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I started reporting this story at the very same moment as I was trying to figure out my own relationship to the subject of this story. White Parents in New York City Public Schools. I was about to be one of them. When my kid was old enough, I started learning about my options.
I had many. There was a zoned public school in Brooklyn, or I could apply to a handful of specialty programs, a gifted program or a magnet school or a language program. So I started to look around. This was five years ago now, but I vividly remember these tours.
I'd show up in the lobby of a school at the time listed on the website, look around, and notice that all or almost all of the other parents who'd shown up for the 11 a.m. middle of the workday early in the shopping season school tour were other white parents. As a group, we'd walk the halls, following a school administrator, almost always a man or woman of color, through a school full of black and brown kids. We'd peer into classroom windows, watch the kids sit in a circle on the rug, ask questions about the lunch menu, homework policy, discipline.
Some of us would take notes. And the administrators would sell. The whole thing was essentially a pitch. We offer STEM, we have a partnership with Lincoln Center, we have a dance studio.
They were pleading with us to please take part in this public school. I don't think I've ever felt my own consumer power more viscerally than I did shopping for a public school as a white parent. We were entering schools that people like us had ignored for decades. They were not our places, but we were being invited to make them ours.
The whole thing was made so much more awkward by the fact that nobody on those tours ever acknowledged the obvious racial difference, that roughly 100% of the parents in this group did not match, say, 90% of the kids in this building. I remember one time being guided into a classroom and being told that this was a class for gifted kids and noticing, oh, here's where all the white kids are. Everyone on our tour saw this, all of us parents, but nobody said anything, including me. We walked out into the hallway, a mom raised her hand and said, I do have one question I've been meaning to ask, and the group got quiet.
I was thinking, okay, here comes. But then she said, do the kids here play outside every day? I knew the schools were segregated. I shouldn't have been surprised.
By the time I was touring schools as a parent, I'd spent a fair amount of time in schools as a reporter. I'd done stories on the stark inequality in public education, and I'd looked at some of the many programs and reforms we've tried to fix our schools. So many ideas. We've tried standardized tests and charter schools.
We've tried smaller classes, longer school days, stricter discipline, looser discipline, tracking, differentiation. We've decided the problem is teachers. The problem is parents. What is true about almost all of these reforms is that when we look for what's broken for how our schools are failing, we focus on who they're failing, poor kids, black kids and brown kids.
We ask, why aren't they performing better? Why aren't they achieving more? Those are not the right questions. There's a powerful force that is shaping our public schools, arguably the most powerful force.
It's there even when we pretend not to notice it, like on that school tour. If you want to understand why our schools aren't better, that's where you have to look. You have to look at white parents. From Serial Productions, I'm Kana Joffiwalt.
This is Nice White Parents, a series about the 60-year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block. I'm going to take you inside a public school building, an utterly ordinary, squat, three-story New York City Public School building, not far from where I live. This isn't one of the schools I toured, and my own kids don't go here. They're too little.
This is a middle and high school called the School for International Studies, SIS. The story I want to tell you spans decades in this one school building that I'm going to begin when I first encountered SIS in the spring of 2015, right before everything changed. In 2015, the students at SIS were black, Latino, and Middle Eastern kids, mostly from working class and poor families. That year, like the year before, and the year before that, the school was shrinking.
The principal, Jillian Juman, was worried. Yeah, so, in the last two years, we had 30 students in our sixth grade class, and so we really have room for 100. So numbers, I think, are hard. Ms.
Juman started to reach out to families from the neighborhood, inviting them to please come take a look. Parents started showing up for tours of SIS, mostly groups of white parents. Ms. Juman was thrilled and relieved.
She watched parents through the building, saying, stop me anytime. If anyone has any questions, really anything, I want you to feel comfortable. Ms. Juman says they did have questions, mostly about the poor test scores.
That was fair. Ms. Juman expected those questions. She did not expect the other set of questions.
She got a lot from parents. Is there weapons? Are you scanning? Are you scanning school because kids are dangerous and they're weapons?
I've heard that there's a man like metal detector. Right. I heard there's fights and those kinds of things. I don't know what school you're talking about.
I have never heard of that incident ever happening ever. So the fears of what this building is and what this building has represented has kind of transcended itself. There's a different story of international studies outside this building. How much of that do you think is racism?
