success of an integrated school.

A pta has a very simple democratic structure of parent, has an equal vote, smart. It's like a built in system to equalize power to help them make a budget together. Big decision, the priorities collectively or not.

So we're like enough. We have rob here who has really have taken over fundraising and try to bring IT to the next level here. Our school is another pta meeting, and the whole collective thing is not really happening.

IT seems like the new parents are still raising money separate from the pta, and the communication problems do not seem to be resolved. And some of the new parents have an idea. They propose a formal separation, the P.

T. A and the people doing fundraising. Reb says this way, there be two organizations collecting money for sas.

There will be two sorts of ways dollars are raised. One would be a community raised, big sales, uh, direct gifts.

So that would be the P. T. A side, community funds. Then there would be a separate organza that would go after .

grants and big donors.

Up until this point, there seem to be tension bubbling under the surface between the new parents and the old parents. But IT wasn't really until this moment that the unsaid started to get said mostly by amy's husband, Morris.

I think a lot of us feels all day is two defend groups is the fundraising group in the P. T. A, which is, you know that what looks like you guys have this colum of making fifty thousand dollars and it's going to the different program now because said about the rest of school, where's always money going?

We are, you know know it's very easy to feel steam. That's marine, a White mom who's knew they're later, adds Morris asking, is this new money your talking about? Is IT just for the new french door language program, which is another way of asking, is this money just for your kids? Or is IT for everybody? Grab says, emphasis. Ally, it's for everybody.

Morris says, really think OK they don't fanciest sy, we're going to, okay, but we're going to buy no talk box that been now you're saying the fifty thousands and be for the P. T. A community to decide was gonna go. So I mean, I hear what you are saying, which sounds great. May be I about last meeting later.

tucking a rab. I learned that the new separate funders, ing ARM he's talking about is actually a foundation. They want to create a school based foundation at S.

I. S. The plane is to call IT the brooklin world project.

I asked rob, why do you need another way to raise money? But there is a, there A. P, T, A.

Most people have heard of a school. P, T, A. Why do you need a separate org? Ization.

that's not the pta. yeah. So the probably easier way to explain IT is to not think about IT from the school side, but to think about IT from the potential donor side. So a basic idea that were following is that, that said, the interactions says we wanted do extended day, and we want to do theater.

And so we go and we find a donor who loves theater and loves the french language, and loves the idea that kids who've never spoken french and had no exposure get the chance to go and compete actually, against some of the most staver schools in the city. And I don't just love that. I got love that.

I love giving that kind of opportunity to kids. I'm going to cover all of that because I think it's that important. If that money goes to the pta, you could have a situation that pta says or remembers the pta.

I don't know that we really like the theater program. I'm not sure I think that we should be using those dollars to do x or y or z. Now Normally you'll be will say, well, donor intent is what IT is. You should probably use IT towards what IT was intended for Normally .

in another founders .

and ding in nonprofits. So there's a basic kind of morality of a nonprofit to say if a donor gives you to you to do something, you should try to do that doing or intense, an important part of IT. It's sort of the trust that established.

robb says, because the pta is a democracy, IT makes things complicated. The very thing I saw as a strength of A P T, A one parent, one vote to rub that's a problem for fundraising. Parents come and go and change their minds about what's important.

A private donor wants stability. And rob is trying to raise money for the kind of programing that was available at his son's wealthy elementary school. At that school, rob was co president of the pga.

And the previous year, his pta pulled in close to eight hundred thousand dollars, eight hundred thousand dollars money that payed for after school programming and bowl, room, dancing, chess, art, music, a garden, eight hundred thousand dollars for a school that is seventy five percent weight and serves a tiny fraction of the poor kids in the district. They aren't in a wealthy appearance at S. I.

S. To raise that kind of money, that year, rab helped to raise eight hundred thousand dollars. The S A, S, P, T A raised two thousand.

So rab was trying to be creative. A foundation was away for his new school to catch up the school leadership. The principal was behind the idea.

