Nice White Parents - Ep. 4
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in the new york times. This is nice White parents. Episode four, I wanna tell you about another old film I found during my research.

It's from one thousand nine hundred and fifty one. We see a housewife, a White woman. Everyone in this film is White. SHE is sitting in her living room with some neighbors. They're here to solve a problem.

A chain broke on a swing in a public playground, relatively unreported, but a child might have been hurt.

They sit on couches with no pads, deep and discussion. They will solve this problem together. In another scene, a machines in california approaches boss, the factory owner, with the request from .

the workers, show the new pension time.

I thought we had discussed the pension plan previously. They had. But discussion requires listening, debating and waving your arms. Elite, which they do in the film.

not yet friends, they may never like each other, but they'll sweated out together. The problem is mutual, much is involved, developed within each citizen is the democratic spirit, the democratic method?

Where were they taught the democratic method? You might ask public school, where were the housewives taught to problems solve for the safety of the community? S children public school, this film is made by the national education association, is a twenty five minute promotional film that spends almost no time inside schools.

Instead, it's all about the purpose of public schools, how they prepare us to live together as citizens. We see americans use their public school training in everyday life when they sit with their neighbors, debate their bosses when they go shopping and drive a car by a house. We are all part of a grand play independent. The senator, the homemaker, the factory worker.

and fed garman, the farmer of pensylvania, are his decisions important? They are if the nation wants to eat.

Fred, the farmer, has a nameless wife, whom we see now standing next to him. Fred's wife is trying to resolve a problem. The neighbors want to build the drainage system into a pond.

The lowest land for the pond is an orchard that belongs to fred and his name, wife. The wave understands that to prevent further flooding, SHE in friend will need to sacrifice for the greater good. And bread is not so sure.

If we don't do something to help, our land is going to get like theirs. And, you know, IT, I don't like the idea of losing those trees. There's the problem, in a nutshell, a tough one to crack his land and his neighbor's needs. A dictator could solve IT for fred, but he prefers to do his own thinking.

Luckily, fred has the tools to do IT.

Those tools are sharpened in the schools of amErica .

and think goodness, because the stakes are high .

problems everyday, and the way they are solved determines the way the country functions.

This vision of public schools, the same one laid out hundred years earlier by the founder of american public schools, horus man, is that amErica and democracy cannot survive without public education. We need common schools where rich and poor come together to solve problems, generate fellow feeling. Public schools, the great equalizer.

But I have made my way through the history of one modern american public school. And from what I can see, wait, parents are standing in the way of achieving this vision. Our schools are not in equalizing force because way parents take them over and hord resources.

We're not learning how to live together as one society because White parents flee or cording themselves off in special gifted programs even when we are not in the school building, funding and attention still slight our way. So I don't see hoods possible to have equal public schools, common schools, that serve every child unless we limit the power of White parents. But how do you do that? In all my reporting around this one school building from two thousand and fifteen, always back to the beginning, i've never seen that happen. And then I did from serial productions and planet jpy wilt. This is nice weight parents, a series about the most powerful force in public schools, weight people.

Recently, i've come across two examples of schools that seem to be suppressing the power of White parents. Two examples I found in the very last place I expected in the I. S.

Two to three building, one upstairs and one downstairs. So today's episode, what is a look like to limit the power of a wife, parents and schools? And does IT work, does IT lead to an equal education for everyone.

I'm gonna start downstairs. Eight years ago, the city put a charter school in the basemen of I S. To ninety three.

It's called success academy. The year spent following the new weight parents upstairs at the school for international studies. I would occasionally see success academy kids around the building and orange and blue uniforms. IT was always a little startling because success academy is an elementary school, so they look tiny in a building full of middle and high school. But mostly the success kids stood out because of the way they moved through the hall.

