On episode 4 of the CitySCOPE Podcast, Sarah Medina Camiscoli, founder and former executive director of IntegrateNYC, a youth-led organization seeking integration and equity in New York public schools, speaks on their efforts to integrate the largest, and also one of the most segregated, public school districts in the country.

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Leanne Nunes joined the fight to integrate New York City’s schools — among the country’s most segregated districts — as a 14-year-old student. Throughout high school she worked with other New York City students to address why public schooling is so unequal, particularly calling attention to an admissions process that resulted in the city’s best-performing public schools enrolling dwindling numbers of Black and Hispanic students.

Now she’s preparing to go to college as that admissions process — developed over the last 20 years in New York City — has more or less collapsed. After COVID-19 hit, the metrics that long dictated school admissions, including attendance, grades, test scores and sometimes interviews, promptly disappeared as schools shuttered.

Three weeks ago, Carlos had an internship in finance lined up for the summer and was planning to channel years of social activism, beginning in middle school, into a job in impact investing. But as protesters flooded the streets of New York, the 21-year-old Dartmouth student put his internship offer on hold and headed out to join them.

Many of the people who have led marches across the city during recent weeks have been even younger than Carlos. Some have not yet cast a ballot in an election and many have no activist experience at all. But now, they all have dedicated their lives to building and sustaining a movement that has already sparked monumental changes across the country. Here are just some of the young activists who have spurred thousands of New Yorkers into action.

When New York City became the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, its once-sacrosanct practice of sorting thousands of children into selective public schools suddenly collapsed: The metrics that dictate admissions evaporated as schools shuttered.

Then, the city erupted in protest over the killing of George Floyd, and the fact that the proudly progressive city is home to one of the nation’s most racially divided school districts took on fresh urgency.

New York is now inadvertently running an experiment in how to operate without high-stakes admissions screens. Some hope that a looming decision on how schools will admit students into top schools this fall could lead to integration long after the pandemic ends and the protests ebb.

Student activists across the country are calling for their schools to cut ties with police departments and remove officers from campuses in response to a national uprising against police brutality. And school leaders in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., have already taken that step.

While debates over the role of police officers in schools have raged for years, activists say the latest high-profile examples of police violence against black people — the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.,— have fueled the argument that police officers don’t belong in schools.

The public school board in Minneapolis voted unanimously to terminate its contract with the city’s police department on Tuesday in response to Floyd’s death. “I firmly believe that it is completely unnatural to have police in schools,” school board member Kimberly Caprini said during the meeting, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Remote learning has become a grading nightmare for teachers and students.

Seven days into the city’s seismic shift to “remote learning” to stem the coronavirus spread, Queens high school math teacher Bobson Wong has spotted a pattern among students who aren’t turning in assignments.

“Almost all the cases... it’s like ‘my whole family has the flu,’ or ‘we don’t have a laptop,’" said Wong, who teaches at Bayside High School. [Learn more.]

“We are all in this together” became a uniting motto for our communities during these challenging times. In an effort to keep New Yorkers safe, IntegrateNYC teamed up with #NYCEDU to create a database of helpful online resources. Their latest project helps communities and families stay informed and involved during the COVID-19 quarantine. This database provides access to free educational platforms, mental health support sites, housing and financial advice, and much more information where you can filter by type, topic, and location criteria based on resources available on national and state level. Check out these quick links to some great free services and online support platforms for families.

A wide coalition of elected officials, community organizations, and parent leaders are asking for a seat at the table to guide decision-making while schools are closed due to the spread of the coronavirus — and whenever they finally reopen.

More than 50 people and organizations signed onto a letter sent Tuesday to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, calling for a new COVID-19 task force to address disparities that have been ripped even wider due to the global pandemic.

The signatories include state senators Robert Jackson and Jessica Ramos, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and local Community Education Councils. Others include nonprofits and advocacy groups, including the the Hispanic Federation, NAACP of New York, and IntegrateNYC.

With New York City schools closed from coronavirus and social distancing the new normal, student activists in the country’s largest school district are recalibrating their campaigns, focusing on outreach to at-risk peers and using the newly magnified attention on the system’s inequities to force new policy.

Before the pandemic, student groups Teens Take Charge and IntegrateNYC were prepping for a May 18 districtwide school boycott, taking a page from the playbook of young activists in 1964 who’d turned out by the hundreds of thousands to protest school segregation. The spring boycott would have marked an escalation from seven near-weekly strikes starting in the fall that demanded immediate action on integrating the 1.1 million-student system, still one of the nation’s most segregated.

It’s been more than two months since New York City students began boycotts at a different school campus each week. They’ve walked out of class to demand Mayor Bill de Blasio integrate one of the country’s most segregated school systems.

Students went on strike at one Manhattan campus to protest admissions practices that had segregated them into different schools within the same building. A few weeks later at another campus, students walked out to highlight how schools with mostly black and Hispanic students often lack access to sports teams.

This spring, students plan to ramp up the pressure by taking their strikes citywide. Two student-led organizations — IntegrateNYC and Teens Take Charge, which has led the weekly actions — are joining forces for a daylong walkout planned for May 18.

In the mornings, the B61 city bus in Brooklyn feels like a school bus, filled with students criss-crossing District 15. 

Sixth-grader Melina Mays climbs aboard in Red Hook, along with her neighbors and friends. Many peel off along the way, heading towards schools that have been considered the district’s most coveted, like Park Slope’s M.S. 51 and South Slope’s New Voices. But 11-year-old Melina continues on, catching a second bus that drops her off at Sunset Park Prep, about an hour away from home by public transit. [Read more here.]

New data show a plan to boost integration at some Brooklyn middle schools is making a difference.

Last year, School District 15 middle schools ended selective admissions and switched to a lottery. Students from low-income households got priority. [Read more here.]

The landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka turns 65 Friday. In New York City, some student activists are celebrating with what they're calling a "retirement party" for school segregation.

"For it to be 65 years ago, not much has changed," said Jace Valentine, a senior at a Brooklyn high school. Valentine is a member of the student-led advocacy group Integrate NYC, which planned on distributing 25,000 newspapers across the city on the anniversary.