Miss jon told me he saw the foundation as a path to equity and access more resources meant the'd be able to provide all kids with opportunities, like save a school trip to france. But the parent leadership, they found IT annoying. I mean, knew the new parents were trying to help the school, but he already left the school.

He felt he was being saved against her will. Plus there are new SHE said, shouldn't we be the ones helping them? He is fine with them bringing an ideas, but SHE didn't understand why they hadn't brought them to her first.

They hadn't thought to consult her. SHE said to me multiple times, why are they coming up with all these private plans and meeting in secret committees? You were pissed about that totally.

yeah. And why are .

you angry about that?

Because here I am trying to build something with the school. Why didn't you just involve me? Why didn't you just tell me about IT like I felt like I was a secret?

I don't know I was if I wasn't. I'm invested in the school. I clearly proven to your invested in the school, and you couldn't tell us that you wanted to fund ys in a different way.

Rob and the new parents did tell the principle that they wanted to fundraising a different way. But I may felt like, what about the rest of us? SHE felt like the pta was ignored at that last meeting. I may went quiet. He told me he just felt enraged and then embarrassed for feeling so enraged.

I guess I just throw a tension. And I just didn't want to be a part of IT, which is not right. But I think again, in the moment, I ve just felt like, no, I was hurt you throat.

That was the tantrum thing I thought, because I did not feel like a tantrum. No.

that was not a time truth. I could have been a lot worse. And I was really, really trying to restrain myself.

Yeah, I really was um that was really under control, really, really under control. And I wasn't. But I was really, really under control.

I asked, was there another time .

time trum you at home in my husband? That's when I .

throw my tantrum. So IT was tense among the parents, but this is a school for children. Did IT matter if the adults we're not getting along, or who controlled which pt of money? Yes, yes. IT is that's coming up after the break.

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The school year went on. Robb's fundraising committee moved forward with the french embassy to plan a fundraiser. IT was now being called a gala, the P.

T, A move forward with parent volunteers to plan a spring carnival. IT was being called the spring carnival. Quiet resentments lacked in place on the phone.

One night, I miss cool president on the pda, Susan moser, told me he worried the school was changing in ways that were damaging to the community. Susan is weight herself, but SHE didn't come in with the new White parents when he started. Her son was one of the only White kids in the school.

And now he felt like they were all being written into a narrative that wasn't true, that S A S was a bad school before. And now that the new weight families had arrived, I was being turned around. IT is noticeable.

I think this is something that even my child is picked up on, you know, just like a very different, different feeling among some of the students and some of the parents that is real sense again and here they can to save our poor, struggling school that couldn't possibly make IT on its own without their money in their vision. Um and we do not all feel that that is necessarily the case. What do you feel?

This was .

a long conversation. The upshot, she's not happy with the way the new parents are behaving IT was true. A new narrative was taking hold that I say yes is not like the kids we're talking about IT at all the time.

But I was in the air, and the kids were started to pick up on who was valued and why. In the cafeteria, every year middle school, they are saying the french kids could kill someone and they get away with IT upstairs. In the high school, at your kids complain, all of the attention has shifted to the new middle scholars.

We are being pushed aside and down in the library, I met three, six grade boys, White boys, new to S. A. S.

They're sweat from plane soccer and looking very small against their huge backpacks. These boys, even at eleven years old, they've absorb to the same messages that I say, yes, wasn't so good before. He was a bad school.

The kids wouldn't pay tension. And they had like, got like zoned out every little thing. And I bet they learned very little. And now with this, now this generation with us, I think we're doing a lot Better, and I think that we're learning on a much faster pace.

He and his friends dave turned the school around. That's what he's learning.

It's gonna the top choices like already and like the book, like like when you're applying to mental schools, you get like a book sort of like on statues and stuff. And I think the schools actually, we really hide up in the status.

Nobody calls IT the book on statues. They call IT a directory of schools with info like enrollment numbers for different schools, test scores and special programs. But I love that calls IT the book on statuses, because this is what happened to sis.