The walk in single form like they're in the army like it's it's so weird. It's like and if they don't walk in single form like they stop the whole .

line like deny is one of the many students from S I S. Upstairs who is eager to tell me about the charter school and its rituals, there's silent controlled lines.

is like a, is like A A like a sense of, like the children of the corn. Like this is a crease me out. what? Storm choppers? Yeah.

something that's his friend Chris saying. Like storm choppers, sometimes still here, success teachers say, make a bubble in your mouth. And then a line of six year old will close their lives and filled their cheeks up with air that we know. Boy's talking, as I told me, they look like puffer fish.

I remember kinda very vividly, and I know if I was to have my face in a power fish, I mag. Start making all types of black sounds and stuff know.

So the and they .

do no was so weird, like is like IT helps me think or makes me think about, like what happens really happy inside of the classroom to be coming out like that.

The year I was reporting A S, A S, the net times publish a video that showed a particular and alarming moment inside one of the success classrooms. IT was secretly recorded by an assistant teacher who leaked IT in a went viral. You see a group of first graders gathered in a circle on a poke out rug, sitting legs cross hands in their lapse.

And a teacher is asking one girl to correct a math problem. SHE got wrong, lit, so counted again, making sure you're counting correctly. The girl does not respond. The teacher leans in and repeat.

The girl wipers are, says something so quiet you can't hear the entire class is watching, silent, intense, the teacher is visibly upset, picks up the child's paper and rips IT in half points, an angry finger to the side of the room. Go to the town downstair and sit SHE goes, the teacher turns to the rest of the circle. There's nothing that, in theory, has been more than when you don't do this on your paper.

Somebody come up and show me how he should have counted to get her answer. That was one in a split. A boy rushed es over to do IT correctly, but the teacher is not done publicly, representing the girl now sitting to the size of the classroom in the content chair.

Thank you. Do not go back to your seat and show me one thing. And then don't do IT here. You're confusing everybody. Very good, sad and very disappointed.

The teacher is, wait, the girl whose work SHE just ripped up is not the whole thing is hard to watch. When this video came out, the student was living at a homeless shelter with her mom. Success suspended this teacher but didn't fire her.

Instead, at a press conference, the C E O represented the near times for not understanding that this teacher was having a bad day. When I asked about this incident, the C E O of success told me the teacher's behaviour was unacceptable. Teachers are not allowed to yellow kids, but IT was not a variable offence.

SHE says the teacher made a mistake. I have always been sackett al. The success academy success has a reputation for being harsh and punitive.

Especially unnerving, to me at least, is that they are harsh. Pune tive approach is deployed in schools across the city that are almost entirely black and Brown. Success students are generally kids of color from working class or poor families. The intense focus on policing kids bodies, on test prep drills, frequent use of suspensions. You don't see that in majority weight schools.

I ve never seen a line of uniformed weight students walking through the halls of a public school building with their mouth and bubbles, or being told to quote, show urgency when they dawdle and packing their books, bags or eating lunch. Except for here, this particular success academy in the basement of I S. Two ninety three is integrated.

A quarter of the student body is White, and it's the first school I saw putting limits on the power of weight parents. Success academy is the city's largest charter school network. Forty seven schools, elementary, middle and one high school.

They get public funding, like all charter schools. Success academy, as IT, gets private funding. The state overseas charters, like success, but IT isn't run by the state or the city, is run by a private organization.

And success is a choice school. That means families is opt in to success. The CEO, a woman named even moskowitz, opened her first forty something schools in largely working class, black and Brown neighborhoods, where SHE imagined families would want a new school option.

Then about a decade ago, moscot decided he wanted to open an integrated school, a new success academy that was racially integrated and economically diverse. SHE needed a school building where integration was possible, where perhaps half a century, or a group of White families pushed for a strategically located fringe school building between two racially segregated ted neighborhoods. And this is how success academy wounded up here in the old is two and ninety three building because of yet another plan to integrate.

Only this time, IT worked. White parents opted in the way families at this success academy is called success academy. A couple have tend to come from advantage.

