Nice White Parents - Ep. 3: ‘This Is Our School, How Dare You?’
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in the new york times. This is nice White parents. Episode three, I S to ninety three opened in one thousand nine sixty eight.

Rana flowers was part of the first generation of students to walk in the door. And you're talking about the building on court street. I went to school there.

He was a nice, and I was brand knew, you know, was nice, really nervous about going because all your friends, you all your friends were enable hoit was there they go on us night's hood where when they grew up and still lives, the housing projects threw blocks away from the school. Ranney went to I S. Ninety three, graduated, and SHE kept going back to the building to play handball, to vote, to attend graduations.

Reni coaches, the neighbor d drill team and theyd perform at the school for years, should regularly go watch the basketball tournament. Renne is in her sixties. SHE just retired from the post office. The school has been a fixture for most of her life. SHE knows every part of the building.

Actually, if you go on on the go walt street entrance, the school safety, then when you walk actually into the building, what time is right to you? Right as we're talking? SHE closes her eyes SHE can see IT woke .

up a little more on turn left. And another left that the gym is right exactly where everything is.

The country has a stack of old I S two ninety three year books in her apartment. Even the year SHE wasn't a student there. She'll take the year books out for go on this old timer's day every August where nails black SHE is.

Never wondered why I S to ninety three is located on court street, why they all had to walk to the edge of the White neighborhoods, get to school. She's never heard about the battle over where the building would be located, or the White parents who wanted a fringe school renege ous knew the school was theirs. Imani gale gillson told me the same thing, two ninety three with hours, why folks will go on to two twenty nine or somewhere else.

I aren't where they weren't really, but they weren't even at to ninety three, so we didn't even see them. The money was very eager to talk about two ninety three, which I found charming because he didn't even go there. He says he was one of the only go on his kids whose parents at a catholic school.

And she's never forgotten IT SHE was so jealous of her brothers or her friends at I S. To ninety three they called IT I S. Or Nathan hale, june, or high school, the kids would all walk home together in a big group.

Any money remember seeing them in their Green nath's hail sweers, hearing them saying the nath's hail school song, there was a pride in their school. You, they would like, sometimes be singing IT on the way home and stuff. Really, we will tell your old boys, yeah, like, really like, you know, very like.

That was their anthem. You know, in the continental army was a soldier every now. Nathan hill, his name was known to be.

He was captured by the british in a long, long england town. So he died for his own country. So he died for his own country to keep his from serial productions.

And hana jeff y, this is nice weight parents. We're telling the story of one public school building to see if it's possible to create a school that is equal and integrated. This episode, what if we dropped the integrated part? I was talking to an academic recently, a sociologist and writer who studies education, a black woman named in viewing.

I was telling her what I was working on. And at some point in the conversation, he asked me, why are you so obsessed with integration? IT through me, I guess i'm obsess with integration because IT feels like an obvious school.

It's the best way to equalize schools empirically in terms of test scores and outcomes. But also, so segregation is anti theft. Al to the american promise, life, liberty, segregations anathema to all of that. It's cast.

But after seeing what happened at sis, the year the new White families came in, and after learning about how the school was founded on a false ideal of integration, how unreliable weight families were, how they paid no attention to the actual voices and needs of families of color, I don't know why expend energy chasing White people who don't actually want to participate or don't even show up. Maybe it's Better to set aside integration entirely and focus instead on the kids who do show up for decades. After IT opened, I S Q ninety three was largely a segregated school.

There weren't any White parents pushing their whiskey ideas of integration. The school was pretty much left alone. I'd seen what happens when nice way parents came inside the building was IT Better when they stayed out.

To start, I should say that I S to ninety three was not an experiment in black self governance. There were schools like that opening all over the country. Schools founded on the premise that you didn't need White families to get a good education.

Integration was not the answer. These schools focus on black power. They developed afo centric curricula and insisted on people of color in leadership positions.

I S to ninety three was not that he was a pretty average one thousand nine hundred and seventy public school. The principal is White. The teachers were almost like the local community school board also wait.

The kids were black and Brown. There were always some way, kids at two ninety three, but there were a small minority. I wanted to know, was I S two ninety three a good school? Back then? There wasn't much in the official record some math and rating scores that won't read.

