From Serial Productions, I'm Chana Jaffe Walt this is Nice White Parents, a series about the 60 year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block.
A series that was meant to be told in four episodes.
And yet I'm still talking.
I never expected to make a fifth episode.
I'd already gone back to the beginning of the school and all the way through the present day, 60 years in one building.
I felt like I'd seen all the various ways nice white parents will participate in public education and the limits of that participation.
I understood that nice white parents might opt into certain integrated schools under certain circumstances, but they might.
We were not going to make way for a fully integrated, equitable school system because an equitable school system would likely mean the schools our kids go to would get less money, not more.
Our kids might get less access to the most experienced teachers and the best facilities.
So of course we were not going to make way for that and nobody was going to force us.
White parents will stand in the way of truly equal schools.
The end.
That's how I plan to end this.
I mean, let's keep trying, but basically the end.
Have a nice day.
But then something big happened in the very same school system I'd been looking at for years.
New York City is broken up into a bunch of school districts.
The school I've been focusing on is 293.
Nathan Hale, SIS, BHS, window, whatever you want to call it, that school is in District 15.
And just recently after I finished my reporting, District 15 rolled out a diversity plan to integrate its schools.