I think our entire society is fearful of the unknown. Excellent principal answer. Principal Juman is black, by the way. She needed these parents.
Schools get money per student. A shrinking school means a shrinking budget. Ms. Juman was worried if this continued.
The middle school could be in danger of being shut down by the city. SIS is in Kabul Hill, Brooklyn. Weafy streets, brownstones. It's a wealthy white neighborhood that's gotten wealthier and whiter in the last decade.
But white families were not sending their kids to SIS. Ms. Juman told these parents, Choose SIS. We're turning things around.
We're in the process of bringing a new prestigious international baccalaureate curriculum. Renovating the library. Here's the new gorgeous yard. It's an excellent school.
The parents seemed interested. But I believe that might have had just as much to do with what was happening outside of the school as what they were seeing inside the building. Sure, so my name is Rob Hanson and I'm a parent. So we were the middle school process is interesting.
Rob lives nearby SIS, but he had never heard of the school. In his district, Rob could choose from 11 middle schools. The majority of white families sent their kids to the same three schools. Rob's white.
Those were the schools he turned of. And those were the schools he toured. But they were packed. There were too many wealthy white families in the district to continue cramming into just three schools.
There's a couple of city wide ones where we went and we stood online for like an hour and a half and then joined in and auditoriumed for the parents and then had them announced that they were accepting 15 students in the coming class. And they'd been running tours all day. Most cities have some amount of school choice like this tours and options. New York City, though, is an amped up version of what happens elsewhere.
The level of competition, the level of wealth, the diversity of people sorting into different schools. Everything is more intense. Rob found this process frustrating. Although Rob is very even tempered, even when he's frustrated, he's Canadian.
When he gets especially hot, he starts calling things interesting. And this whole middle school thing was very interesting. He asked other parents on school tours. What are we going to do?
Someone said, have you guys heard of SIS that building down the block? Rob hadn't. The other hadn't. They decided to all go check it out together.
I walked away and lots of parents walked away from those tours thinking, wow, you know, people jamming up into some schools and you're leaving 60 or 70 seats empty, empty all year long. You have 30 kids. You spread them out around and that's a big school. Then all of a sudden you're sort of like, wait a second.
There's nobody here. As Rob toured SIS, he had an idea. That night he emailed Principal Juman. And he asked, would she be open to starting a dual language French program at SIS?
They had one at the elementary school. Rob's kids went to and everyone loved it. Sure, Principal Juman was open. So Rob started spreading the word.
SIS is starting a dual language French program. We should all go. Rob says there was interest, but a lot of people he talked to had this question. Wait, are other people going?
And then families have that kind of fear. Like, what if I look around? Nobody else came with me? And I came for something that's not here because nobody...
So it's a collective action problem. Why do you need a collective? Just on the... I think overall there's a collective action issue.
But if you're interested in this in part because of the French dual language part of it, if you're the only one to show up, there's no French teacher for one student. But there's a program if 15 come, if 20 come. But we all have to then take one step forward to exactly the same time. The vision requires people to come.
And what if nobody comes? When it came time to choose middle schools, parents were supposed to rank their top choices. Right before they did, before everyone chose their schools, Rob sent a survey out to the families he'd been talking to to try to ensure that a group of them would choose SIS together. It was a simple survey monkey.
If enough people said yes, they'd rank SIS as one of their top picks, and they would be able to act as a collective. People said yes, the numbers were stunning. In 2014 there'd been 36 graders at SIS. In 2015 there would be 103.
That 200% increase was almost entirely weight-kits. Did you think about yourself as integrators? Or did you think about... No, my apologies because I was trying to think of that had gone through my mind and no.
No, the not integrators. Participants in school that was going to hopefully be diverse. But yeah, that's not a framing or a way of thinking about it. That would have occurred to me at the time.
Nobody I talked to from SIS characterized what was happening there as integration. But here's why integration was on my mind. The New York City Department of Education was aware their schools were segregated. It was also aware that desegregation is the most effective way to close the gap in achievement between black and white students.
But it did not want to mandate racial integration through zoning or school placements. The city was trying to make integration happen through choice, hoping to lure white families into segregated schools. The school tours I went on for my own kids, the sparkly programs and amenities, that was the new approach to integration. But can this work for white parents to opt into integration?
Not because we have to or because it's the right thing to do. But because it's a selling point, because we get a dance studio and STEM and a school that was hopefully diverse. Integration without talking about race. The kids at SIS though, they did talk about race immediately.