The school had a bad reputation among weight families, and then suddenly ly IT was in demand. Its status had changed because of the weight needs, a powerful draw for weight families into any school is other weight families. When there are enough other White families in a school, you reach what one city calls a bliss point.

This is a real thing. Researchers study how many way kids are needed at the school to make other weight families feel comfortable. That number, the bliss point is twenty six percent. That fall late, families were crowding the school tours in sas now because the test scores had improved, the new scores had even come out yet, but because the other weight families made them feel peaceful ly comfortable.

Of course, the thing that made the new way parents comfortable come in S A S. In the first place was the promise of a french program. They went a french and they got french.

So now all the six, seventh, eighth and nine twatt are learning french. IT was in a true dual language program where kids learned in french for half the day, or whatever, that first year most of the french was happening. In the after school program, you sign up for a regular after school stuff like colonies or soccer drama and IT would be conducted in french.

We play everybody.

You have to sten, we're in the editorial and it's sweet. The kids are on stage rehearsing this play they wrote in french and those like they're having fun. But I can help feeling like there's something off baLance about this.

Most of the kids doing this drama program seem to be native french speakers, but not all. A sixth grader named maya is standing to the side of the stage script. Ed in hand, waiting for her line .

for me is like, weird cause no radio the same yeah.

really even even in the play that you .

ve been practicing, you don't know another think so. Yeah, sometimes when teacher talks in french to the class, I I understand.

And do you figure that out?

Or is IT like fusing confusing still?

She's excited. She's grinning, watching the other kids on stage. She's he out her friend Constance. My eyes gets up to .

deliver .

her lines.

You did run out of IT is you just say that and then I, after .

constants and native french speaker tells me a you said the wrong thing Constance.

correct her pronounces IT for her yeah .

because .

like I can see you mine .

says I can't. And your friends said, i'll do IT for you OK.

I just, I know learning another .

language is not new to my 呀。

My dad speaks arabic .

and my mom's turkish. You french? yes.

So confusing three languages the same time.

When the new weight parents asked for a dull language french program, A S A S, principal human said, yes, S A S was supposed bly an international school. But he told me they didn't really have a lot of international programing, so seem like a good idea to her. But there is no school wide debate about IT or consensus.

The community didn't decide. What if they had more than a third of the families? That S A S. Are his panic.

What if the dual language program was spin or arabic? C ten percent of the students speak eric. If they had made a different choice.

If I say I had a dull language arabic program, maya would be teaching constants how to read her lines. SHE would be the one explaining the cultural references and teasing her friend about her terrible accent. SHE would be the one translating the teacher stage directors.

There was money for a french program, which meant that A S, A S french had value. Arabic c didn't. Spanish didn't. That's something my is learning at school, along with her french script.

From the very beginning, amy and the others had insisted on three things from the new parents and the funding arising committee, that the gala fundraiser they were planning with the french embassy would, number one, be open to everyone. Number two, take place at the school. And number three, be free.

Then four weeks before the goa, the P. T, A. Aspern update, an apparent named deb showed up a mom to a new six greater part of robs .

fund raising committee. So I will start with the fact that I had a nice conversation with breeze is IT for Price? yes.

Deb volunteered early on to help organize the party, and he tells everyone I met with her partner for a break at the french empathy y, and the event can't be at the school. The embassy won't be able to driver the supporter to berglund. It'll be at the cultural services building on the upper each side, manhattan, five minutes away.

I apologized if I saying things you guys already know, but I didn't know some of the sin foo was good. But the event is really it's their event. It's not really our event. Oh, it's their ever .

that Susan, with the old morice, leans forward, elbows on the table. Amy is not here. He knew the meeting would be almost entirely about fundraising and share.

Sitting this one out.

Morris is now concentrating on rob, who turns to deb and says, in what sense of their event, they make the rules.

