{"id":357222,"date":"2026-09-26T00:32:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357222\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T00:32:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T00:32:54","slug":"nikole-hannah-jones-campaigned-against-a-yuppie-invasion-of-kids-from-whiter-areas-to-failing-school-they-sent-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/357222\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikole Hannah-Jones campaigned against a \u2018yuppie invasion\u2019 of kids from whiter areas to failing school they sent daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Activist and reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones<\/a> and her husband crusaded against allowing more students from affluent backgrounds into their daughter\u2019s struggling, mostly-black Brooklyn elementary school \u2014 while decrying New York\u2019s hopelessly \u201csegregated\u201d public school system, a Post investigation reveals.<\/p>\n

In a 2016 fight against the \u201cyuppie invasion\u201d of Brooklyn\u2019s PS 307 school, as local reports dubbed it, the Hannah-Joneses stood firmly against a Department of Education rezoning initiative, which seemed poised to flood their kid\u2019s school with local tots from wealthy backgrounds.<\/p>\n

This despite the couple themselves being well-off non-native New Yorkers living in Bed-Stuy in a completely different school district.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn mom Ebony Richardson said the tony couple \u201ccame into this school to make a mess\u201d and said she felt \u201cheartbroken\u201d by Hannah-Jones\u2019s characterization of her school. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

At the time, nearby public school PS 8 was overflowing with students, at 148% capacity and had a multi-year waitlist.<\/p>\n

PS 307 Daniel Hale Williams school, located in Vinegar Hill, was underutilized, at just 50% capacity. The re-zoning plan carved out the gentrified Dumbo neighborhood from PS 8 and assigned it to PS 307 Daniel Hale Williams school in Vinegar Hill.<\/p>\n

In a Sept. 20 New York Times Magazine story, Hannah-Jones described how she and husband Faraji purposefully sent daughter Najya<\/a> to a \u201cmostly low-income and Black school\u201d which \u201cwealthier families with choices uniformly avoid\u201d because they thought they could \u201chelp improve it for all the children there,\u201d she wrote. Around 90% of PS 307\u2019s students were black at that time.<\/p>\n

Iowa-born and raised Hannah-Jones chose PS 307, across from a Brooklyn housing project, as a public stand against \u201csegregation,\u201d she claimed.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had connections and time and status that should not matter, but that we all know do. And more than that, we believed strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families with similar values to do the same,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Controversial New York Times writer Hannah-Jones stirred up a frenzy in a Times magazine piece likening her daughter\u2019s public school education to a social experiment. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The re-zoning was designed to do just that.<\/p>\n

After the local board voted in 2016 to pass the school integration initiative, irate husband Faraji \u2014 who had been elected PS 307 PTA co-president \u2014 demanded limits on how many new kids the school could take in.<\/p>\n

The newly assigned Dumbo neighborhood was roughly 70% white and 11% Asian.<\/p>\n

Referring to quotas of kids from the neighboring housing projects he fought to secure, Faraji said at the time: \u201cWhen we said 50%, we didn\u2019t say 50% with conditions. We said 50%, period.<\/p>\n

In a Sunday New York Times Magazine essay, the Iowa-born and raised Hannah-Jones admitted to sending her daughter to poor, mostly black PS 307 across from a Brooklyn housing project as a public stand against segregation. Getty Images for ESSENCE<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want the opportunity to sustain our equity for that neighborhood. We don\u2019t want PS 307 to become PS 8,\u201d he said at a 2016 community meeting, referring to the school which had rapidly become one of the borough\u2019s best and most desirable, partly through benefits from gentrification. At that time 85% of the school\u2019s pupils were white.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen those affluent parents come in, we do not want to alienate the parents who live across the street in the Farragut [housing project],\u201d Hannah-Jones, himself among the affluent, noted.<\/p>\n

David Goldsmith, president of the Community Education Council for District 13, which voted to approve the rezoning, told The Post that PS 307 was a standout, magnet school at the time Najya enrolled, thanks to former principal Roberta Davenport.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn mom Richardson, who put four kids through PS307 and is pre-K volunteer at the school, said, \u201cI went to that school, I\u2019m still involved in the school. I couldn\u2019t believe the stuff I read.\u201d Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cRoberta had built an amazing school,\u201d Goldsmith said. \u201c[The Hannah-Joneses] sent their kid to 307 probably because they heard what she was doing. She had a lot of funding, wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer, had all sorts of program and grants.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Davenport suddenly retired in June 2015, one year into Najya\u2019s enrollment, and everything the principal built crumbled under her replacement,<\/a> Goldsmith said.<\/p>\n

At the same time the war against the \u201cyuppies\u201d had reached fever-pitch and PS 307 had become a citywide lightning rod for one of the most divisive topics of the 2010s: Brooklyn\u2019s gentrification.<\/p>\n

But it never happened at PS 307. The year after rezoning, fewer than 10 white kindergarteners enrolled, according to a Politico article. Today, the school remains about 6% white, according to DOE data, suggesting Dumbo parents opted for other options, including gifted-and-talented programs, charter or private schools.<\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones and her husband, Faraji Hannah-Jones, said they put their daughter in public school for ideological reasons. <\/p>\n