But aside from that, there was curiously little written about the school. Most school show up here and there in the archive or a news reports, not to ninety three, which could mean everything was going just fine or IT could mean the school was falling apart. I found names of some I S to ninety three allum nine and renewed. Your books was at a good school. I don't really .

remember, I think is one of the first one.

Where can you were one, the first girls to .

wear pants cut?

The pants have nothing to do with how the school was, is just what he remembers of this time in her life. You wanted to wear pants. I D A lot of conversations like this, people had fun memories of via to ninety three people had sad memories, but mostly they had very specific memories.

Jo brand, he like the desk, kettle, all super star back then. I just thought he was secured thing ever.

I heard about the song that was on repeat the summer before seventh grade, the lighting in the basement. mr. Brener, this scary dean whom everyone called big head barger, when I was two twenty three graduate, told me what SHE remembered was a teacher who used for long nails to eat pumpkin seeds in class.

I met sula Sanders at a barbecue by the guana houses. SHE went to two ninety three, so did all of her siblings, friends. Nearly everyone else at this barbecue was IT. Was two ninety three a good school?

Two ninety three was, I was, say, I was good because I had done to. Comparing to that was the local school that we had to go to. So whether we used .

to to rate IT was I to ninety three good school during this period time? The morning asked IT, I recognize what a modern day question that is. This is the way we talk about public schools.

Now, good schools and bad schools at I soon any three, there was no school choice. Every neighbourhood was zone to its designated medical school. Apart from the White families, most everyone from the community was there, middle class, working class, poor kids, black kids spanning dorky, goody ri kids.

Everyone went, I was two. Ninety three wasn't good or bad. IT was just school. And then something happened. And I was two ninety three when I was looking through the board of IT archives, the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty four stood out.

It's the year I was two ninety three search, showing up in the records that year, a few parents from the school began asking the district superintendent for an investigation into the local community schoolboy. One person writing on behalf of the two ninety three parent association suggest an investigation is critical because the board is planning in secret to harm the school. The board, this person says, is, quote, controlled by people who are out for the real estate interest and have little regard for minorities.

Another parent, Wrights there, unhappy with the local school board, because IT has, quote, seized to act in the best interest of our children. I couldn't really understand from the archive exactly what these parents were talking about. The first person I thought to ask with delicious haden smith, so many to ninety three, alumnae shed me. Smith Smith worked to two ninety three longer than anyone else I talked to forty two years.

Everybody's name I know, everybody's saying they said, miss me was my teaching the kids l in the product, say, ss, mh, was everybody's acher. I'd know them by name. I got have the air juices SHE .

group in the neighbor od. Her mom worked at the school. Her sister, her brother.

I call her parents right from the class room was our community. We would like one big family.

Miss miss told me everything was fine. And then in the eighties, they started messing with us, started messing with who they sent to our school.

I can't say why is just that you noticed IT IT was blame. You could see if, for your self, nobody here to tell you that.

How could you see that?

What what made IT possible? Children put function ing children. They wanted the top, the cream of the claim. You know, they were in those children anymore.

There's a local news article from nineteen eighty seven where the principal to ninety three says the same thing. He accuses the district of, quote, skimming off the higher achieving students from his school, specifically poaching weight students. Miss Smith says they just started .

disappearing and they was offered, you know, behind the court, other options that you could go to, the places that maybe somebody, other children were afforded the James ago.

There would be options for weight kids that seemed like they were happening.

kind like I of positions that they could take us oppose to come into our building. I know the occasion case were offered other things. They started to raging them to go other places as opposed to come in our school.

And they are behind close. They never come out. C.

Okay, so there was something happening behind closed doors, and the local community school board was part of IT. I took these claims to norm fruit, or he was on the local school board around this time, although I figured IT was unlikely. He d say, why? Yes, we did have a secret plot to steal to ninety three high achievers and White kids. And yet that is basically what he said.

There was a lot of repetition, particularly at the middle school level, as to whether White parents would say.

Norm says White parents had left his district in the one thousand nine and seven days. They'd left the public schools entirely or moved out of the city. Black families were also leaving in large numbers, but the school board was completely preoccupied by the White flight. Norm says board members saw decline in White students as a serious threat.

