RadCasts

Chana Joffe-Walt searches the New York City Board of Education archives for more information about the School for International Studies, which was originally called I.S. 293.

In the process, she finds a folder of letters written in 1963 by mostly white families in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. They are asking for the board to change the proposed construction of the school to a site where it would be more likely to be racially integrated.

It’s less than a decade after Brown v. Board of Education, amid a growing civil rights movement, and the white parents writing letters are emphatic that they want an integrated school. They get their way and the school site changes — but after that, nothing else goes as planned.

For more information about this show, visit nytimes.com/nicewhiteparents

It’s 2015 and one Brooklyn middle school is about to receive a huge influx of new students.

In this episode, Chana Joffe-Walt, a reporter, follows what happens when the School of International Studies’ 6th grade class swells from 30 mostly Latino, Black and Middle Eastern students, to 103 — an influx almost entirely driven by white families.

Everyone wants “what’s best for the school” but it becomes clear that they don’t share the same vision of what “best” means.

For more information about this show, visit nytimes.com/nicewhiteparents