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[quote=Anonymous][quote=littlehouse]I'm the parent who had kids there.

Just a couple things -- this "French dual language program" was an after school program at this time.  It still largely is now. I think she kind of glosses over that, so people can incorrectly overlay their own experience about language or G&T etc.  It is not a separate track.  It was  open to all - it later became a core subject so every had to take it .. a part of the school day as a class, but again, just one class.  This is a 6-12 grade school.  It's not like a k-5 school where kids are with one group all day.  Subjects are departmentalized and kids have electives and every period kids move to a new class, with a different set of kids.   In the name of equity, they later made the French class mixed level (which is what white people do when they want to be "fair" and a lousy way to teach French), but at the time, Rob proposed basically this: "How about an after school French program and we make the French pay for it".  And he delivered.  (the Arabic program down the street used to be funded by the Qatar foundation .. I wonder if it still is)

2.  The reason the principal, Jilian, wanted a language was because her main goal was introducing an IB program, and she needed language for that.

3.  The PTA then and now are is tiny handful of people who organize a couple small fundraisers.  A typical meeting would have been 4 or 5 people.  The PTA is not synonymous with "the parent body" or "the school culture".   The entire PTA budget at that time was maybe 5-10k.  It's maybe 50k now (that's with an enrollment of almost  900 kids).  The PTA has no budgeting authority.  The principal usually says, "how about chrome books this year" and the PTA puts whatever money the carnival raises towards chromebooks.   Like the French  fundraiser in 2015, when the library was renovated, there was a one-time fundraiser for that .. run not by the PTA but a couple parents who really cared about the library -- sure, probably parents who had kids who loved to read --  and the librarian. All that money went only to the library, not mixed up with PTA money.  I can't wait to hear the podcast on that (non) drama.

4.  In NYC, there is something called the SLT.  The School Leadership Team. Unlike the PTA, the SLT has power.  This is a parent-teacher-admin group that has a lot of say over school direction, curriculum, budget.  Parents are elected to this.  The SLT has to write a pretty mayor report (that's posted online) and the DOE reviews the goals annually and how well the school does vs goals.  IB and language would have been under the SLT umbrella.  The PTA president is usually defacto a non-voting part of the SLT, although at this school, they often didn't show up to meetings -- it is another monthly meeting  and sometimes too much for volunteers -- but this is where a lot of information gets shared, and if you're not at the meeting ...

Lastly, I think a lot of the narrative is about doing things for "their own kids".   But most parents realize the first and second classes are not the ones who benefit.  I think maybe 4 years in, those kids do.  So I hand it to people who are working for a better FUTURE school.  I feel like this school kind of ate it's own later during the diversity plan drama.  They didn't wan to step on toes and insist heritage speakers get a seat (who again are largely Caribbean ).  The current largely white admin team will come off well on this podcast, I bet, but because they were afraid to make a mistake and have even the appearance of pushing back against the so-called Diversity Plan, they left a lot of brown and black kids behind and the school got whiter.

Which isn't to say this very first class wasn't white French kids.  They mostly were.  But the next year and year after that, the kids from Flatbush heard about it and their parents enrolled them.

As my friend said, "replace "French" with "math olympiad" or "track and field" and does this all come across as very different?"  I think most of America sees French as rich, white.  This podcast plays that to the max.  For the majority of  Francophones in Brooklyn, it's pretty frustrating .

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Thank you so much for offering your experience and insight regarding the events described in the podcast. I almost wish you would do a blog with your thoughts to provide context.
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