They acquit that with school quality. If you lose White students, your achievement levels will go down. Your schools would be less attractive places for teachers to come. And so because when they thought teachers, they thought White teachers and a whole bunch of pillow effects would happen, what the graduation rates would look like.

their solution, a gifted program.

The district started the program explicitly to maintain a White population.

That was the explicit goal.

That was explicit, because the unspoken, an assumption of the administration aren't district. And every district was that if you had a gift, the program IT would attract like .

parents to get into gifted programs. You had to take a test. Gifted kids would be taught in separate classrooms.

They opened gifted programs in select elementary schools. And a new gifted program opened in a different middle school, a school called M S. Fifty one.

This is part of what the people at I S. To ninety three were seeing. Their strongest students were being signed off way parents, even when they were not inside to ninety three. We're beginning to change the school .

because what you are creating was omani White truck within those schools and they were their kids would get in no matter what kind of testing you used.

Parents who were committed .

to getting the kids and who gives the program could do IT White parents.

yes, about non White parents. We are committed to getting their kids into the do what.

There's a free amount of bias in the testing administration.

Norm says there were kids of colour who were clearly qualified, but we're not in the gifted program. And he says this was because the questions were biased and the people administering the tests were sometimes biased. He also says parents were hiring their own psychologists to test their children and paying for test prep. But also there was another reason black and latino kids were not in the gifted program.

Herd, yes, I was an honest student.

Nathan Jackson might have been one of those kids who would have qualified as gifted. SHE was a student of ice ninety three, a black kid from the guanas projects.

The day I was never absent math on a row, all the time I was on the densely and me, I was that nerdy child. I've always wanted to be a professional. I've always wanted to be someone of importance.

You've always want to to be someone of importance.

always, always. I wanted to be an actress or a teacher.

Ney dean was not kept out of the gifted program because of bias or lack of test prep. SHE simply had never heard of the program. SHE went to the school.

Everyone else went to SHE started seventh grade at us to ninety three in one thousand nine hundred ninety three. Indian was eager to jump in, ready to be delivered to ports with hard work. Would you put in? Nadian studied computer technology.

SHE played first clearing net in the band. SHE played witney houston. I have nothing unclear net over and over.

In her first year, the I S two ninety three band went to perform at another middle school, nearby M. S. Fifty one, the school with the gifted program. When nadian arrived there, he walked right into an experience a lot of kids have when they leave their school and enter a world of wealthier kids.

We were amazed at just the way the Operation was completely different. They had a huge orchestra there. We had a small one here.

And we would just admit how they would just outshining us. I mean, they have Better resources, they have Better equipment, they have Better instruments. Everything was top nuch. And as I was more like second class came down fifty one and I S to .

ninety three were in the same school district. They were governed by the same local community board, and they were a mile and half away from each other. When I asked me the same question, i'd asked previous graduates of via two ninety three, what was the school? Lake SHE described the feeling of being trapped.

He told me he was Normal at two ninety three to have forty two kids in a class, SHE said. Teachers came and went frequently in the middle of the school year. He had six or seven social cities teachers in one year.

I was skeptical about the numbers, but I looked into IT, and all of this seems entirely plausible. For those years, there is a recession. School budgets were designated in one thousand nine hundred and ninety one.

New york city proposed two hundred and fifty million dollars in educational spending cuts. In one hundred ninety two, six hundred million school programs were being cut. Media class sizes, balloon teachers were moved around a lot.

At the same time, nadian district was supporting gifted programs, busting White kids out of their own schools, hiring separate teachers, administering special tests, running an entirely separate educational track. At m fifty one, the gifted middle school, there were not forty plus kids in a class. There were thirty.

The school was written up in a book from the ninety nineties called new york city y's best public middle schools. IT describes the school's leaders as masters at developing faculty, talent and enthusiasm. The M S.

Fifty one principle is quoted saying, when we started the gifted program, we got parents who were more involved, more inquisitive. He then goes on to say the gifted program shifted his whole educational approach. IT made him recognize that children and early adolescence need close contact with nurturing adults.

And he began to hire teachers who he saw as, quote, warm and comforting, I S to ninety three and M. S fifty one or both public middle schools. But that day he visited emas fifty one. Nadia in, felt like this school. This is the school that's preparing kids to be someone of importance.

The education system is Better. There are the way a the way, the way they talk is different. They are so smart. The children there, they were taken on their regions at a very early stage.

