So when I moved here, I was pregnant.

Shaila Dewan moved to Bedford-Stuyves in Brooklyn in 2012.

And I talked to everyone I met on the bus, on the subway, eventually on the playground,

about the schools here. Where do you send your kid to school? Where does your kid go to school?

Shila is a journalist who covers criminal justice. So she approached the schools in Bed-Stuy, like the investigative reporter that she is.

I was trying to educate myself about this huge system of options that we have in this city.

And no one I talked to ever answered that they sent their kid to school in this neighborhood.

Instead, they were taking advantage of this huge system of options,

going to public schools in other districts, charter schools, or even private schools.

It didn't sit well with Shaila.

I thought, why can't Vets Die have what other neighborhoods have?

Why do I have to take my kid to Clinton Hill or Fort Green or to lower Manhattan? My God, I mean, their parents here that take their kid to the Lower East Side

for school. And that just outraged me. That just outraged me. Like, this is not insurmountable. Like,

we should be able to have here what everybody else has.

And so Shaila, along with a number of other parents in the neighborhood,

started an organization called the Bedstuy Parents Committee.

Almost immediately, the Bedstuy Parents Committee would become a lightning rod for controversy.

And at the center of the storm was Shaila Dewan.

I've spent so many nights in tears, just crying over this.

Like, how did I get to a place where I was trying to help, and I became public enemy number

one?

How did this happen?

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