The first few weeks of school, a senior named Kristin leans over to her classmate Chris and mumbles, they're a lot of white kids in the school. And Chris says, oh yeah, a teacher warned me about that over the summer. He told me, oh there's going to be a lot of white kids coming in French white kids from upper economic statuses, so we're prepared for that. Kristin nods.
Yeah, I guess we were prepared. And then she turns to me to say, I should have been ready for that. We saw the parents on the tours last year. We would see them walk through the hall, but we never knew it was so serious that a whole group of co-caucasians would come in.
It would be so diverse. But it was such a big change. Not to be, I noticed the big change. High schoolers are more Hispanics than blacks, with a few co-caucasians, and the new groups that came in all co-caucasians, they tried to make it so diverse.
This was a word I heard over and over in the first few weeks of school. Diversity. I love diversity, so when I just see other white kids, I'm like, so? Diversity seemed to have two different definitions.
White families would talk about all the diversity at SIS, and they were talking about black and Hispanic kids. When kids of color noted the diversity, they were referring to the new white kids. For a lot of kids of color, this looked a lot like something they'd already seen happen in their neighborhoods. White families showing up in large numbers, taking over stores, familiar spots.
There's a word for that. It's gentrification. But I noticed that no one was using that word about the school. What was happening here was diversity.
That's how the adults talked about it. Diversity is a good thing, something you're supposed to be okay with. For the most part, the kids were. It was different for the parents.
Some of them saw specific advantages to the diversity, like Kenya Blunt, the co-vice president of the PTA at SIS. He was excited. Having the new parents coming in and the diversity that particularly comes from the new neighborhood, the way that things are changing in the neighborhood, is that we have a gentleman who, his profession is fundraising. Rob Hanson, the dad who started the Survey Monkey.
Rob raises money for non-profits and foundations for a living. Over the course of the year, I'll hear Rob Hanson referred to as Todd Hanson, Ted Manson, Mr. Hanson. Kenya was the only one who went with the gentleman whose profession is fundraising.
The most common was just the guy who gets the money. Rob told the PTA he was eager to raise money for the school. To Kenya, this meant more resources at his own kid's school. His boys and all the kids could benefit.
He has brought on the challenge of taking it upon himself to raise $50,000. So, $50 with three zeros after that. Yes, $50,000. Which, again, goes back to the whole diversity thing, new people who are thinking outside the box.
As our PTA, I don't think that we were thinking that big. They were definitely not thinking that big. Because the PTA was run by Ime Hernandez and her co-president Susan Mosker. Ime is not a gentleman who fundraises.
She's a social worker. The first time I met Ime, she was wearing a t-shirt that said, I'm not spoiled. My husband just loves me. She's Puerto Rican, grew up in Brooklyn.
Her husband Maurice is Puerto Rican and black and really does adore her. He grew up in Brooklyn, too. They have one daughter, one pitbull, one Persian cat, and one school. I make my business stick myself in her school.
For Ime, the new diversity, became for POTS. Like when I saw in September the population that came in, I was like, oh, that's a little frightening. And even the social... Because describe it for people who are on the radio and don't know what you saw.
I saw a lot of white people with very high socio-economic backgrounds. You know, they have money and that's great, but money tends to scare people. And I'm one of the people that scares. I'm one of the people that scares because it twists everything around.
And I don't like that. I don't like that. I'd rather have a dinner where people of different cultures bring their food and we share together. Then have somebody else cater.
Like that's how I feel you build community. I'm a social worker, that's my background. And that's what I believe in. Ime was in her second year at the school.
The year before she put on community events, teacher appreciation, a spring carnival with face meeting and hot dogs. They raised some money here and there, but Ime's vision for the PTA wasn't really about fundraising. The new parents, though, they wanted to be active in their new school and they were accustomed to supporting their kids' schools by fundraising. The two approaches came face to face at a PTA meeting in October.
Three more minutes. And then it's up to every rep. So you all got your... you all got your...
you got your home. You got your home. So... Their bed doesn't grown up sitting on small, plastic chairs around a classroom table.
The PTA Executive Board, Principal Juman is here too. Ime's leading. And the principal jumps in. She says she wants a minute to share how much the new fundraising committee had raised so far.
