43 min listen
S1 E5: The Disappearing District
FromSchool Colors
ratings:
Length:
60 minutes
Released:
Oct 25, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Since 2002, the number of students in Bed-Stuy’s District 16 has dropped by more than half. There’s no single reason why this is happening, but the year 2002 is a clue: that’s when Michael Bloomberg became the Mayor, abolished local school boards, and took over the New York City school system.In this episode, we’ll meet parents trying to reassert collective power and local accountability in District 16 after years of neglect from the Department of Education; parents trying to save their school from being closed for persistently low enrollment; and parents trying to do what they believe is best for their children by leaving the district altogether.In a Black community that has struggled for self-determination through education for nearly 200 years, what does self-determination look like today? CREDITSProducers / Hosts: Mark Winston Griffith and Max FreedmanEditing & Sound Design: Elyse BlennerhassettProduction Support: Jaya Sundaresh, Ilana LevinsonMusic: avery r. young and de deacon board, Chris Zabriskie, Blue Dot SessionsFeatured in this episode: Kamality Guzman, NeQuan McLean, Natasha Capers, Felicia Alexander, Clara Hemphill, Dr. Lester Young, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Faraji Hannah-Jones, Andre Farrell, Kayann Stephens, Dascy Griffin, Crystal Williams, Leonie Haimson.School Colors is a production of Brooklyn Deep, the citizen journalism project of the Brooklyn Movement Center. Made possible by support from the NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Released:
Oct 25, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (25)
Episode 1: Old School: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn is one of the most iconic historically Black neighborhoods in the United States. But Bed-Stuy is changing. Fifty years ago, schools in Bed-Stuy's District 16 were so overcrowded that students went to school in shifts. Today, they're half-empty. Why? In trying to answer that question, we discovered that the biggest, oldest questions we have as a country about race, class, and power have been tested in the schools of Central Brooklyn for as long as there have been Black children here. And that's a long, long time. In this episode, we visit the site of a free Black settlement in Brooklyn founded in 1838; speak to one of the first Black principals in New York City; and find out why half a million students mobilized in support of school integration couldn’t force the Board of Education to produce a citywide plan. by School Colors