Just liked the way parents upstairs at S. I S. They're upper midd class and rich doctors and layers, corporate accountants, people who walked in most public schools with a lot of power.

But the influence i'd seen White parents wield upstairs at S, I, S, that didn't seem to be the case. Downstairs, I found that confusing. Do the P, T, A? We have a parent council.

So it's very similar to a pgi. This is a lisbon hop, the principal of success couple. Hell, a parent council is not that similar to A P, T, A, though, because in the very next sentence, principle bishop told me that the parent council is not allowed to raise money party.

This, I assumed, was probably difficult for parents who are accustom to fund raising for their kids schools. Have you had parents who want to raise money, like who come to like I want to you know I want this thing to happen and I want to raise the money for IT not anything um like that. I have had parents come to me and say like I want to do a coat drive they to we do that stuff throughout the entire year, but it's never i've never had anyone approach me about donating money really.

Yes, no parents have been like I want to do a funder er for x and you have to be like that's not a thing that we do. No, i've never had that principle. Bishop looks over at the P.

R, person whose come from success headquarters to supervise this interview. The poor person shakes her head. No parents don't raise money.

And what if somebody did want to raise money for the school? A parent wanted to raise money? Yeah, we don't against the yeah, we don't.

We don't raise money. Principal bishop looks over to the P. R.

Person again, as if to say, I might not being clear with this chick, why hasn't you getting IT? But I seem to be unable to stop myself from listing all the things i've seen. Weight advantage parents demand in public schools.

If parents were like, we want this to be a door language french school and we can help fund I mean, we don't have our curriculum is is network based. I mean we're given curricular. We don't have um a language curricle in our elementary schools.

If parents were like we want there to be less math or a different kind of math or we want there to be a film programming or whatever like any of those things parents like we want, yeah, I mean, this is our model. It's our model across all of our schools. No changes. The CEO of success academy, even a moscot z follow up later to tell me if parents want to give money, they can, but IT will be distributed evenly across all of our schools. We can't have a couple hill families getting more than our families in harm.

Here's what he started to understand about how success academy was limiting the power of way. Parents success was limiting the power of White parents by limiting the power of all parents. I met a dad named previous sharp outside the building one day, a black guy who grew up in brooklin, his son, Ethan, is that success.

We actually get graded. You get get graded as the parents. We get an e mail saying, this is what you are progress to say. We know.

but you get agreed like A, A, B, C.

like is A A did you like a medium expectations or not? Like, you know.

let's upstairs. S A, S had tripped over itself to meet the demands of new weight parents. downstairs. All parents at success academy are being greeted even day a day. The success principal and teachers make sure to remind parents when they're falling down on the job.

So we want to late. Was italy is your fault wisely a wain I think one day hours in SHE text and say i'm meeting and I here yet, any reason why? And I felt like I wasn't the parent that like, you know that their time but IT keeps you on your toes and .

you feel you weren't the parent.

I was the point. I wasn't the parent. And I felt like I was just drop in the skate off to his parents day in the cafeteria.

I met a White mom named sera stanic. There is a financial adviser, her son's in fourth grade. And SHE was telling me he likes the school, even though. And then Sarah lowered her voice, pointed at her boy and said, he's been suspended. Yes.

i'm 说 he's been suspended。

And I was not happy about that.

and I definitely never had that experience when I was a kid. But but how? Would so very singly. So so you know kind of like that maybe third grade was maybe even second the first time. What happened?

Yeah how many times been suspended?

A few times, a few times. It's probably ably gray, but like like pushing, fighting and he's really not a fighter but you know their boys and and sometimes I think it's like kind of a harsh you know like Young kids and I know that that's like a complaint about suspensions in the schools. But you know on the other hand.

He had warnings and we know IT wasn't. I think that his teacher, you know, given him, given him space once lack in other areas. So I want I have no lingering anger about yes. Overall yeah I mean, overall, overall i've been I feel very like lucky to be able to be a part of this community and be a part of this school.

