Nice White Parents - Ep. 5
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for details from cereal in the new york times. This is the fifth and final episode of nice White .

parents from serial productions. I'm kana jpy wilt. This is nice weight parents, a series about the sixty year relationship between White parents and the public school down the block, a series that was meant to be told in four episodes.

And yet i'm still talking. I never expected to make a fifth episode. I'd already have gone back to the beginning of the school. And all the way this present day, sixty years and building, I felt like seen all the various ways nice White parents will participate in public education and the limits of that participation.

I understood that nighest parents might up into certain integrated schools under certain circumstances, but they, we were not going to make way for a fully integrated, equitable school system, because an equitable school system would likely mean the schools our kids go to would get less money, not more. Our kids might get less access to the most experience teachers and the best facilities. So of course, we are not going to make way for that.

And nobody was gonna force us. White parents will stand in the way of truly equal schools. The end.

That's how I planned to end this. I mean, let's keep trying, but basically the end, have a nice day. But then something big happened in the very same school system i've been looking at for years.

New york city is broken up into a bunch of school districts. The score i've been focusing on, I S two ninety three need and hill as I yes, be IT. Just what everyone to call IT that's score is in district fifteen.

And just recently, after I finish my reporting, district fifteen rolled out a diversity plan to integrate its schools. And IT was a real plan, not just for a few curious schools, but every single middle schoo in this one district that on its own, is larger than the entire school system of state. U. S.

This new diversity plan, up ended middle school admissions, replaced the old system with one that would break up racial segregation and concentrations of wealth and poverty, would commit all the schools to the kind of anti racism ministries they had in place a beer dress, and actually integrate the schools, all of them I can. I completely miss this when I happened two years ago in two thousand and eighteen, when I started to see flyers for meetings to talk about a new diversity plan, I waved IT off, such worth the depth of my own cynics. Over the years I was reporting the story, a growing number of way people in the district and across the city were starting to talk about school segregation, school inequality, forming discussion groups and book groups.

But I was sceptical any of that would turn into action. So then fires meetings, a diversity plan. I just thought more people talking about diversity. I never expected an overhaul, a large scale plan that would address the problems i'd seem persist in this district for half a century, one that seem to go through without any huge rockets, battle or protests or boycott how they pulled this off. Could this be a model for school systems across the country?

Because they ignored the district fifteen diversity plan. As IT unfolded, I was left having a backtrack to understand how this came about. I didn't even know who started IT.

Myriam non bourg. That was the name I keep tearing talk to mariam. When I did, mum started telling me how you got involved in all this, and I began to hear a very familiar story.

Myriam is White. When our kids were little, people on the playground started warning merum about middle school, telling her, you think choosing an elementary schools difficult? Just wait until you get to the middle school.

And IT was funny how I IT was like, became a thing. IT was people were so anxious about IT that that I was like, all you had to do was say, say, i'm looking for school for my kid. And I was like, oh my god, just wait.

There are only three good middle ols. That's what everyone would say, what weight people would say that two million was talking to. People called them the big three. This is fifteen, actually had fifteen middle schools, but White parents, if there .

aren't enough middle schools, because that's what everybody said, was there only three good meal schools? And so I thought, oh, well, we need another medical school. Let's start one. Because at that point he was.

did you create an I did.

yeah.

Before her older child even entered kindergarten, marine began making plans for a new middle school, exactly what judy arenson had done twenty years earlier when he dreamed up the school for global studies in two thousand and seven. Marie would be at the park in the coffee shop.

I just would start talking to people like, hey, let's school. You want out me people .

throughout ideas. What about an urban gardening school project base camping the outdoors? We could call IT the school of natural literacy.

And I was like, oh my god, that's perfect.

Let's do IT. They put together planning committee just as judy irons, and had developed division for the school.

We were really committed to IT being as diverse possible.

And was the planning community diverse?

Not very a little bit, definitely predominantly for sure.

They wrote up a proposal, decided to make IT a charter school that have more control. They ask the city for approval.

IT happened with IT. IT happened once we have put in the application. That happened the first time around what you are just astonished by.

Not me, not astonished. The city opened the new school because a group of weight parents wanted IT not astonished by any of this. But then merum went through a change that none of the way parents before her ever did best.

