This is the first of two special bonus episodes recorded live at the Queens Public Library on December 15, 2022.

Mark and I had the opportunity to interview the Chancellor of Schools for all of New York City, David C. Banks. Banks was appointed by our

mayor, Eric Adams, and is just finishing up his first year on the job. As you might remember from

the final episode of Season 2, the district-based diversity planning processes that were supposed

to have launched under the previous administration just sort of fizzled out once the COVID-19

pandemic hit New York. They were never officially canceled. So we started by asking Chancellor

Banks if he thought diversity planning would ever come back. And if not, why not?

This event was co-produced with two news organizations, the city and Chalkbeat, New York.

A reporter from Chalkbeat, Rima Amin, was our moderator for the evening.

And it's Rima's voice you're going to hear first.

First, you're going to hear from Max and Mark,

and they will be interviewing the New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks,

who himself is a product of Queens. And then afterwards, I'm going to sit down with Max and Mark,

and we're going to sort of peel back how they crafted the podcast and some of the lessons that

they came away with. But before all of that, I would like to introduce Vijay Ramjitan, the president of

Community Education Council for District 28.

Thank you so much. Good evening, Queens. How are you? All right. District 28 here. Yes, my

name is Vijay Ramjan. I'm the president of CC28.

And back in 2019, we were bombarded by so many newspapers

and articles and reporters and everyone

because the word diversity came up.

And of course, Max and his team came over,

...