Sir later wrote me to say her kid was actually suspended four times that year. I've reported on discipline in schools and the use of suspension a lot. I've talked to many mothers of children who have been suspended. Not one of them has been White. Black kids are suspended in neck city schools at five times the rate of White kids.

After a met sa, I double checked the numbers for the two thousand seventeen school year, just to be sure, in the regular york city public schools that same year, not success or other charters, but the traditional public elementary schools that year, there were three hundred and twenty seven suspension for non White kids. For White kids, there were only nine. I was so surprised after meeting Sarah when I left the building, I called two people who know a lot about education to say, this is what's happening at access academy.

Couple hill White boys are big, suspended, rich way boys, and they can believe IT either one of them. No lewy rocks. A professor at coral said, well, well, how's that very quality.

So why parents can raise money, they can ask for special programs, and their kids gets suspended. Why are they suddenly OK with equality interviews? Lots of success. Parents.

we did get a flying. They put them on the doors. They put them on the doors in the neighborhood.

Susana julio, I saw the fire for success when her son was in high school. So SHE looked into IT in every other possible school options you had.

IT was in our neighborhood. But more importantly, we towards so many schools like, you know, public, private, parochial, we were slated for fifty eight, which is an excEllent school, and we did get in there. But success was heading above any school ede scene, just the level of excEllence. And you have nothing match the test scores.

Almost every parents spokesman said they were initially drawn to access academy because of the excEllent test scores. If you're a measure of success in school is standardized test. And at success academy, IT is this is one of the best calls in the city.

The scores are truly remarkable. Success academy students performed twice as well on state tests as regular in new york city public school kids. The vast majority of success kids passed the test. Ninety five, ninety seven percent in your average city public schools is less than half.

And even more impressive, to me at least, is the kids of success are doing well in tests, no matter if they're poor or rich, or black or latino or asian or weight. This is the problem that decades of public education reforms have tried to address the achievement gap. Success academy was pulling off not only an integrated school, but an equal integrated school that was closing the achievement gap.

The way success achieves equality, though, some things give me pause. Let's make first expectation, like your hand ship, Cameron. Your first access expectation is really, last year I went into the success classrooms, some computer in love, get computer too. Yes, my second expectation is that I didn't see any teachers representing kids or ripping up work like the one in the video.

What I did see where teachers who issued a constant wall of verbal directions, where to look, what to do, how to sit, delivered in the same consistent, neutral tone when a teacher calls on someone, SHE gives the direction to the class to track the speaker, look at the person speaking. Meanwhile, a second teacher, romes and hos, issuing reminders. Answers correctly.

China, no scanning for another friend on the carpet who looks so professional. Lock your hands thread, joe. Success of chief equality, at least in part, through utter uniformity.

Every success academy across the city uses identical methods, identical circular in identical classrooms. The kids sit on the same pocket carpet, hands locked in their lap, same signs on the wall, seeing the same chance. Even the teachers look the same.

They're almost all Young White women in cotton dresses and belly flats just at a college, sometimes the same college. I know this because the classrooms are named after teachers. Oma matters, and there are three, ten state classrooms.

What have you go? We are platy day. Yeah, we fall away. Yeah, we can not away. 下 不了 下 下下 不了 路口， 下 不下。

Education people talk a lot about the difference between equality and equity, to a point that I believe is tiresome. But I thought about this difference, a lot of success. Equality means everyone gets the same thing.

Equity means everyone gets what they need. Success is equal. Everyone is treated the same, but kids are never all the same.

Some kids are chatting in the hallway or need a minute to think before answering a question. Some kids have a million books at home, and some kids don't. A black girl might respond differently than a White girl to being represented by a way teacher. A single parent with two jobs may have a harder time getting their kid to school on time, then say, a stay at home mom at the partner.

One of the main criticisms of success academy from public education advocates is that success doesn't actually serve all students, that IT has excEllent test scores because IT serves a select group of students, kids who don't test well or can't set still, they're weight out of the school success academy. Viamede denies this. They point out that they make special accommodations for kids with special needs, and they note that they don't get to choose students because kids get spots in their schools by random lottery.