Regions or state test. Kids Normally taken high school.

then it's like, oh, my god is later students Carry themselves was different as if they knew something that we did. And now like like they had a secret that we didn't know of and when where we're going to find .

out after eighteen, I ama fifty one SHE says that made her see her own school differently. I used to any three to her looked like a school for trumps.

This is where we all went. That's what we knew, that what our parents know IT really makes you wonder, do we even have a chance? You are trying to figure out who you are.

How do I fit into society? Where do I put myself? That was hard IT made me feel dump, in a sense. And I know anything. In the one hundred and eighties.

when the district started greeting specialized programs at other schools, I has to, any three parents fought back. But norm fruitful, the school board member, told me once the gifted programs were in place, they were there to stay. The board was serving a constituency of White parents who believed their kids deserve the program to serve their unique needs. And he says those parents will. The tremendous power.

there were huge pitch fights in the schoolboy meetings. Whenever we put a resolution agenda to change the gifted program, they could mobilize five on our people for our meeting so you could fill an eleven mentally school order term with gifted program parents. Or as as we used to say, the district gifted parents as if somehow the git ness .

got passed up toward them .

yeah and they called themselves that as well. And one of the many things they argued was that IT was important to maintain the White population in the gifted program in order to have some sembLance of immigration and the schools. And there were benefits that would flow from the gifted program to the rest of school.

Who are you that the parents? The gifted parents?

yeah. They argued .

that the gifted program designed to serve weight families was actually an integration program, when, in fact, IT was a separate track in the school that kept black and Brown kids from resources, from special programs, which is what segregation was designed to do to separate. This was its latest adaptation and IT wasn't the last that's after the break you're taking a late afternoon girl from outfits to sports highlights to wedding pics, and new york times could compose stops .

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Nineteen ninety four, about halfway through us to ninety three sixty year history. And here's where things said tunny three did not have any White parents messing with things inside of the building, but why families in the district were drawing resources away from I S. To ninety three by creating specialty gifted programs in other schools.

I S. Two ninety three was separate, an increasingly unequal. And that is when judie aronson enters the scene, a woman who is not connected to us to ninety three, but was about to be history is about to repeat itself.

My daughter was in the fourth grade, and I felt that there was not a viable middle school for her.

At the same time, nadian, the nerdy, honorable student, was started junior high school. A two ninety three judie had a daughter who was finishing elementary school. Judy's daughter was zone for EMS one, the school of the gifted program. But judy wasn't excited about that school.

IT was a big school, very traditional, not a very exciting curriculum, fairly segregated because of how to segregated gifted program that was mostly wide. And then the kids of color were in the mainstream at that time. And we wanted something a little different. We wanted another option for our kids.

Judy had been a special ed teacher in a public school. Then he left the classroom and started working at the teacher's union, the U. F.

T. Later, SHE became a school principle and a superintendent. So he had spent a lot of time think about schools, but makes a school successful. And she'd begun to imagine what I would look like to build something Better.

I had this idea. I was born and hungry, and then I lived in viana, and I grew up in montreal, and I lived in broke lin for the last forty six years. And I wave, travelled up up. My husband and I and i'm a firm believer that you learn so much about the world through other people to, you know, talking to them through variety of cultures. So the idea behind the school was that kids would have exchanges duty.

got a group of parents together, a planning committee.

They wanted something that a school that was diverse, that was child center, that had a progressive, innovative curriculum. Small student center, you know, all the buzz ds, excEllent teachers, not a large school where kids will learn second language, not the way they learn IT now, but what Better way they would learn about different cultures, all those ideas.

How much was diversity a part of IT?

I think IT was very, very much a part of IT. Um and i'm thinking of our planning committee, I don't think, but very diverse. Now looking back on IT.

why did you guys want the school to be diverse? So what? Why was that central to what you were doing?

Well, we all stayed in the city for a reason, and we didn't want. I mean, one of the reasons that we didn't like fifty one is that segregation of the gifted kids being all White in the rest of the school being, uh, children of color. So we wanted diverse and I I wanted my kids to to really be accepting of everyone.

The planning committee put together a thirteen page proposal for a new school called the brooklin school for a global citizenship. The local community ard approved IT, although somewhere in the process they dropped the citizenship part to controversial, and IT became the brooklin school for global studies. Okay, so why am I telling you about the school for global studies? Because this brand new school needed a building.