As I can tell, what happened was mirrors view of the entire school system started to change first. SHE started attending middle school fares in information sessions in district fifteen. SHE is trying to drumm up parent interest in her new school.

Mirum is a lawyer by profession, not just a layer. SHE was a lawyer for the U. S. Department of education in the office for civil rights SHE says everything SHE saw at these middle school events have the school selected students sounded her civil rates alarm bells like there was .

principle of one of the middle ols one of the selected ones who said, wheel screen for nice. We look for nice kids you know i'm like, oh my god, this is this is so discriminatory, how do you to find nice? How could you possibly not have some sort of cultural bias in your brain when you are deciding that one kid is nice and another kid isn't? Um there was another time when um for one of the schools had interviewed the um parent corners or was asked, well, what are you looking for in these interviews and he said, I can't tell you, but we know that when we .

see IT we know that when we see IT these were public schools. Maryam could not believe this is how IT worked. Every school had its own complex and ever changing, catering for admission somewhat to attendance, some required auditions, interviews, portfolios.

For ten years old, IT seemed outrageous and SHE thought likely violated student civil rights. Then in two thousand and fourteen million, sun didn't get into the big three. He also didn't want a spot in the school his mom created, but he don't want to go there anyway.

Mariam son wanted to go where all his friends were going. When he didn't get in, he was devastated. Maria was devastated to marine, began connecting with the many other way parents who found themselves in the same situation left out of the big three.

One of them was a mea cost. Again, her twin sons were rejected from the big the same year as mariam, and a million told me. As soon as that happened, we all went online.

Does anyone else not choice? Or is anybody else going to at school or at school? Or is there any way to appeal? I mean, people were slowly coming out, and we sort of all connected a group of us.

a group of mostly White parents who had knocked on their choice of mostly weight schools, meeting in private google groups and lives. I do believe google groups are the most underappreciated tool for maintaining school segregation. Anyway, Miriam in a millia found each other and some other parents and began doing all the things White advantage parents do, making phone calls to principles, sharing tips on how to appeal, who to talk to. And somewhere in that process, both of them began having doubts. Marum told me IT seems like her efforts to circumvent her school assignment, we're probably gna work like maybe he could get her son into the most thought after school that made her question herself in the power SHE had.

I was told that, you know, different people could pull strings for me.

and he was back to .

you people who were high level at at at my kids school and and other high level people in our district um had said to me like I could probably get you and if you know it's like what how's that okay again.

he thought this is how IT works. A mila had a similar experience the summer before six grade, her twins got off the waiting list for one of the big three just by luck. Initially a million was thrilled.

SHE says her. First I was, we won. And then SHE stopped herself.

And I started to think about why I had been so like, self absorbed about my own family. And and I just think about the bigger picture. Like what does that mean for all the kids of color?

We what made you do that seems like a really big leap. How did you make that transition?

It's almost, you know, you just kind of lose your path in life. And I think I just lost what was important to me. And then, you know, once I won, I started to realize this is really fucked up.

You know, like, this is what I got. I mean, IT is a wonderful school that I was glad that my children were able to have that. But then I was like.

what does that mean? I mean, you got to stuck on that word, winning. SHE won. disturb. Or if her kids want someone else.

children lost. You know, like, I, I, I won .

for merum. IT was another word in two thousand and fourteen, the year her son and a million son started medical school. A report came out from the uc, a civil rates project, and I made huge news.

IT looked at segregation in american schools. Sixty years after browse support of education, I found public school students are increasingly isolated by race and class. This trend was particularly pronounced in liberal states, the very worst being new york.

New york state, the report declared, had the most segregated school system in the country. segregation. That's what merum was a part of.

IT was like, oh my god, this is exactly the issue that was really like a light bub and off like, well, why is new york city so segregated? And well, look at our district. This is system wide.

Why do you think IT took you .

until think about you? I don't know, I it's just like when you literally day one of fifth grade on the playground, people are just going crazy like how have you started touring schools? Know where are you're gonna rank or you're gonna look at anything other than the big three schools and and all of this bus, right? And then inevitably IT comes up that, well, let's school, you know, I went and looked at bricklin collaborative and then somebody would say, but there are any weekends there.

People talked blatantly and explicit racial terms about schools. But to mariam, this hadn't felt like segregation until IT was attached to the word segregation. In my experience, part of being a White parent is rarely being asked to account for what we have or how we got IT rarely being treated as a demographic.