Ime looks confused. Principal Juman goes on to say, the new fundraising committee has had a lot of success. But total, they have raised a corner of about $18,000. And then we just had a donation from a family a couple weeks ago, one to be anonymous, that they're going to give either $5 to $10,000 in December.
So this is big money. People seem unclear what to do with their faces. This is good news, right? But also, wait, what's the fundraising committee?
Ime turns to her husband, Maurice. A retired cop. Maurice is also the treasurer of the PTA. Because when he retired, his wife told him he couldn't just sit around at home.
Maurice drugs at Ime. Doesn't seem to know anything about this new money. Ime turns back to Principal Juman. So, can we use that money?
That was the question that the PTA can have access to this money, because I know already like... But what is the PTA? So that's all the question that is going around. So this $18,000, Rob has raised under the umbrella of PTA.
That's Principal Juman. Okay. So, I think. But who's...
Who's not at it? Where's it going? This PTA member don't know not about it. So, you know...
How can I be access for this new goal? Maurice asks, how can that money be accessed for Mr. Negron, who wants new gym uniforms? Or Mr.
Lowe to get his microscope? I mean, nods. I mean, I got more power to him, but he's not an official member. So, I think that's what makes it confusing, at least for me.
He is a PTA member because he's a parent. He's not part of the executive board, so I think that's what makes it... That's probably true. Yeah, it makes it tricky.
I mean, I mean, I'm not... I mean, I mean, I'm not... You could bring him a lot. Principal Juman nods repeats that she wishes Rob had been able to make it.
She was hoping everyone could be here and get on the same page about money. But Rob is shop running a sixth grade overnight trip. They're late getting back. One mom, a white woman, who came in with a new group of sixth graders, says, look, I know Rob.
He means well. I think Rob is a professional fan. Yes, he's right. He's okay as his initiative.
He's run fundraising, and I think that's great, but I don't... He should communicate with him. My impression is I don't think he's meaning to offend anyone. No, no, no.
I think he's sort of so laser-wise. That he's not thinking about like, what are you... And he's an amazing. He really has.
That's Principal Juman. At this point, everyone seems to feel a little weird about how long they've been talking about a fellow parent who is not present. And anyway, it's money for the school. We're all for that.
We just need better communication. I mean, he says, yeah, it's just usually money raised by parents goes through the PTA, so we can all talk about where to spend it. Okay, you have to decide who has the same because if it's a collective PTA, there it is. Then it would be a new idea about your apartment.
Rob wasn't the room. He just got back on the sixth grade trip. He sits down, and they all start to talk. We need to start out some questions about money.
Then a mom from the fundraising committee says, she's worried about me recording and asks me to stop, so I do. What's going on? Name your question, but we don't know. They let me stay, though.
I take notes. Rob apologizes and then explains. A group of them have been meeting to raise money for the school. The new dual-language French program is expensive, and they promise the principal they'd help raise money to cover it.
They were just eager to help, Rob says, so they formed a committee. He's really sorry. He should have communicated and coordinated better with the PTA. But good news is, it's going great.
Someone has a contact with a French embassy, a guy at the Cultural Services Arm in New York, and he says he wants to help cover the costs of new French teachers and books. They've already kicked in around $10,000. At this point in my notes, I wrote lots of looks, big money. Rob says, the embassy suggested we do a fundraiser, an event.
They can help. Here I wrote, looks, confused, mad, nobody really talking. Amy says, this fundraiser will be at the school, though, right? And free for everyone.
Rob says, yes. Good, good. She asks one more time. Free.
I just want to make sure everyone can go. Lots of nuts. Rob says, totally. This is a community event for our community.
After about 20 minutes, Amy says, we're out of time, guys. I can't tell if this is out of a professional commitment Amy has to stick to the schedule or a personal commitment to getting out of that room. Before I came to SAS, I never thought much about the role of PTAs. Ever.
At SAS early on, I had this feeling of, oh, a PTA is actually critical to the success of an integrated school. A PTA has a very simple democratic structure. Every parent has an equal vote. Smart.
It's like a built-in system to equalize power, to help them make a budget together, make decisions, separateity, collectively or not. So we're lucky enough we have Rob here, who has really taken over fundraising, to bring it to the next level here at our school. It's another PTA meeting, and the whole collective thing is not really happening. It seems like the new parents are still raising money, separate from the PTA, and the communication problems do not seem to be resolved.