The community school board survey its options and chose a spot. The school for global studies would be located in the basement of I S. Two ninety .

three one day was like, you're going to get in to school in your building and we would like house that possible, where how we only have three floors. And is Billy noval for us?

Nadan was an eighth grade when this happened september ninety nine before. And SHE was not into this idea.

You want to put a new school in, and yes, you have forty three kids in the classroom. why? How would you make these classes a little bit smaller and get get more teachers in before you put in a new school? I mean, i'm a big, i'm a big advocate of let's fix the problem first before you want to add on to things.

An article in the nearer times proclaimed a miracle of a school opened its doors this fall in brooklin, thanks to determine parents who created with the new principal called vote. The taj mahal of education global cities had classifies as small as eighteen kids. The curriculum included trips to museums.

The students went outdoors to learn measured shadows for math. They diggin's soil for science experiments. The students at two ninety three saw all that as they went about their days at the not touch maho of education.

and they were pissed. You're in our lunchroom, you're in our jm, you're in our school yard. And they was like, where did these people come from? Where do this school come from? How does this even possible? This is our school, is our neighborhood. How there you.

whenever a dean or the other two ninety three kids walked by the global studies classes, they'd make sure to bang on the classroom doors, and the two ninety three teachers and staff, school security officers, the custodian, the principal, they didn't welcome the new school for global studies either.

I heard stories from this time about the staff from global studies asking to put up student work in the hallways and being told, by the long time, to ninety three custodian, you can, that's a fire hazard. Global cities wanted to use the auditorium for a performance. Sorry, is accused.

ed. And I heard this story from the global city's principal, A I named Larry abrams, who'd been hired to lead what to him sounded like such an exciting new school. And then he showed up to work the first day there, or not, the first day, the first week, uh, the two school cups came down, put me in hand.

Fs, I said what? But they were joking. They're going to arrest me because I was taking over the space in the building.

And now I think about IT. It's pretty funny, but we we the school security came down and and we like you here on the arrest. This is like the first week of the school.

Yeah, forgot the first, the second week. I mean, but obviously we weren't welcome in the place. And IT was gonna a battle. Remember how I said history repeats itself? Oh, your kid didn't go to global study.

No, no, because I took forever.

Judy arrison did not end up sending her daughter to global, because by the time I opened, her daughter was already middle school. When her Younger son was old enough for the middle school. Couple years later, he didn't send him either.

so I sent him to a new small school in sheets, said bay.

oh, wow. We send him to a small school. That was not the small school that you made.

No, not the small school that I made. no.

So your kids did even get to go to the school .

that you created? no. And IT had a lot of rough. A, don't ask.

I am going to ask you about that.

Oh my god. The school ran into a lot of problems. There were too many chAllenges.

The kids were difficult. The teachers were, had issues. IT did none of us send our kids there?

This is not entirely true. I did speak with one parent from the planning committee who sent her sent to global studies. Although SHE said when they showed up in september, I looked to her like he was the only White boy in the school. He said had a good experience there. Judie decided what was best for her kids with something else.

In an effort to appease White parents, the school district had once again made a choice that sidelined to ninety three. why? Parents had said jump.

So the district jumped, and now they were left trying to fill the school for global studies, a school that had no obvious constituency. Most of the parents who created IT didn't send their kids, and the neighbor and kids already had a school I S. To ninety three. This meant to fill global studies, the distorted, to find kids who weren't happy at their schools, or kids who schools aren't happy with them, or they had to bank and families randomly applying to a school they'd never heard of.

You know, it's one thing of the student says, I want to go to this school because this is what i'm passionate about. Okay, but that did not happen. So IT became a place where they place kids that were difficult, they were chAllenging. Very, very chAllenging.

They were acting out when they showed up. Well, they were in a school that wasn't designed for them.

That's true. Two hundred percent through that .

had this whole vision that had nothing to do with the kids who were there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you feel bad about that?

Yes, I mean, yes, yes, I did that. You know, we had these great ideas and 啊， and not everything came to fruition. An, yes, we opened up to school, but wasn't exactly everything we thought you would be.