SHE says, with our input, but there are certain things that are not flexible. The biggest thing is nobody will be allowed in at the door. You have to be on a list. You have to r cp. You have to be on list, all names.

security. It's the government building. After all, he sends out the invitation .

to twenty two thousand people on his mAiling less so now making IT a free event is a problem because now are inviting twenty two thousand people for free to drink wine at food that may not have any interest in us. So we thought the best thing to do would be a suggested donation can afford go.

That's rob asking to give a variant, which is, how about we have a separate invitation for our people that doesn't ask for any money. Rob seems to be picking up on the instant irrtation in this room and he's adding many variants to debs .

reported modified version or just a clarity that that everybody in this community.

he won't he'll be one invite IT will say the same thing. So I suggested that I suggested he was ahead for outside.

even if we simply put cover note saying you no charge you, we want you to come join us.

right? But on the invite, IT will say, suggest a donation. And if you want, however we want to forward, we can say that, but they will only do one invite.

Debt hasn't been able to make previous pta meeting. So all deb knows is he got an email from the fundraising committee at our kid's new school, which he assumed was part of the P. T.

I. She's volunteering her time, a tone of her time, to organize a huge event. SHE does not understand that the email list shes on is for a separate fundraising committee that just became even more unpopular with the official pta leadership.

I think I stopped moving watching deb. It's so tense. She's like a poor cupid who's just wandered into a balloon .

store deserving wine, water and in french ODPS. As far as the auction, we have a couple of classes. We have restaurants, we have a soccer m.

We have vacation rental in california. We got a couple hair sallads. Very few from the community here. That's really what I wanted .

to talk about. The ocp geography community .

debt .

says at her kid's elementary school, they they got a lot more donated items from parents. SHE tells the room, you can ask the restaurants you go to if they do give certificates. This alone, your employers, you'd be surprised what people can offer.

Just ask you then my friends and most my friends. So you know the all in other schools, i'm just new here. I don't really know many people. So the only people i've been able to reach out to the thirty six on robs email.

this and then and a quarter of .

gifts have donated something you already like, found something. So i'm telling that house and tsunami colon is gorgeous. Four bedroom, three bath, beautiful. I think about .

a pta meeting a few months before where I watched, I me gently explained to one of the new parents why IT might be hard for some families to throw in five dollars for classroom supplies that even being asked to donate can feel alienating.

A lot of some .

people in this room seem to be experiencing this whole thing as a routine update about public school volunteering. Others look like someone who's walked into the wrong room and is now looking around to the friends they came with for affirmation. We're in the wrong room, right?

How do we get out? Usually get more tickets to shows, games, things like i've got broadway tickets, but I haven't got anything in the ticket arena nix of the net .

to reach out that .

yeah they always go everybody wants to go to a game. There's always somebody and they also make great Christmas gifts. And that's the other thing we're we're lacking as actual items. We used to a parent what we stop the parent but SHE on my school that we're to a Tiffany and we always had some beautiful Tiffany y pieces are you know coach bag some products makes you look nice.

It's been a small chunk of that meeting occupied by an admittedly ly sentimental thought. Just looking around, the room was kind of incredible, people with homes in camera and people who live in public causing sitting together at a long wooden table in the library of a public school that they all share. That never happens.

And I didn't want them to mess this up. But of course they are. This is not something we have a lot of practice in.

New york city has one of the most segregated school systems in the country. White parents here have very little practice sharing public schools. Maybe this is all to be expected.

My parents will charge ahead, will sometimes be careless, secretive or entitled in response, parents of color will sometimes be cautious or distrustful, defensive. These are well established patterns repeated over generations. It's easier for us to continue Operating on separate tracks because it's what we already know how to do.

The guy from the french embassy apparently has a million list of twenty two thousand people in the nigeria, three hundred people. R, S, V, P. To the gala for sis.

I couldn't believe IT, and I could not believe that one of them was amy. Local level, amy Morris and Susan carpet together to the upper. It's winter.