And some of the new parents have an idea. They propose a formal separation, the PTA and the people doing fundraising. Rob says this way there'd be two organizations collecting money for SIS. There would be two sorts of ways dollars are raised.
One would be a community raise, big sales, direct gifts. That would be the PTA side, the community funds. Then there would be a separate organization that would go after grants and big donors. Up until this point, there seemed to be tension bubbling under the surface between the new parents and the old parents, but it wasn't really until this moment that the unsaid started to get said, mostly by Amy's husband, Maurice.
I think a lot of us feel that there's two different groups. The fundraising group and the PTA, which is, you know, that's what it looks like. You guys have this goal of making $50,000 and it's going to the FET program. Now, what you saying about the best of the school?
Where's what's money going? We are going to. It's very easy to feel steamrolled. That's Maureen, a white mom who's new.
They're left in odds. Maurice is asking, is this new money you're talking about? Is it just for the new French dual language program, which is another way of asking, is this money just for your kids? Or is it for everybody?
Rob says emphatically, it's for everybody. Maurice says, really? That's the naive. You think, okay, they're going to donate all of my French embassy.
We're going to buy new chocolate. That's the naive. Now, you're saying $50,000 is going to be for the PTA community to decide what's going to go. I mean, I hear what you're saying, which just sounds great.
Maybe I'm still thinking about last meeting when Jillie's like, okay, well, we only going to get up to send you that. So we still don't have an answer. Later, talking to Rob, I learned that the new, separate fundraising arm he's talking about is actually a foundation. They want to create a school-based foundation at SIS, the plan is to call it the Brooklyn World Project.
I asked Rob, why do you need another way to raise money? There's a PTA, most people have heard of a school PTA. Why do you need a separate organization that's not the PTA? Yeah.
So the probably easiest way to explain it is to not think about it from the school side, but to think about it from the potential donor side. So the basic idea that we're following is that the international says, we want to do extended day and we want to do theater. And so we go and we find a donor who loves theater and loves the French language and loves the idea that kids who have never spoken French and had no exposure get the chance to go and compete actually against some of the most established schools in the city. And I don't really just love that.
I love it. I love giving that opportunity to kids. I'm going to cover all of that because I think it's that important. If that money goes to the PTA, you could have a situation where PTA says, or members of the PTA say, I don't know that we really like the theater program.
I'm not sure. I think that we should be using those dollars to do X or Y or Z. Now normally you'd be able to say, well, donor intent is what it is. You should probably use it towards what it was intended for.
Normally in another fundraising kind of. Meaning in nonprofits. So there's a basic kind of morality of a nonprofit to say, if a donor gives you to do something, you should try to do that. Donor intent is an important part of it.
It's sort of a trust that's established. Rob says, because the PTA is a democracy, it makes things complicated. The very thing I saw as a strength of a PTA, one parent, one vote, to Rob, that's a problem for fundraising. Parents come and go and change their minds about what's important.
A private donor wants stability. And Rob is trying to raise money for the kind of programming that was available at his son's wealthy elementary school. At that school, Rob was co-president of the PTA. And the previous year, his PTA pulled in close to $800,000.
$800,000. Money that paid for after-school programming and ballroom dancing, chess, art, music, a garden. $800,000 for a school that is 75% weight and serves a tiny fraction of the poor kids in the district. There aren't enough wealthy parents at SIS to raise that kind of money.
That year, Rob helped raise $800,000. The SIS PTA raised $2,000. So Rob was trying to be creative. A foundation was a way for his new school to catch up.
The school leadership, the principal was behind the idea. Ms. Duman told me she saw the foundation as a path to equity and access. More resources meant they'd be able to provide all kids with opportunities, like say, a school trip to France.
But the parent leadership, they found it annoying. I knew the new parents were trying to help the school. But she already liked the school. She felt like she was being saved against her will.
Plus, they're new, she said. Shouldn't we be the ones helping them? She was mine with them bringing in ideas, but she didn't understand why they hadn't brought them to her first. They hadn't got to consult her.
She said to me multiple times, why are they coming up with all these private plans and meeting in secret committees? You were pissed about that. Totally. Yeah.
Because I was involved. Why were you angry about that? Because here I am trying to build something with the school. Why didn't you just involve me?
Why didn't you just tell me about it? It felt like it was a secret. I don't know if it was or if it wasn't. I'm invested in the school.