Within six or seven years, most of the original global study staff had left, including the principal. Within a decade, nobody knew where the school was called the global cities. In the first place, global cities became a regular segregated public school, which share the building with another segregated public school.

In my experience, schools are immune to long term memory. They get new principles, new names, a new generation of parents, and they're populated by children who have no reason to care about what came before clean late every september. This, I believe, is also what makes IT possible for us to keep repeating the same story.

We constantly reset the clock and move forward. When we look to diagnose the problems of our public schools, we look at what is in front of us right now. We look forward. Nobody looks backwards to history.

And so the question is not, how do we stop weight families from hurting other resources? Instead, the question is, what's going on with the black kids? This became the question driving the next era.

And I was two ninety three, the latest era of school reform. The midd one thousand and nineties rate up to today, a time when business people in american and tech company billionaires committed themselves to solving the problem of fAiling public schools. Basically, it's everything you've had about schools in the last two decades.

Charter schools, no child left behind, an accountability, the achievement gap, race to the top. These were data driven initiatives. They assess the educational landscape and identified schools that were fAiling, teachers who are not getting results, children who are not performing. And I is to ninety three. This meant a flurry of new programs that came and went, sometimes in rapid procession.

First I was two, ninety three, got a grant from march and nabis go to break itself up into small academies, smaller schools within the building that would focus on different specialties, a long time to ninety three, teacher carbon sanchez told me. After that, everything just started changing. The staff turnover was a dizzying.

but suddenly these people appear, and they're going to be the directors, no principles, directors of this math academy. And cattle me a music.

Miss ancha says one of them came in to run the place, and SHE opened her staff meeting by promising to fire everyone.

SHE lasted that maybe nine months. He was gone. People, just when, I mean, he was amazing. There was justice, this reviving door of of, of principles of directors. And they just left.

They keep changed over what kind, kind of school you in the science program of school do you're in the this, what what are we? You know.

miss smith, the lauris haden Smith was in her third decade working at the school. When they started changing names. They were the mathematics academy, the academy for performing in fine arts, the school for integrated learning through the arts.

Teachers left new staff, came in new initiatives. They needed to be smaller, more specialized. They needed more science.

They needed a trade. They needed to be a six through twelve school, middle and high school. Miss Smith says this was confusing for the parents, especially the parents in her community, the goon us. Community parents who went to two ninety three and knew IT as two .

ninety three.

Now they were asking me, smith, what happened to two ninety three? The school for integrated learning through the arts. What's that mean then .

when i'm not send my child there, I don't want my child go to performing or at school. I want my child to go get academic when we get both. But they made IT like he was a tap, a tap, their school.

Little is that how long when my kids are no tap dance and singers I want my kids go where they can get an education. Well, they thought he wasn't into education because we had performance in our school. Also, that was just a feature, one of the many features that we had, but the parents didn't get .

IT by this time. Public school admissions, more choice about where parents send their kids. So some of these local parents started choosing other schools. Two ninety three was losing students, which meant they were losing money.

A new principal came in and an assistant principle named jeff chete ro, at that point, two ninety three have been renny ed, the school for international studies, but not even a system. Principal to teco knew why prospective parents would ask him, why should I sign my kids here? What does international mean?

I remember, just like having this horrible response would be like, oh yeah, our students come from all over the world and that's that's really what it's about. It's about our diversity, which kind of ball, but know like that when I would sell because we sound like we really spoke a lot about IT in a currit one man like, and we can eventually did .

you have students from all over the world? I mean, you had students from maybe the crayon and from yemen.

Yeah, tods the end. I think we had right more from carvin. So, you know, or if we had that one student, you know, I did.

They they are from all over the world, really. You just make ourself up. You guys like you just trying to sell IT.

By two thousand and three, sz s had low enrollment and terrible test scores. The state put IT on a fAiling schools list, the dread sir list schools under registration review. Being in a fAiling schools list made IT harder to sell the school to prospective families.

But IT did mean S A S got a chunk of money to turn things around. They bought new reading programs and academic intervention program. They doubled periods for reading and math.

During this time, the leadership was stable. Less teacher turn over, the school is less chaotic. The test score stabilized.

Jeff to terro says they were feeling good about where things were headed. Still, they had to compete for students. So we have harried a marketing firm to help draw families.