And that's true. But it's also true that lots of parents don't apply the lottery because they know the schools is culture and the demand. And that makes the families won't work for them.

And plenty of kids who do end up at success don't last long. Maybe they get held back a grade or they're suspended. A civil rates complaint filed on behalf of more than a dozen families alleges their children were regularly removed from class and suspended seven, ten, thirteen times at access academy.

Most of those families eventually left the school. I had a thought walking through success, I suspected that the strict classroom control was partly what mid weight parents feel comfortable at access academy. I'm speculating here.

None of the way parents I spoke with told me they chose success because the school police is black and Brown students so well. And I don't believe this was a concious thought for anyone, but I do know that way. Parents bring plenty of unconscious biases to public schools with black and Brown kids.

Fears that the classrooms will be chaotic or not chAllenging, that the kids will be disorderly or threatening way. Parents worry that arcade will be harmed. Success academy completely controls for these fears.

Everyone gets excEllent test scores. There's no room from his behaviour. No risk of disruption because there are no idle moments.

If thirty children need to move from their desks to the rug, IT sounds like this on your bottom, on the black line, in five, in four, three, two wine. Every kid is on their bottom, hands locked. I was tracking the teacher is everyone. Boy, he gets a correction.

Success Operates on the principle that with river and discipline uniformly applied, all students will achieve well. It's attempting vision, especially coming from upstairs, where the power of White parents seem to have no bounds. But equality does not necessarily shift the baLance of power.

Why parents aren't running the show here, but success is run by a White CEO and a board that includes millionaire dfb d managers, sorry, billionaire heddington managers or of trustees is listed on the success website. And the BIOS include mather capital, redwood capital, glam, bew capital, cumulus media, Morgan Stanley, facebook, arno importer. This is not exactly a disruption to the social order is all i'm saying. You can limit the data date influence of wait parents, but still rich weight people control the agenda, the priorities and the money.

Back in two thousand and fifteen, the year of the White influx in S. I, S. Toward the end of that square, I was talking amy hernan's one day.

SHE is the P. T. A co president at S. I, S. And amy told me, watching all those way parents come and take over, IT was almost like watching tumble d move along in the wind. IT was so quiet that how they moved through here, SHE said, picking up power as they went like a tub.

Wheat IT starts really soft and slow, and IT keep just picking up speed and getting bigger. So it's really soft and slow, but it's it's getting bigger. It's not like a envios a comes at you just tumbling long, very slowly. So to very light you don't feel IT come on IT back then .

I may told me there's no stopping IT SHE worried he couldn't protect what he loved about her school. If you are right, in the worst case in ario happens, what does that look like in a year or two .

that does no more colour in the school? Then there's Normal community, which I really hope i'm wrong. That's my biggest fear. Then I would question if my daughter coming back, I really would.

Amy feared that each year more and more White families come into S. I, S. Until IT just became like the other segregated metal schools, where all the White parents fought to enroll their kids against the repetition of history.

Amy was wrong. What happened at S A, S. Was nothing like SHE. Or I expected that's up next when we go back upstairs.

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This was spring, a black teacher, its access academy named fabulous scent. Hilyard publicly criticized the C. E, O for not taking a stand after the murder of George floyd or acknowledging the effect police violence was having on the families and community successors.

After that, more staff, families and alumina raised the alarms about success, calling some of its practices racist and abusive. It's discipline, policies, the way weight, staff and leaderships speak to kids and parents of colour. In response, the C.

E. O apologized, and success has released a plan that commits to Mandatory bias and sensitivity training for staff. The plan says they will create an equity team and review their culture, their relationships with staff and families and kids with quote and attention and sensitivity to race. I read this plan and thought, hh, there is a school that already doing many of these things, read in the same building, read upstairs.