So no one questions our investment in our children's education. No one blames our culture who we are as people, for educational shortcomings. No one wants to research papers that call us a quote, hard to reach population or lacking in college bound mindset, why parents get to be individuals making rational, thoughtful choices. We aren't forced to consider all the ways we act as a group. So for a long time, mariam didn't, even though Miriam is a civil rights layer, even though he created a school and knew the way medical school admissions work Better than most people do, even though he was part of the public school system, SHE couldn't see what was right in front of her until the word segregation was lifted out of thousand, nine, fifty years, alama and stamped under her life. And then he could.

A million million joined forces with a few other advantage, moms from majority weight schools to create an organization called the district fifteen parents for a middle school equity P M C, P M S. IT was unintentional, but they embraced, said pm has demanded the district deal with two problems, the stress of middle school admissions and the segregation IT created.

P M S wanted a new admissions process in two thousand and fourteen, two thousand and fifteen, P. M S. Wielded their power. They took their complaints directly to the most powerful people in the school system.

They got meetings with the district fifteen superintendent, the city council person and the deputy schools chancellor for all of new york city. And then quite unexpectedly, to me at least, they were shut down. The P.

M. S. Moms were told most people like the system as IT is they like having school choice? So the woman presented results from a survey the'd sent around, showing parents did oppose the current system.

The district superintendent looked at them and said, how do we know these are not all parents from the same neighborhood? There no zip codes or addresses. So a mila, the mom who felt weird about winning a spot for her twin boys, said, we did the survey again.

We had two social scientists review what to make sure like, okay, we're going to do this right, so that we know can be told that we didn't do right. And so we got over fourteen and fifty signatures, and we make sure that we got, you know, every part of the district.

They presented IT again to department of the officials.

You know, we got very look warm response in some I roles. They asked if we had doted in spanish, which we had, and they asked if we had dotted in Mandarin, which we had not. And then they kind of pulled IT, and we thought, they thought that was the end of IT.

But IT wasn't at this point. Your kid is in one of the winning schools, right? Like what do you care at this point? Yeah, I know.

I realize that I felt a responsibility because at this point I didn't have Younger kids coming up. I mean, I was done with the whole middle school thing. So I was just like where how people doing.

uh.

why are you doing anything?

Why do you think they weren't doing anything?

I think it's because you know I think of bureaucracy, you just get comfortable. Um you know IT was going to be a big headache to make a change. I think fear, I think people were close to retirement ages um and I do believe you know I was obviously set up to to keep White families and broker and .

need this cap. You're the superintendent. Why weren't .

you doing anything? But we were doing things.

district fifteen superintendent and media scope told me they were not ignoring this problem, SHE says. From the moment he started the job eleven years ago, SHE understood that the way they started kids into middle school was, quote, morally wrong. SHE told me SHE was making changes. For instance, he told her principles that they needed to stop considering letters of recommendation, the kind parents with illicit from scout leaders and pastors on behalf of their ten year old president, Scott, their principles, you can't look at those when choosing who to admit.

That doesn't mean parents didn't send them anyway. But IT, we chipped away at that. We did away with the tour preference.

We said, meaning if you go on a tour, you get preference for admission and you said .

you can do anymore.

Why didn't you just get rid of the process?

First of all, it's not my decision to get rid of the process. This has to be approved by the chancellor, and we ask to get .

rid of the process.

We went through two chancellors in this, and we have a lot of parents who violently did not want to get rid of the process.

I have been reading the words of near city schools, chancellor and port of education officials in speeches and quotes and reports, going all the way back to the one thousand fifties. But this was the first time i'd actually SAT with one. And finally got to ask, why not act on segregation? I need a scope.

Opposes segregation. Board officials half a century ago opposed segregation, and yet segregation persists. But a new cop did say something I hadn't heard from a new york city education official before. He said he recognized these women.

IT is a piece of privilege to think that because you have a plan and you have an idea that that's what should be implemented immediately, if not sooner, and saying what we think this is a good idea and therefore do IT. And that was kind of my response to that.

SHE wasn't gonna jump because they said so. SHE wasn't sure there was widespread support for a major overhaul of the middle ols.