And clearly I've proven to you I'm invested in the school. And you couldn't tell us that you wanted to fundraise in a different way. Rob and the new parents did tell the principal that they wanted to fundraise in a different way. But I'm even felt like, what about the rest of us?
She felt like the PTA was ignored. At that last meeting, I'm even quite quiet. She told me she just felt enraged and embarrassed for feeling so enraged. I guess I just threw a tantrum.
And I just didn't want to be a part of it. Which is not right. But I think again, in the moment, I just felt like, you know, I was hurt. The tantrum thing I saw because I did not seem like a tantrum.
That was not a tantrum. I could have been a lot worse than I was really, really trying to restrain myself. Yeah, I really was. That was really under control.
Really, really under control. It wasn't but it was really, really under control. I asked, was there another time? Tantrum?
Yeah, at home with my husband. That's when I threw my tantrum. So it was tense. I'm among the parents.
But this is a school for children. Did it matter if the adults were not getting along? Or who controlled which part of money? Yes.
Yes, it did. That's coming up after the break. This is Sarah Canig, host of the Serial Podcast. If you're already hooked on this show, then maybe I don't need to say anything else here except if you want to hear the rest of it, subscribe to The New York Times.
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You can do it through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The school year went on. Rob's fundraising committee moved forward with the French Embassy to Plan a Fundraiser. It was now being called a gala.
The PTA moved forward with parent volunteers to plan a spring carnival. It was being called the spring carnival. Quiet resentments locked in place. On the phone one night, I'm E's co-president on the PTA, Susan Mosker, told me she worried the school was changing in ways that were damaging to the community.
Susan is white herself, but she didn't come in with the new white parents. When she started, her son was one of the only white kids in the school. And now she felt like they were all being written into a narrative that wasn't true. That SIS was a bad school before.
And now that the new white families had arrived, it was being turned around. It is noticeable. I think it is something that even my child has picked up on, you know, just like a very different feeling. You know, different feeling among some of the students and some of the parents.
You know, just real sense again. And here they come to save our poor struggling school that couldn't possibly make it on its own without their money and their vision. And we do not all feel that that is necessarily the key. What do you feel?
This was a long conversation. The upshot. She's not happy with the way the new parents are behaving. It was true.
A new narrative was taking hold at SIS. It's not like the kids were talking about it all the time, but it was in the air. And the kids were starting to pick up on who was valued and why. In the cafeteria, I hear middle schoolers saying the French kids could kill someone and they get away with it.
Upstairs in high school, I hear kids complain, all the attention has shifted to the new middle schoolers. We're being pushed aside. And down in the library, I met three sixth grade boys, white boys, nude SIS. They're sweaty from playing soccer and looking very small against their huge backpacks.
These boys, even at 11 years old, they've absorbed the same messages that SIS wasn't so good before. It was a bad school. The kids wouldn't pay attention and they had zoned out every little thing. And I bet they learned very little.
And now this generation with us, I think we're doing a lot better. And I think that we're learning our most faster pace. He and his friends, they've turned the school around. That's what he's learning.
It's going to be one of the top choices already in the book. When you're applying to middle schools, you get books on statuses and stuff. And I think the school's actually really high up in the statuses. Nobody calls it the book on statuses.
They call it a directory of schools with info, enrollment numbers for different schools, test scores and special programs. But I love that he calls it the book on statuses because this is what happened at SIS. The school had a bad reputation among white families. And then suddenly, it was in demand.
Its status had changed because of the white kids. A powerful draw for white families into any school is other white families. When there are enough other white families in a school, you reach what one study calls a bliss point. This is a real thing, researchers study.
How many white kids are needed at a school to make other white families feel comfortable? That number, the bliss point, is 26%. That fall, white families were crowding the school tours at SIS. Now because the test scores had improved, the new scores hadn't even come out yet.
But because the other white families made them feel blissfully comfortable. Of course, the thing that made the new white parents comfortable coming to SIS in the first place was the promise of a French program. They went to French and they got French. So now, all the six, seventh, eighth, and ninth graders are learning French.
It wasn't a true dual language program where kids learned in French for half the day or whatever. That first year, most of the French was happening in the after school program. We signed up for a regular after school stuff like culinary or soccer or drama, and it would be conducted in French. Hey, everybody, you have to listen, okay?