Yes, it's september two thousand and nineteen. I'm back at sis. It's been four years since the french gala and the drama with the pta. Rob, the dad who fundraisers he's not here anymore. His son finish medical school.

Amy is still here, her daughters of junior in high school, and a new crop of six raters and their families are settling into the auditorium to B. A chess. Well, someone please find a seat for me.

The school is no longer called si s the school for international cities. It's now bh s the borrower hill school for international cities. They change the name again.

B, H, S has a new principal. The coal landau SHE gets up on stage and the staff cheers. Miss land's later welcomes the new families to be at us.

Any school is a microcosm of the world, and we are blessed with beautiful diversity. Miss lanza, to list the way the school reflects the world, race, ethnicity, language, gender. We are extraordinary verse community, and its a beautiful thing.

And we fight for IT, and we work on IT. Miss liza eto says, bh just is going for true equity SHE says the word equity three times in this welcome speech. Muslim leto is weight chat well liked with black hair that style straight up.

The hair is really muslim. Sats defining feature picture boyband pompeo she's retired most of her professional career. The year weight families arrived as I S miss land's lada was the assistant principle SHE won't say anything bad about that year.

He was a learning experience. It's a process. Her processor.

Miss jw man talks about IT the same way. Remember, principles, diplomatic. They're careful not to place blame. But both of them said after that year clear they needed to intervene.

One of the first things miss land's later did as principal was request special permission to reserve forty percent of the seats for kids who get free and reduced Price lunch. The majority of kids who get free introduce press lunch are kids of color. And miss lands later didn't want to school.

The flip SHE didn't want black and Brown kids to get pushed out. The assistant in principal told me they wanted to make sure the school did not become colonized. Some things here have changed. They get rid of the foundation, the brookland world project, rob and the other White parents are created. They scrapped some of the french programing, hired more teachers and staff of color.

And one of the most striking changes, I notice, spent ten minutes of the school, and you can not notice miss lim zalee is talking directly and constantly about race and equity SHE told me everyone here and needs to be on alert for racist habits and ideas. They need to aggressively address them whenever ver they pop up in the cafeteria, in the classroom, all of this a conversation happening in the school around the smart classes and the non smart classes. Let's talk about IT.

Where is that coming from? So I think it's really about being a beast. I think it's about everything we do coming back to IT, coming back to equity. I could knock IT over how much time and energy the school puts into ensuring equity, nutty quality equity.

It's almost like the obsessive focus success puts on making sure everything is the same is exactly matched by the obsessive focus beer just puts unrecognizing everyone is not the same. Beach has formed an equity committee of staff and students a few years ago. They looked for bias in the curriculum and the signs on their walls and the books on their shelves.

They analyzed achievement data, discipline data, where they could clearly see that the school punish ed black boys more harshly than other students. So they've revamped their entire approached to discipline, created a restore of justice department. They applied for grants to help pay for this, to train their teachers on implicit bias and then train them again.

They brought in experts. And here's some things that I look for in transition. So how to kids engage with each other is a verbal engagement, is not verbal engagement.

I watched to equity ult cornelius and cast minor show a group of b just teachers how to observe racial dynamics in their school. This involved teachers walking around in a huddle with clipboards, taking diligent notes as kids walk through the hallways. One fun lens to look at.

And i'm just kind of like naming things, though. I often ask, what a boy's doing? What a girls doing? What are black students doing? What students of color doing? mr. Minor is full of fun things the teacher should look for.

Here's another fun um thing to do just because we out here um I do kind of like dry is in the hallway where I walk by classroom windows and I look in they all take turns peering through the small window of a classroom door. They take more notes. Later, the teachers meet as a group and one teacher, S C N. Mansle, explains for observations from a math class.

And then in the math cosme that we were in something that stood out to me. So there was two White males, White female, black male, and i'm walking around and black male, he was finished. And I, he finished early, waiting for his pairs to do the think right pair share.