When you come to a district that has thirty one thousand kids and you say you've you've surveyed four hundred and seventy five people or something like that yeah I don't think it's a really great survey and I also didn't know how the survey was done. And so IT isn't that I put puit. I just did not see IT as credible, as valid and reliable. It's the same thing when you deal with gift and talented. It's the same thing that when you deal with specialized high schools, they are parents who adamites for this and their parents who are adamantly against IT.

And but you were against IT. You thought I was morally wrong.

I thought I was morally wrong, and I still do. And IT wasn't about me making a decision and putting IT on people. I wasn't about a small group making a decision putting around people. IT was about canvas as many people as humanly possible with in our district to hear what the district wanted. That's what I see my role as.

I think this is where i'm getting up. You thought I was morally wrong and a year in charge of a district. I mean, if kids start bringing some new weapon you've never heard of to school and you think it's harming kids, you've just ban the weapon. You don't canvas the community and IT .

doesn't work like that in new york city. In new york city, we are under the chancellor. The cancer would be the one banning the weapon.

And I would reach out to the safety office. This is a concern, and they would make a decision. So do.

do on this. This year.

we talked a lot with the enrollment to office about what we can do. We talked a lot about how can we change this process so that ultimately we would do something with the approval of the central office.

But in two thousand and fifteen, the central office of the department of education was not interested in putting forward desegregation plans. Word from central was any diversity plans would have to arise, quote, organically, from local communities. This was especially frustrated to the P.

M. S. Women who felt like, here we are. We're organic. They told me they saw a need, a scope, as the main obstacle, the change.

They didn't believe he was pushing this agenda with the higher, I understood, being frustrated at a passive department of education, especially given the history of the doe. But I was also curious about, I need a scp frustration with these women. P M S was a group of mostly weight White moms who were saying they wanted to undo segregation.

But did they actually care about segregation? Or were they just saying they did, because they couldn't cramb all their White kids into the same three schools anymore? I asked me number about this, and he said I came up all the time when they talk.

The question of how much do we focus on actually integrating the schools was really like a huge part of sort of our own internal debates. Who are we? What's our motivation? What are we looking for? So like, is this about segregation? Or is this about a bad process that happens to cause segregation when .

you look at them actually? Are we gonna use the segregation to kind of motivated change in something when we're actually motivated by changing the process? And secretion is just sort of a cover to get the thing that we want? A cynical, I mean, I think I come to my signals. M, from history point of that.

Yeah, well, people would would be link. So you're a bunch of White women, you know sort of arguing for school desegregation like who are you and why and so we kept sort of that was our debate all the time like should we stop until we can diversify our group?

yes. They decided, yes, they should try to diversify their group.

And IT was just a catastrophe that's .

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Something i've noticed about my parents who wanna create change in schools is often they only talk to other White parents because that's who they know, even if they live in york city, where the vast majority of public school families are not White. Wait parents talked to wait parents. IT was true in two thousand and fifteen with rob hanson and the parents at S.

I. S, who created the dull language french program. IT was true with judy aronson in one thousand hundred and ninety four when he came up with the school for global studies, all the way back to the White parents in one thousand nine hundred sixty three, who decided where I was, two ninety three was built, supposedly so IT could be integrated.

White parents talk to other White parents and come up with improvement plans for schools populated by mostly black and Brown students. But P. M, S, they actually recognize that this was a problem, and they wanted to fix IT.

They wanted to be working with parents of color. So they started showing up a majority black Martino schools with stacks of flyers at school meetings and at school drop off. This didn't go well, amalia says. They got either disinterest or vague interest from a distance.

No, just people are a lot. Yeah, I believe in everything you do. But oh, I I really believe that if I do such great work, keep added. No, I don't have time.

They send out invitations to meetings, but their communication was all by email and an english in a district where forty one percent of the people speak a language other than english. At home, a White mom named kary mclaren got connected to P. M.

S. Kerry had her own google group of White parents trying to push for equity in the schools, and SHE was running into similar problems. SHE had reached out to parents of color red to school.

SHE held meetings in black and Brown neighborhood ds in the district. But mostly her meetings were not well attended, except one time, one meeting, kerry says they got strong turnout. People of all different backgrounds showed up and SAT in a room together.

