S2 E6: Below Liberty

School Colors

Brooklyn Deep

Politics, Education, Government, News

5 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Queens has changed a lot in the last few decades — and so has District 28. New immigrant communities have taken root and the district is, on the whole, pretty diverse. But most Black folks still live on the Southside, and the schools below Liberty Avenue continue to struggle. A lot of parents and educators agree that there needs to be some change in District 28. But the question remains: what kind of change? When we asked around, more diversity wasn't necessarily at the top of everybody's list. In fact, from the north and south, we heard a lot of the same kind of thing: "leave our kids where they are and give all the schools what they need." So what do the schools on the Southside really need? And what’s at stake for Southside families when we "leave those kids where they are" and fail to meet their needs for generations?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This season, we've gone deep on the history of District 28, how it became both segregated and diverse.
0:06.5	But the reason we started looking at this district in the first place was because of a proposed diversity planning process, and some parents' reaction to it.
0:13.6	A plan to diversify a Queen's school district is prompting a protest from parents tonight.
0:18.8	A contentious meeting, with parents lashing out over a plan to boost diversity in their school district.
0:24.6	A plan, the Department of Education says, doesn't even exist yet.
0:28.6	It's called fire department.
0:30.6	Actually, we're going to make it sure that you guys don't get this plan done.
0:34.6	These parents made so much noise and got so much attention.
0:38.7	You might assume they stopped diversity planning in its tracks.
0:41.9	But that's not what happened.
0:43.9	Instead, in early 2020, quietly and deliberately, the diversity working group started to work.
0:52.0	This was a group of 20 volunteers, parents, students, teachers, administrators, and community leaders.
0:59.0	They meet in the evenings to learn about each other in the district, plan a series of big public workshops,
1:04.3	and strategize for how to get as many people to those workshops as possible.
1:08.6	And Aki Young says, it was going well.
1:12.6	It was going very well. It was such a beautiful part of the process.
1:15.6	Aki worked for an urban planning firm called WXY
1:18.6	that was hired by the city to facilitate this process.
1:21.6	People didn't really know each other in the working group when they started.
1:25.6	And then you could see just even a couple meetings in
1:28.7	that people felt more comfortable with each other, that they would like stay longer to chat
1:34.6	with certain people afterwards, that they would like ride the train home together and like
	...

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