And when the timer went off, the girl, the White girl he was sitting next to, he looked to her, but he looked to the two White boys, and they formed the pair. So I was like, now he had to work with him, but he was sort of looking for the other two boys for validation, for what this boy was saying. So like my teacher self is like, okay, does this child not participate in class and he does entrust that he knows what he's doing or is IT because he doesn't see him because he's a black SHE figures? He's not capable.

The teacher has talked about this moment in debt. What IT might mean? What messages the kids we're picking up in their school about race, about who's important, who's bad, who's smart.

And it's not just the staff. The administration is telling White parents that their mere presence in the school does not make IT integrated. They have to work at making this place fair.

So this is our agents today. We're onna start with a reflection, and we're going to get into how we talk about race with our Young people.

When saturday morning, a group of two dozen parents gathered in the beach just library for something called family academy, this event was open to everyone, but mostly way parents showed up, and many of them shared that they had never really talked about race very much when they were growing up.

Looks show of hands if if race was not talked about, only minimum talked about or sort of avoided in in some way. So just looking around the room, it's bad. Half, not about sixty percent of us.

Assistant principal Megan casey box, everyone throw a work shop on race and racism in amErica and child development. If I think about how, just a few years ago, the buz word in this very school was diversity. Everyone is all about celebrating diversity.

But now Megan casey tells this room of parents, diversity is not the goal. Having a diverse goal does not mean we have an integrated school. We need to work on that to get to an integrated school. He says they surveyed bh r students last year asking them about their experiences.

And our White kids overall said IT feels like i'm in a benetton and it's so diverse and lovely and i'm not experiencing racism or racial bias or implicit bias here at school. It's it's great. And our kids of color were saying they feel less loved, less seen.

They talked, though they didn't use this language, they talked about stereotype threat. They talked about implicit bias. They talked about moments with peer White peers that were uncomfortable, whether friendship felt a little strained and IT was clear to them.

The fair White friend just didn't, didn't not have bad intentions, love them, good friend, but didn't know the harm they were creating, just didn't have the same knowledge face that they had about race and about racial conscious ness. I wanted just make sure, because for whatever reason, I don't know why sometimes we think that things are Better than they are. I just wanted to come back to our students. They are reporting that this is urgent and we need to continue to deal with IT. And and it's it's not a menthon yet even if some of our kids s think .

IT is it's a little drawing to hear school leaders telling parents even though everything looks OK, it's not principal lanza ada says he knows that can be hard to hear some of the stuff and some people are gonna feel pissed off about IT and some people do. And that means some people going to leave the room feeling like they're being blamed. But at the end of the day, this is about kids.

This is about serving kids and including families and communities. I mean, what else is the point of a school? That's the whole point of school.

Is that the point of a school? When muslim's letter said this, I got stuck on the phrase, what is the point of a public school? We don't seem to have any kind of unified vision.

Maybe there was one back when they made that old film about public schools teaching us about democracy and how to live together. But we don't have a shared vision. Now what we have is choice.

You can choose your vision for a public school. You can go to the test or school, like success academy, or are the racial justice school like B. H.

S. There's no city policy that says every school needs to be integrated and equitable. It's up to us if we want that, we can choose IT for families with the most power, the most choice es.

That means we get to choose. Do we want to play fair or not to be at just families were choosing equity weight advantaged families. I didn't see anyone leave the room at that parents workshop or seem upset or blamed at all the parents I met at the address of all races.

We're pretty happy with the school. They seem bought in. Meanwhile, the test score that beat just have improved dramatically. They're still achievement gap, but IT seems to be closing.

Black boys are no longer being disciplined at much higher rates than everyone else, and the kids seem happy, warm and confident and adept of talking about things like race in power. One day, though, I heard a rumour was going around the high school kids were saying the P. T.

A was stealing money from the high school and giving IT to the middle school. I heard a first in the library from a group of tenth graders. They said the P.