Not like, oh, guys, you know, we, we, the three of us, the three White women who planned this has literally no idea what we're doing. We thought to have translator flyers, but we didn't have actual translators at the meeting. We didn't have a plan for making sure that IT wasn't just people sitting next to each other grouping together so that, you know, we didn't have a plan relay for having facilities conversations. And we really had no, we didn't know how to move forward without being a group of White people, which is not what we wanted to do.

IT was easy to understand why black, latino parents would be luke warm to Carry in pms or put off by their clumsy efforts. But there is another reason for a lot of appearance of colour. Diversity was not their issue.

One la, tina mom, lower espanola told me for her, the most important problem was overcrowding in her neighbor od element mentally, schools packed classrooms and school buildings. That is what mattered to her. He showed up at a meeting about creating more equity in distract fifteen schools, but he says the room was full of way.

People, professionals, and they spent the whole time talking about diversity. They just are saying all they wanted to give opportunity their kids, more equity, more debate city um so I don't understand that. That was a little confusing for me.

Lara was confused because he was hearing White parents say they wanted their kids and schools that were diverse but the schools in her neighbor od had almost no weight students. The vast majority were latino and asian. And every morning sh'd watch latino kids leave her nights or hood to go to the weight schools on the other side of the district.

But lower never saw White kids come to her neighborhood. So that's why look at a little I don't I didn't understand that because some of the mistake that they speaking, but they are not doing, I see. So you you're hearing what parents say we care about diversity, but then they don't actually seem to be doing the thing that they say they care about. Yes, just saying, but is like acting. And I I was sitting there and I said what i'm doing.

One of the main organizers for P. M, S, alongside a million in merum, was a woman named ray hund, marion mayhan said. After months of lobbing ing parents of color about diversity and changing the middle schools, the P.

M. S. Leaders were starting to question that they knew what most parents wanted.

We thought we know we, we had no idea. And even at that point, we had no idea.

Do you actually think that the district superintendent was right? That you didn't know what you were talking about?

Yeah, SHE was right. That we didn't know what we were talking about, but he was wrong, that he knew anything. We didn't know anything and he didn't know anything. So half of what he told us was right on the money.

P. M. Has determined, actually, IT was not their job to speak for everyone, to know what everyone wanted. But I was somebody's job. IT was the job of the school district.

Where were they in these neighbourhoods? My word, day out, serving everyone were listening to the priorities of all families. Here's morum.

We started to feel like, well, we were a small group. So what gives us the right to say, you know, this is what you should do. So I think we finally came to the decision that, like, if we weren't speaking for the whole district and we couldn't, then we didn't have. We can see ourselves as kind of having the authority to ask for a specific solution um any more than you know the what was currently in place. So we really felt like, well, you have to ask the community.

you, the school district, have to do your job. Mariam and the other P, M, S. Leaders finally realized they didn't have the moral authority or the actual authority to represent everyone in the strip fifteen.

That authority rests with one institution, only the department of education. So, P, M, I, stop trying to draw parents of color into their meetings with their agendas. And they didn't forge ahead with misplace confidence, nor did they disengage.

They pivoted. They focus all of their attention on shaming the department of education. P, M, S, stopped acting like pissed off customers and started acting like outraged citizens.

They settled on a multipronged political strategy. They pulled in supporters wherever they could. They connected to other groups that we're pushing for, integration cty wide, redefine themselves as part of a larger movement.

They weapon zed, a little known voting body in the district, called the community education council that had the power to approve zoning changes. They stack IT without eyes. They thought about going the legal out.

Remember myriam, a lawyer? But that would take too long. Instead, they went to the media again and again, and they stayed on message, hey, D A V, this is a problem and it's your job to fix IT. The very same thing I judged had to the very same school system in one thousand fifty eight, when main malloy saw the conditions in her kids school in harlem ensued.

By now he was two thousand and seventeen, and suddenly mayor bild, a blazer, found himself under tremendous pressure from advocates across the city, from the U. C, L, A report calling the school segregated, from journalists asking about IT, from well organized students of color, all pushing the mayor to do something about segregation. The blazer was still saying that top down desegregation Mandates were not feasible because of White resistance.

At one point, he referenced angry wit mars, protesting busing in his hometown of boston in the eighteen seventies. I'm telling you, he said, history is on my side here. You do not want to create a series of conflicts.

But now here was his opportunity. District fifteen write there in brooklyn, where a bunch of weight parents were saying they wanted this superintendent in need. This gap got word from central.

