Peace. This is Mark Winston Griffith, producer and host of school colors.

And this is Max Friedman, the other producer and host of school colors. We're excited to be able to bring you the recording of a special event we had on a rainy night earlier this week, December 17th.

In an auditorium at the Brooklyn Public Library, we spoke to Christina Vega, a reporter from Chalk Beat, New York, the essential nonprofit education news organization.

We were joined by a voice you should recognize from school colors, Nequan McLean, president of the Community Education Council for District 16.

If you've been following school colors,

I hope you'll find our conversation pulls back the curtain a bit

on how we created this podcast and where we're going next.

And we got some really thoughtful questions from Christina and the audience that night,

digging deeper into some of the topics and themes of the show.

Enjoy.

In every episode you open saying that it's a podcast about race and class and power,

these really big, meaty themes.

But you started with a pretty narrow question, which was why are District 16 schools so

under-enrolled?

So District 16 includes Bedford-Stuyvesant and has been basically hemorrhaging students

for years now.

So I'm just curious, could you walk us through the evolution

of the reporting because you started off with a single question

and here we are?

I'll just say that.

I really think it was, in many ways, it was Max's idea, actually.

We had a struggle. There was so much material.

...