T. A had taken fifteen hundred dollars to create a garden, and they were pissed. Later I heard IT again.

Thera tan's greater name prisoner. And IT wasn't fifteen hundred anymore. yes. So they just received fifteen thousand dollars for gardening.

What else can I be? Fifteen thousand dollars can be user, so much more. But yeah, this was meaningful because the beach is middle school is much weiter and larger than the high school. And despite all the focus on racial equity for the past few years, the P.

T, A leadership at ba jez is now almost all wait a lot of middle school parents, which has not escaped the notice of students who have been encouraged by their school, to notice such things and call them out a girl name. Pelt told me, we have to keep watching them because there's no one there representing us. My mom works. You can go to P T A meetings and that your mom can be in the P T A. Um and you make all these rules and like, no, like we want the money for middle school .

yeah they like this all power thing that's like above everybody's had. I can like take this money and do this. And like.

that's Jeremiah jumping in jerrem a is a kid who jumps in. He's the guy you go to if you're feeling angry about something. And just and what you want more than anything is someone who will feel just as angry as you do during my IOS.

Pola, this is ridiculous. I'm gna go to the P T. A and just tell them straight up.

you guys need to stop taking just stop taking money from this to put in middle .

school programs that my middle already do. I wasn't sure they had the details exactly right, but I did think, yeah, here we go again. The mostly way pta probably is manipulating where money goes.

So I looked into IT, and IT wasn't true. The P. T. A did not steal money from the high school. IT did get money for a garden, but I was grant money, not P, T, A money. Plus, the garden is mostly for the coronary program, which mostly serves the high school jar.

Maya texted me a few days after we spoke to say, sorry to bother you, but I think I might have been a little too critical of the school is IT possible to do a follow up interview. He was mad at himself and his friends for believing the rumor. He was mad that he said that to me and looks stupid.

I think there was some leftover feelings. I, I, I, I can't even say because I just, I just.

what do you mean by leftover feelings?

Because that's in the the the understanding for five years. The only thing it's always been.

it's always been that I took me a while to get jar my the same more about what he meant by that. The my is fifteen years old. When he was in third grade, the city closed his mostly black school called IT, feeling.

His mom, a black woman, fought the school closing as hard as he could, went to every meeting. IT happened anyway. The city put a charter school in the building, and IT also opened a new small school designed to appeal to the newly gentrified neighborhood.

IT had a global study's curriculum and a door language spanish program. Jeremy mi went there third through fifth grade. Then he went to S.

I, S. For middle school. The year the way kids came in, suddenly, his science class was sometimes type in french. The after school programs he wanted to go to are so french. What you didn't love, for obvious reasons.

because I can't speak french, shows pretty annoying.

right? Jeramy A A black kid believed a rumor that White parents in the pta were stealing from him and his classmates because he understands that this is how schools work. He has left over feelings. 这 mallets the new by address， and he says that does feel more integrated and more equal. I told him about some of the way parents i'd been meeting at the school who seem truly committed to integration.

I think that for for White, my White mom just think I think it's like A I think it's like it's it's popular now like yoga, like o yeah integration. I got kind, it's cool now is a new thing.

And what do you make of that?

I mean, yeah, you are part of IT. Like, thanks. But are you just you I like, do you really, genuinely care? Is that everyone's doing that? I mean, when it's not beneficial to the wife family is it's going to be changed and that's no history repeat itself. So when this becomes not when this integration is in beneficial than a ball, it'll go right back to where I was before.

History repeat itself is like a very central thesis of my story.

Yeah, it's is true for life always history always like I think yeah, when an immigration is not helpful to can become segregated again.

that's probably true way parents are opting in to be adjust right now. But they can just as easily up out historically. They have.

When this school building first opened its doors years ago, black and porter ian parents were demanding integrated equal schools city wide for everybody. They weren't asking for a one curated school or a small network of schools where people could integrate if they wanted to. They were asking the board of education to have a plan for all schools. They were asking for things to go differently than they have for all of history. Next time on nice ely parents, things go differently.

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