Tomás Monarrez’s work at The Urban Institute focuses on school segregation. As an economist, he brings quantitative skills and a deep respect for data. We discuss the ways we have thought about segregation are problematic, and where the low-hanging fruit is to try to improve desegregation through the country.
Stefan Lallinger’s grandfather argued the Brown v Board case at the Supreme Court. He has stepped into that legacy in his own work as a teacher, a school leader, and now leading The Bridge Collaborative at The Century Foundation. We discuss how his family history has shaped his approach to integration, and what gives him hope for future generations.
We’re joined by two White mothers who recently moved. Anna and Sarah have been part of the Integrated Schools community for some time and had the opportunity to really think about their values as they chose new cities, new neighborhoods, new houses, and new schools.
We kick off Season 7 with some big changes for the podcast! Val, a Black mom from North Carolina, joins Andrew to co-host this season. We discuss why she cares about school integration, and what we hope to accomplish through our multiracial discussions.
Mother, journalist, and author Courtney Martin’s new book, Learning in Public, is at once a deeply personal memoir of the “journey of a thousand moral miles” that led her to enroll her daughter in their neighborhood “failing” school, as well as a full-hearted endorsement of public schools as the foundation of our fragile democracy, in all of their nuance and complexity. She joins us to discuss the book, and integration more broadly, with one of the key characters in the book, Mrs. Minor, a Black teacher who left the public schools to start her own private preschool, and brings a healthy degree of skepticism of the value of desegregation.