The city was ready to create a new middle school admission system in distract fifteen I need to stop conceded in our interview. This never would have happened without White advantage parents lobbying for IT, which is not how IT should be. But I appreciate herhor esty.

So there was political will. finally. Now, what if district fifteen was gone to scrap its current system? What was going to a replace IT? What did people want? Tracy pink card remembers hearing that the di, we wanted to address the urgent problem of segregation.

Fifteen, one years old. And i'm like, you kidding me, like this is nothing new. Tracy group up in the guanas houses.

She's black, and I was two ninety three graduate. So people are now decided that they need to do something about this right now. IT wasn't hard to figure out that this all started with weight parents.

Tracy was skeptical about that. But more importantly, SHE didn't trust the D O E. Remember, this is the school district that undermined and neglected I S two ninety three three years at the same time as a built a special gifted program for weight kids. The same district that had allowed White parents to dominate schoolboy meetings and public meetings and policy decisions. This stuff had gone on for as long as Tracy could remember, because many of the players that have in place have been in place for a long tight.

So I just begin to kind of question, you know, like what's what's happening now? Are we going to actually publicly acknowledge the fact that this has been an issue for how many years and how many how many families have suffered from this, a type of lack of diversity or or resources in schools? No, the department of education was not going to be acknowledging the harm that had been done for generations.

IT was simply saying, we want to involve, we want to hear your voices without having demonstrated a history of ever listening to those voices. The D O, I had no credibility, and IT seemed to know this. The dev had outsource the whole district fifteen community engagement process to a consulting firm, an urban planning firm called W X Y, which told me, when I went to do outreach, IT went out of its way to emphasize that IT was not the daily.

The firm would be doing things differently than the department of education. W X, Y put together a working group from across the district. P, M, S had one seat on the working group.

The D. I got two seats, and the other thirteen seats went to teachers, principles, community advocates, parents and students, almost all people of color. Then there was a problem of how to make sure advantage. White parents still didn't dominate the conversation. They had a solution for this, which basically boiled down to don't let them speak.

The working group decided, instead of public meetings where you put a mike in the aisle and people come up in yellow or get boot or cheered by a crowd, they'd run workshops, control the conversation. Parents came to these workshops that at small tables and share their experiences and district schools, they talked about sending their kids to school sick so they wouldn't get a mark against their attendants that might hurt their chances at a good middle school. They talked about preparing for additions, emAiling principles, calling in favors, private sessions with guidance councillors, tours in middle of a work day, while other parents said they had no idea people were doing any of these things.

I was an at these workshops, Christina vega, an excEllent reporter who rides for an education news site called chock beat, went to many of them, and SHE told me they were unlike anything he'd seen in city government before. These were actual conversations. I went table a way dads said, but isn't a good that the system rewards working hard and merit a leti? A mom responded, but does a reward? Merit doesn't IT just reward access to resources.

If you were addition for the performing art school and your kid has been getting dance programing since he was three, my kid never had that at her elementary school. Christina, the reporter says the workshops were thought ful was the first time you heard the word integration spoken and spanish at a public meeting. Everyone wars, simultaneous translation, earpieces and IT really didn't feel like english was the defauts language.

People learned things. Everyone got a chance to speak. They eat sandwich SHE beat like, wow, democracy.

Why parents did not entirely dominate or derived these conversations. There was no angry opposition, no protesting. And that was thanks to careful planning and facilitating ation. Maybe, or I heard another theory from a few people about whether wasn't more resistance from White parents of these workshops rate in the middle of the public meetings for district fifteen, a video of an angry White mom at a school meeting in manhattan went viral. The video is of a parent at one of the city's waiter schools on the upper right side.

And she's angry about a proposal that would have made more space for black and latino kids at some of the most sought after middle ols in her neighbor, od SHE was captured on local TV, new york, one standing up and shouting at a city official. You're punishing eleven year old for working hard. You're telling them you're going to go to school.

It's not onna education in the same way you've been educated. Life sucks. Is that what the do we wants to say? Antonia ferro, a White member of the parent council in district fifteen, says he watched the video. Everyone you knew watch that.

When I came out, I said to my council, I said we're not to have any problem because nobody wants to be the White lady on twitter.