Central park is across the streets cold. Amy told me he decided he needed to be a grown up and come. They got second traffic, so they're .

rushing up the sidewalk. That's serious. No.

the cultural services building is ivy covered with columns. The doors are rot iron, the entry way is marble.

A huge marvel staircase winds up the side of the room. Later, I look up the architectural style. Italian renaissance asso style is a palace. There are people milling sapling, seventeen different cheese. I don't recognize anyone else from the school. Who are these people who have chosen to come out on a weekday evening for a fundraising event for a nap, prominent or well known at all public school in brooklin? I started asking people how they heard about the event.

Actually, an invitation by my wonderful french professor.

a lady named to Barbara tells me, and she's never heard of sas, like most people here. But SHE loves french and he loves paris, and he sounded like a fun nate with other people who do to SHE goes to friends every year.

October is my sales plan. A actually, I ve found this october too warm, but I like IT when it's a nice for crist and you wear your scarf, your full are.

I enjoy a person who likes to talk where you can just get on the ride and sit back. Burberry is definitely that kind of person.

And my apartment in paris is sort of confused sometimes I say, and my own gramsci park, or and my play, it's got a similar among once of being a neighborhood. It's great. Have you been? Oh my god, SHE hasn't been to paris barbers .

looking around for her french teacher to tell her the news. Berber's teacher IT, turns out, heard about this evening the same way most people here did. He was invited by this man for is for the school for international studies.

Uh, we are hoping we will raise one hundred thousand dollars each year for the next seven years on works for the cultural services ARM of the reemploy. He tells me he's fundraising for dool language programs in public schools because his mission is to promote french language and culture. He called IT soft power, which I was kind of surprised, he said out loud, since I associate that with something we do in developing countries, not something you're allowed to do in american public schools. After for a reason I talked, I walked into the main room and immediately on Morris Morris was so skeptical of this whole embassy thing but there he is at a table selling raffle tickets next to amy, cheerfully raising money for a program neither them ever wanted at their school.

We are rafting off um to airline tickets to friends warm blue ket is gonna win IT could be yours.

Mario is ever is trying and mostly fAiling to convert ticket sales into social connections. He asks everyone, so if you win, when do you think you are going? Oh, you're going in anyway for easter. nice.

How's the weather?

They're in easter. Yes.

I am from friends. How is the .

weather in easter good? Um i'm at before we do IT I have a question. Can I from here from these tickets buy something to go from parries too much say .

when i'm living barbera .

from grammar cy park, the woman who lives fall in paris wanders across the marble floor toward the rafle table side where amy is sitting. And I thought, oh no.

Hi, how are you? You the parents by lingual student?

She's not by little little, but you talked .

the school SHE will be bilingual eventually.

eventually. Onderstand thing.

are you pleased with the program? Yes.

I like the school .

is so important to learn another language. IT opens the world for you. And what is your name? And I was just telling on when I go to paris, which I do every year, IT is cool.

And it's cool because I can speak the language, and you have on tray into the society. Not totally. One will never have total on trade, but you can interact with your neighbors.

You can interact in the restaurant. You can interact at the dry cleaner at the supermarket, and they so appreciate an american who can speak for that. Yes, yes. And the language is beautiful.

And I mean, starts looking around. Morice moves closer and leaned to hear why his wife is doing that nervous life, as barba explains to amy, a porter ican woman, that being bilingual makes a person more sophisticated. Amy is exceedingly polite.

Paris is a low stone. If you really want to enjoy IT, you've got ta speak the language.

There is a pressure.

Thank you.

That entire conversation, I mean, never mentioned a barba that he does speak another language. Spanish leader, I ask her why SHE shrugs IT up.

No, I just let her talk. Okay, he was alright. So do you remember when you .

were telling me about the silent tantrum that you're having? How would I know if that was happening?

You would IT only my husband would if i'm throwing a silent tender. He would know if i'm throwing a silent tender.

So was that happening right now?