We're in the auditorium. And it's sweet. The kids are on stage rehearsing this play they wrote in French. I don't think they're having fun.
But I can help feeling like there's something off balance about this. Most of the kids doing this drama program seem to be native French speakers, but not all. A sixth grader named Maya is standing to the side of the stage, script in hand, waiting for her line. For me, it's like weird because I have no idea what they're saying.
Yeah. Really? Even in the play that you've been practicing, you don't know what they're saying? Yeah, I don't know what they're saying.
Yeah, but sometimes when you talk to French, you're a class, I don't understand. And do you figure it out or is it confusing? Still, she's excited. She's grinning, watching the other kids on stage.
She's hanging out with her friend Constance. Maya gets up to deliver her lines. Oh, you did the wrong line. Yeah, wait, what?
You just say Ashmul and then Ashmul is after. Constance, a native French speaker, tells Maya you said the wrong thing. Constance corrects her. Pronounces it for her.
Okay, uh, uh, Ashmul? I shouldn't. Yeah, because like I can't see her. Maya says, I can't.
And her friend says, I'll do it for you. Okay, I'll just say. Ashmul, no, she would be. Learning another language is not new to Maya.
May dad speak Arabic and my mom's Turkish. And now you're learning French. Yes, so confusing. But your language is the same time.
When the new white parents asked for a dual language French program at SIS, Principal Jimin said yes. SIS was supposedly an international school, but she told me they didn't really have a lot of international programming. So it seemed like a good idea to her. But there was no school-wide debate about it, or consensus.
The community didn't decide. What if they had? More than a third of the families at SIS are Hispanic. What if the dual language program was Spanish?
Or Arabic? 10% of the students speak Arabic? If they had made a different choice, if SIS had a dual language Arabic program, Maya would be teaching constants how to read her lines. She'd be the one explaining the cultural references and teasing her friend about her terrible accent.
She'd be the one translating the teacher's stage directions. There was money for a French program, which meant that SIS, French, had value. Arabic, didn't. Spanish, didn't.
That's something Maya is learning at school, along with her French script. From the very beginning, I, me, and the others had insisted on three things from the new parents and the fundraising committee. That the gala fundraiser they were planning with the French Embassy would, number one, be open to everyone. Number two, take place at the school.
And number three, be free. Then, four weeks before the gala, the PTA asked for an update. An apparent name Deb showed up. A mom to a new sixth grader, part of Rob's fundraising committee.
So I will start with the fact that I had a nice conversation with her, the Reese. The Reese? Yeah. Deb volunteered early on to help organize the party.
And she tells everyone, I met with her partner, the Reese at the French Embassy. And the event can't be at the school. The Embassy won't be able to draw their supporters to Brooklyn. It'll be at the Cultural Services Building, on the Upper East Side, Manhattan.
Forty-five minutes away. I apologize if I'm saying things you guys already know, but I didn't know some of this info, so it was good. But the event is really, it's their event. It's not really our event.
Oh, it's their event. That's Susan, with the O. Maurice leans forward, elbows on the table. I, me, is not here.
She knew the meeting would be almost entirely about fundraising, and she's sitting this one out. Maurice is now concentrating on Rob, who turns to Deb and says, in what sense is it their event? They make the rules, she says. With our input, but there are certain things that are not flexible.
The biggest thing is nobody will be allowed in at the door. You have to be on a list. You have to RSVP, you have to be on a list, all names. Security.
Get the government building after all. He sends out the invitation to 22,000 people on his mailing list. So now making it a free event is a problem, because now we're inviting 22,000 people for free to drink wine and eat food. That may not have any interest in us.
So we thought the best thing to do would be a suggested donation. Can't afford to go? Yeah. That's Rob asking to give a variant, which is how about we have a separate invitation for our people that doesn't ask for any money.
Rob seems to be picking up on the instant irritation in this room, and he's adding many variants to Deb's report. It's either a modified version or just a clarity that everybody in this community. He won't. He'll be one invite, it will say the same thing.
That's right suggested. I suggested $50 ahead for outside. Even if we simply put cover notes and no charge, we want you to come join us. Right, but on the invite, it will say suggested donation.
Then if you want to, however we want to forward it, we can say that. But they will only do one invite. Deb hasn't been able to make previous PTA meetings. So all Deb knows is she got an email from the fundraising committee at our kids' new school, which she assumed was part of the PTA.