Do you think that actually did? Yeah, like keep that a bit. absolutely. Maybe that was IT liberal White fear being seen as racist kept people in check.

I made this theory to a black member of the district fifteen working group in parent council, a dad named ed neils affright. A well, I don't. They can check people enough, you know um you don't know.

I mean, you still had parents that were, we know my kids going to suffer in a classroom, know behavior issues are going to occur and you know the school academic standards is going to go down. And to me, you know, I look at that as cold work, you know, cold language, you know, people were basically scared that know the White kids were going to be in classroom with other black kid. Maybe more than one black IT can to be like a black kid that the post of one black k, one black ID in the class of twenty twenty five White student is palatable.

But you get eight way. Wait a second. So yeah, neal said some of the way people are still fully themselves. It's just that they weren't the only ones talking or being listened to.

June two thousand and eighteen, after ten months of meetings, the district working group came up with the plan to desegregate medal schools. Or rather, should I say, four years after mariam and P. M, S first asked for a district ed plan to address segregation.

Fifty four years after thousands of black and porter ican parents demanded a city White plan to address segregation, and sixty four years after Brown versa support of education ruled that school segregation across the entire country was unconstitional tional. There was a plan in one new york city school district for eleven metal schools. The distract fifteen integration plan scrapped the current system.

No more screening kids for test scores or attendance or for being nice. Middle school admission would proceed by lottery. Every current would still get to rank their top choices, but every school would be required to offer fifty two percent of its seats to kids who are a poor, speak english as a second language or live in temporary housing.

As part of the new plan, district would expand anti racism and anti bias training for administrators, staff, parents and students, create equity teams and schools, create more culturally responsive curriculum, and hire more teachers of color, all things that parents of color had pushed for IT during the workshop process. As soon as the new plan was approved, there was push back. Parents who hadn't been paying attention before began paying attention, and some of them were mad.

They demanded a slower timetable for rolling this out. So this all happened too fast. They hadn't been consulted, and they needed more time to understand this new system.

IT was a lattery. The whole point was no gaming required. But parents found that hard to believe.

The most consistent argument people made against the new lottery system was that IT wasn't meritocratic. The old system was preferable because IT reward the kids for working hard. And isn't that what schools are supposed to do? Christina vega, the education reporter for chuck beat, told me her new sake got emails from parents, many of them anonymous, warning that the latter eries sent the wrong message to students.

One letter says, just use the example of two weight students, one of whom sacrifice to get to school on time everyday, even while sick, the other who took vacations on school time, one whose well behaved and works hard in school, the other who starts, fights and bullies other students, one who studied hours more to get good grades, and the other didn't bother. Should they really both have the same shot at a seat in school? For what it's worth, I believe the answer to this question is yes. I do believe that a nine year old to mess around in third grade is still entitled to the same opportunity in a public school as a nine year old who stayed in her seat. I think this is what IT means when we say each child is entitled to an equal public education.

For september two thousand and nineteen, twenty two hundred children began six grade and district fifteen middle schools. Why families did not leave the school system, there is no mass exodus. The target for the new admissions plan in distract fifteen was for every middle school to serve a mix of vulnerable and advantage students.

Within five years, there are eleven medal schools that first year, eight of them hit the city's target. The new system will be in place this fall. But as for what IT will actually look like, who knows? Who knows anything? Well, well, of parents stick with the city's public schools through a global pandemic, a budget crisis, through half school, remote school, or whatever is actually gonna en, I don't know.

But sometimes there will be real school again. And when there is, this will be the system for middle school admissions in the district. It's not a fat it's not easy to undo.

It's entrant policy, a system that is more fair and more equal. Something actually changed here. Instead of trying to solve their individual problems, the women from P.

M, S. Focus all of their attention on the system that created those problems and on solutions that would benefit all kids. These women surprised me.

Miriam m surprised me by the time I got to the end of my interview with her, I was listing other places where attempts that desegregation had failed, scoring through my pessimism. But here is medium sitting. I crossed for me, and her efforts hadn't failed, at least not yet. Let's go back to you though, because you, I have feel like you are meeting my deep sensors. And with a lot of optimistic, this is what I do with .

my free time. I floated the notion with .

mariam that maybe you'd created a model other weight parents could follow in other districts, other cities, but merum bubble can do. Mariam number was suddenly on, well, this was a unique set of circumstances, and I don't know if it's that easy to replicate, SHE said. That really helped that in this case, the system was clearly no longer working for advantage parents either. So had IT not becomes so competitive to get into the big three, do you think there would be an integration process?

