Name: Hudson Lewis
Social Justice Group: Funding Inequality in NYC Public Education (A)
Date of Fieldwork: January 12, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):NEST+m
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
On January 14, our group went to NEST+m High School to study the inequities within public schools. When we were there we interviewed an English teacher named Ms. Swann-Pye. After that, we interviewed the school business manager of NEST+m, Julie Longmuir. Across both interviews, we learned about many things. For example, we learned about where funds come from. Or about how amazing it is to have public education because nobody has to pay.
When we interviewed the English teacher Ms. Swann-Pye we learned about how good public education is, and all of the flaws within it. For example, she told us that some public schools aren’t the best quality, while others have very good quality materials, staff, and just overall quality. We also learned about how important it is to have meal plans because 30% of students at NEST+m qualify for the free meals program. This means that 30% of students at NEST are not financially stable enough to afford 3 meals a day. NEST is a specialized school, meaning it has helpful AP classes and a better PTA. To summarize, we learned about the flaws of public education, free meals, and the advantages of being a specialized school.
When we interviewed the business manager Julie Longmuir we learned some valuable, and useful information. We learned that NEST has a strong PTA because most families there are financially stable. We also learned that 97% of funds from the city go towards employee salaries. So PTA money is very important to pay for things like facilities or extracurricular activities. NEST was also given 265,000$ to install air conditioners in the auditorium. So it is very important to get as much money as possible to be the best school that they can be. To summarize, we learned about how valuable PTA money is to NEST.