No, that right now.

amy turned her back to her husband, facing me and behind her morry is looking rate at me not being vigorously? yes.

So here we were in our fancy clothes on the utter side of manhattan, ising money for a french program at an utter ly Normal broker in public school. That was already weird. But the toast, the toast were when the cognitive dissident of the evening really kicked in for me.

Debris steps up onto the marble staircase and clicks his glass, announced its time to celebrate what we've created and raise some money. IT takes services. IT takes the gated principle.

She's here with us. IT thinks, yes, yes. The breeze hands to make the .

principal joe man.

it's so nice to see all of you. And I think, you know, the number one thing is, I think all of standing here believe in public education and believe that .

all suggests one by one. People are talking about equality and diversity and community. The meaning of public here at the cultural services political palace full of way people.

So I went on the six great trip um eleven year olds going overnight trip up in the catskills. I would not recommend doing that.

Rob gives a toast about that time. He went on the overnight trip. IT starts off, okay, but then veers into strange and sort of Cindy territory, then the ropes course, forty feet up, looking down.

And they were diverse. Kids blame me, making sure I, when I jump, that they would actually cushion my fall. That day, each of those kids was gna climb up that pole and was going to have the same opportunity and the same chAllenge.

And maybe think that that's what this is schools about, is about the opportunity to view the international aclu ate the chAllenge of IT. It's about the opportunity to explore french and the chAllenge of IT for all kids. I agree with rab.

it's great to give kids equal access to opportunity, but what they're being given access to are the opportunities that rob and the other way parents care about. Downstairs, if i'm Susan, I miss P. T, A co president on a bench by herself.

She's near the band drinking wine, looking a little dumb struck and ask if she's okay. This is something else, he says. And then he adds, it's just hard to explain how this is a public school fundraiser.

When the founder of american public education, horis man, laid out his vision for public schools back in the day, he rode his horse around machua ts, podium to podium, and his pitch was common. Schools would make democracy possible. They would bind us to one another in doctorate us, give us the skills and tools we need for democratic living public schools, he believed, would be the great equalizer.

Rich and poor would come together and develop what he called fellow feeling. And in doing so, quote a literate factitious distinctions in society. For that to happen, you need everyone in the same school together.

At S. I, S. They've gotten that far. Everyone was in the same school together, but there was no equalizing.

We can be in the same school together and not be equal, just like we can be in the same country together. It's not enough. What do we do about that? After the gala, money poured into S A, S.

And more weight families and roll their kids at the school. But in the years after that, there was a backlash. N S I S changed in ways that mid drab question himself.

He wondered if you'd made mistakes. He told me he thought they all wanted the same thing for the kids. He just didn't know, not knowing that happens a lot with White parents.

I looked into the history of this school, and I learned that this wasn't the first time White parents showed up here. White parents have been involved all along. Although we back to the very beginning of the school half a century ago, doing the same kinds of things I just seen IT happens again and again.

White parents wielding their power without even noticing, like a guy wandering through a crowded store with a huge backpack, knocking things over every time he turns. Where's man believed to public schools would make us equal, but IT doesn't work. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I want to lay out the story, the whole story, of this one american public school. Because what I am sure of is that in order to address inequality in our public schools, we are going to need a shared sense of reality. At the very least, it's a place to start, thus next time on nice weight parents.

Network parents is produced by july's senator and me with editing on this episode from Sarah ic Nancy update and ira glass 3 dmm。 Ing as our managing editor e viewing and Rachel lizer editorial consultants fact checking and researched by ben fAiling with additional research from little solvent music supervision and mixing by stone Nelson, our director of Operations is settling july witichis or digital manager finance management by Cathy holy and production management by forensic swan original music for nice White parents is by the bad plus with additional music written performed by magic ini and dad rights, special things to witness danger field rich orris, amy padoa naoh. Anna Jones, Scott argued jacket Carrier gene dam by Charles Jones, lenguas a and baro diver at the near times, thanks to sam donne's definite Price, new assem and july assignment.

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