I don't know. I don't I mean, I don't think just in sort of telling my own story for how I came to IT, I don't think I would have seen an opening because there isn't that also that that problem that everybody faces.

poor families, families of colour, were shut out of the top schools in district fifteen for decades. But this was not a problem for advantage parents. Mi missing is only one.

White and privileged families began to be shut out, too, that they became open to change. Illegal scholar in civil rights advocate named Derek bell came up with this term interest convergence. He believed that the only times we ever see an expansion of rights for black americans is when White americans benefit.

When interest converge, White americans don't see something in IT for themselves. Nothing changes. I'd wanted so badly to find something instructive in this one example, where things actually changed something, but miron kep saying this just might not work in other situations. So there's like no larger take away about the possibility of integration. I mean.

i'd like to think there is I would love IT if we started this title wave um and I think that we've made IT acceptable. We've brought IT you know this into the consciousness of this district for sure. But like will IT necessarily, will people who ve bought into school zones, are they gonna give that up willingly?

I don't know. I'd like to think that. People are. When you present the story to them in a powerful enough way that they're going to be responsive. But I do think you have to they have if they're giving something up, they have to benefit from something.

I like to think that if you present the story to them in a has an effect as well.

Yeah, yeah.

I think I was wanting something from medium that depending on who you are, you may be wanting for me right now. How to guide. But what mi missing is the only reason why parents supported the change in destruction team is because things are gotten so intense and so competitive that even the most advantaged people were losing.

How do you replicate that? Why children are the minority in district fifteen and in new york city public schools and in american public schools? What about the interests of all the other parents who are not White are not advantaged? What about parents like lower as banana who did not especially care about diversity, but care deeply about smaller class sizes? How does that happen?

What about parent whose primary concern is Better reading instruction or Better special services or sports program, or functioning air conditioning in their kids classrooms? How can we have equitable schools if our public institutions will only respond to this demand if they happen to a line with the interest of weight parents? When Derek bell coined the term interest convergence, what's interesting to me is he pointed to Brown versus board of education, he argued the unanimous ruling was possible because the government says segregation as harming america's interest abroad.

The country was trying to find communism and sell democracy, liberty and justice for all. But the whole segregation thing was making us look bad in some ways. I think this is what happened with Miriam.

Miron began with a material interest in getting your kid into a good school, but then he developed a new self interest. SHE didn't want to be complicated in segregation. SHE felt compromised by a system that made her into someone SHE did not want to be.

I recognized that feeling. It's shame. I think we should listen to that shame, because what is telling us is that we can't have IT both ways.

Basely parents can't grab every advantage for our own children and also maintain our identities as good citizens who believe in equitable schools. The shame is telling us we have a choice. We can choose to hoard resources and segregate ourselves and flee the moment things feel uncomfortable.

Or we can choose to be the people we say we are, but we can have both. We can choose to remember, the goal of public schools is not to cater only to us, to keep us happy, but to serve every child. We've never had that school system, but we could we could demand IT. We might not, but we should know it's within our power. I help create IT.

Nice White parents is produced by Julie snider and me with editing on this episode from Sarah ic and ira glass wheel drummers are managing editor evie's ing and Rachel lissy or editorial consultants fact checking and research by ben fAiling music supervision and mixing by stone Nelson with production help from a vivid to corn field and music clearance from Anthony roman.

Our director evaporations is southwind july whittaker is our digital manager, finance management by Cathy holy and production management by Francis. Original music for ny wife parents is by the bad plus, but additional music written performed by map maginness special thanks to all the fantastic education reporters at chok beat also thanks to kati fix alexie website matif x bradlee der Michael j. Studien nava atala krystina burtt rick column g.

David kirk lin Benjamin justice muhamad about chicky to make a nurse, Carter, Andrea, kim, janda, micky, I A. Richards, shawana, hanford, d. Mk, zala, haier, salomon, ca, David rough, rebeca, attalia cola and linking writer and a huge thank you to my incredibly talented and generous colleagues at this american life.

Niece parents is produced by serial productions, a new york times company.

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