And I remember me, the guy a couple of times, had some good ideas. I don't really remember what came out of that I did. We hung up signs outside the door. You just like to try to have a different love. But those banners, like I think that came out of IT.

he says the marketing idea didn't attract any local families into the school. Instead, IT attracted the attention of the new york post, which found out the school was trying to market itself as IT had been told to, and reduce nari article about IT. The headline read, lousy brooklin public school wants to hire press agent to enhance appeal.

IT goes on to say, quote, if they build a buzz, the kids will come. That's the thinking at a mediocre bricklin public school with grandiose aspirations. The article ends with the list of suggested marketing slogans for the school is mean spirit and racist having trouble with english? So as we, the school for international studies, the best six years of your life, jakor pride, where you can go from state chips to state ten, the jaguars, we score baskets. We just can't count them, jeff says everyone at the school redit he distinctly remembers the feeling .

is horrible because you if you're publicly going to put us on a surliest, what do you think you're doing to that school? So now if we have to hire somebody that kind of like get us off of that, the the perception of the schools are fAiling school and then to get this newspaper article, it's just it's just deflate everything yeah you can just really sucks really there's no other way to say that you get that like pit feeling in your stomach and just like ah what's going on what's going to happen next. I think like everybody always nervous about like what happened next, you know and then afterwards you just get super furious.

Here is what happened next. Okay, you waited patiently. Six years later, i'm standing in a sweet school gym at a middle fair for parents. It's two thousand seventeen, two years after that gala throwed by the french embassy sas. A couple dozen schools are here with information tables.

The table for the school for international studies is there's a line of parents waiting to get a chance to talk with someone from the school. A mother named nyssa is near the very back. What have you heard about the international? I heard it's a hot chicken.

Everybody wanted to get in there. After forty years of being neglected, messed with by the school board, after losing students and losing money, losing the building, being blaming and publicly marked S A S were suddenly the hot ticket, as if history have been wiped away. Parents asked the sis admissions director, can their kids get priority if they have good grades, extra curricular, as does attendance count? They want to know if that helps their chances.

If they show up for a tour, I open access to school tomorrow. Three, they wants to know, will you have enough space for all these people? I don't think of of space for next year on the accepting one hundred and forty six creators.

And three years earlier, S V S. Had thirty six creators. What changed? The admission director is the same. Most of the staff is the same, the building is the same, the test course are still pretty low. There's an I B program now and french.

But the biggest change between the era of being ignored and punish ed, and the era of being celebrated and oversubscribed is that wake kids arrived. That's what's different. Nine times as many weight students I S to ninety three was a mostly segregated school for decades.

And still IT was subject to the wimps of way parents. Nice way parents shape public schools even in our absence, because public schools are manically loyalty to wait families, even when that loyalty is rarely returned back to the public cores. Just the very idea of us, the threat of our displeasure verbs.

The whole system, so separate is still not equal, because the power is with late parents. No matter where we are in the system, I think the only way you equalize schools is by recognizing this fact and trying we're ever possible to suppress the power of weight. Parents, since no one's forcing us to give up power, we White parents are gonna have to do IT voluntarily. Which yeah, how's that going to happen? That's next time on nice way, parents.

Next, my parents is produced by Julie snake and me with editing on this episode from Sarah enid and iron glass meal drumming as our managing editor e viewing and Rachel lissy or editorial consultants, fact checking and research, by then fAiling with additional research from lily solvent archival research is by rebeca cent music supervision and mixing by stone Nelson with production help from a viva decoration file.

Our director Operation is south land july widdle er is our digital manager finance management by casey holy and production management by france is swan original music for nice way? Parents is by the bad plus, with additional music written performed by Maggie. The music you're hearing right now is the Nathan hail trilogy performed by the nathless hale middle school two ninety three concert band.

I benefit from the memories and expertise of so many people for this episode. Special thanks to Charles jone liana seo, alan roda, ujo alga clear hampel, Steven snap, Michael rebel, jeff rey, Hannah, Megan panton strange, jeff re. Slater, don maconi markets, Colin mingo, neal freedman, jeff trip, carl rosnay, lAnniere, CIA, syndic's, ack, Arthur, bargain, ei harder, Lewis, Terry, heaven, Davison and off A. Nice way parents is produce by serial productions, a new ork times company.

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