She's volunteering her time, a ton of her time, to organize a huge event. She does not understand that the email list she's on is for a separate fundraising committee that just became even more unpopular with the official PTA leadership. I think I stopped moving watching Deb. It's so tense.
She's like a porcupine who's just wandered into a balloon store. They're serving wine, water, and then French or Durves. As far as the auction, we have a couple of cleanses, we have restaurants, we have a soccer camp, we have vacation rental in California, we got a couple hair salons. Very few from the community here.
And that's really what I wanted to talk about. Is she from the parent community or the geographic community? Yeah, the geographic community. And geographic community.
I think the restaurants you go to, if they do gift certificates, the salon, your employers, you'd be surprised what people can offer. Just ask. You know, and that's what people like my friends. Most of my friends, though, you know, they're all in other schools.
I'm just new here. I don't really know many people. So the only people I've been able to reach out to are the 36 on Rob's email list. And then a quarter of them gave.
I've donated something already. I found something. So I'm telling you that. House in Sonoma County is gorgeous.
Four bedroom, three bath. Beautiful. I think about a PTA meeting a few months before, where I watched I Me Gently Explained to one of the new parents. Why it might be hard for some families to throw in $5 for classroom supplies.
That even being asked to donate can feel alienating. Some people in this room seem to be experiencing this whole thing as a routine update about public school volunteering. Others look like someone who's walked into the wrong room, and is now looking around to the friends they came with for affirmation. We're in the wrong room, right?
How do we get out? Usually I get more tickets to shows, games, things. Like I've gotten Broadway tickets, but I haven't gotten anything in the ticket arena. Next.
I have a content of the Nets. I'm going to reach out to them. They always go. Everybody wants to go to a game.
There's always somebody. And they also make great Christmas gifts. And that's the other thing where we're lacking is actual items. We used to have a parent, well we still have a parent, but I'm telling them at my school that we're to Tiffany.
And we always had some beautiful Tiffany pieces, or, you know, coach bag. Some products. Makes it look nice. It's been a small chunk of that meeting occupied by an admittedly sentimental thought.
Just looking around, the room was kind of incredible. People with homes in Sonoma and people who live in public housing, sitting together at a long wooden table in the library of a public school that they all share. That never happens. And I didn't want them to mess it up.
But of course they are. This is not something we have a lot of practice in. New York City has one of the most segregated school systems in the country. White parents here have very little practice sharing public schools.
Maybe this is all to be expected. White parents will charge ahead, will sometimes be careless, secretive, or entitled. In response, parents of color will sometimes be cautious or distrustful, defensive. These are well-established patterns, repeated over generations.
It's easier for us to continue operating on separate tracks, because it's what we already know how to do. The guy from the French Embassy apparently has a mailing list of 22,000 people in the New York area. 300 people RSVP to the Gala for SIS. I couldn't believe it.
And I couldn't believe that one of them was Ivy. Hello. You guys look lovely. Ivy, Maurice, and Susan carpooled together to the Upper East Side.
It's winter, Central Park is across the street. It's cold. Ivy told me she decided she needed to be a grown-up and come. They got stuck in traffic, so they're rushing up the sidewalk.
Are they all right? Are they all right? No, they're not. No, they're not that late.
Cultural Services Building is Ivy covered with columns. The doors are wrought iron. The entryway is marble. Hi!
I'm going to get together. All right. A huge marble staircase winds up the side of the room. Later, I look up the architectural style.
Italian Renaissance. Palazzo style. It's a palace. There are people milling, sampling 17 different cheeses.
I don't recognize anyone else from the school. Who are these people who have chosen to come out on a weekday evening for a fundraising event for a not prominent or well-known at all public school in Brooklyn? I started asking people how they heard about the event. What about you here tonight?
Actually, an invitation by my wonderful French professor. A lady named Barbara tells me she's never heard of SIS, like most people here. But she loves French, and she loves Paris, and it sounded like a fun night with other people who do too. She goes to France every year.
October is my Cézanne-Prafférer. Actually, I found this October too warm, but I like it when it's an ice fall, crisp, and you wear your scarf with food. I enjoy a person who likes to talk, where you can just get on the ride and sit back. Barbara is definitely that kind of person.
And my apartment in Paris is sort of confused sometimes. I say, am I in Gramercy Park or am I in San German to play? It's got a similar ambiance of being a neighborhood. It's great.