Nikole Hannah-Jones attends the world premiere of the HBO original documentary series, \u201cJay Z in 8\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. ZUMAPRESS.com<\/p>\n

In an email to The Post, Hannah-Jones said she and Farraji \u201cnever\u201d opposed integration of the school and they \u201cwere fighting that the decision was being made without input from PS 307 and Dumbo parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said their aim was to \u201cslow the process down to ensure parents had input and the rezoning came with a certain percentage of seats that would remain for low-income students to try to prevent the possibility of the school completely flipping, like PS 8 did, and losing any chance for stable integration.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her essay, Hannah-Jones \u2014 author of the \u201c1619 Project,\u201d which attempted to recast America\u2019s founding through the lens of chattel slavery \u2014 was scathing in her assessment of PS 307.<\/p>\n

She described children \u201clanguishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach,\u201d and a principal prone to long absences, while ungraded work mounted and students received high marks, despite lacking basic proficiency.<\/p>\n

Public School 307, also known as the Daniel Hale Williams School, is seen in Brooklyn\u2019s Vinegar Hill neighborhood on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. The school has drawn attention over the years, with some critics describing it as \u201cLittle Rikers Island\u201d while former PTA president Ebony Richardson has defended the school. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

parents were baffled by Hannah-Jones\u2019s characterization of their school as a lawless place one likened to \u201cLittle Rikers Island\u201d by some parents in a 2023 online petition. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

She felt the school failed her daughter, now 16, and Najya said she felt her education had been sacrificed for a sociological experiment in her article.<\/p>\n

Past and current members of that school\u2019s community told The Post the controversial scribe only has herself to blame.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were trying to take over the school . . . Things that couldn\u2019t go their way, they felt, \u2018We\u2019re going to write it down and start trouble.\u2019 They were imposing their will on the school,\u201d Ebony Richardson, a former PTA chair and current volunteer at the school, told The Post.<\/p>\n

Current parents who spoke to The Post rejected Hannah-Jones\u2019 characterization.<\/p>\n

Faraji Hannah-Jones, a school integration activist and husband of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, is seen outside their $1.5 million brownstone in the trendy Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026. Stefano Giovannini for NY Post<\/p>\n

Richardson said the couple accused her of stealing money. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I read it, I was confused. I think it\u2019s horrible. I would never use my child like that,\u201d a 46-year-old stay-at-home mom who sent three kids to the school told The Post, referring to sending Najya to the school. \u201cIf her child was failing, that\u2019s on her.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 27-year-old father dropping his child off for school at PS 307 on Tuesday morning called Hannah-Jones\u2019s stunt \u201cselfish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you want the best for your child or just to prove yourself right?\u201d the man, who identified himself as \u201cMr. Jones,\u201d told The Post. \u201cIf you were using your daughter as an experiment and it failed, don\u2019t blame the school. I think that\u2019s selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data shows PS 307 performing well below the city average, with just 17% reading proficiency and 27% in math \u2014 compared to 50% and 57% citywide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there,\u201d Hannah-Jones wrote in the outlet. Getty Images for ESSENCE<\/p>\n

The Post discovered Hannah-Jones at the time lived one block from an all-black public school that really could have used the star power and national attention she thrust upon PS 307.<\/p>\n

In 2015, their local elementary school, Bedford-Stuyvesant\u2019s PS 25, was struggling and desperately needed more students. Called Brooklyn\u2019s \u201ctiniest\u201d school due to low enrollment, most students lived in poverty but still wildly outperformed expectations, with DOE data ranking it the fourth best elementary school in the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cAchievement levels of PS 25 students have steadily climbed over the last three years, and the school now exceeds the city average in state test scores, despite the fact that a large percentage of students are homeless, economically disadvantaged, and\/or have disabilities,\u201d the education nonprofit Class Size Matters wrote in 2018, with the school\u2019s principal, Anita Cooley, receiving high praise.<\/p>\n

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But because not enough parents were sending their students to the school, it closed permanently in 2025. Existing students were sent to a charter school.<\/p>\n

Hannah-Jones told The Post that, \u201cIt\u2019s been 12 years so my recollection may not be correct, but we started school the first year of universal pre-K and I don\u2019t remember [PS 25] having pre-K seats that year. We picked a school where we could start at pre-K and stay through 5th grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, Faraji \u2014 who grew up on a military base in Germany and has a current post of Contracts Committee Chair for the NYC Department of Education \u2014 defended his wife, comparing her to civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen history looks back on this, she\u2019s going to be one of our civil-rights leaders,\u2019\u2019 Faraji told The Post, referring to his 50-year-old spouse, outside the family\u2019s more than $1.5 million home in trendy Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

However, for all their plans to make a difference at PS 307, Richardson noted the pair have never returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody that graduated or left the school always comes back, but not them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Daniel Bates\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Activist and reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones and her husband crusaded against allowing more students from affluent backgrounds into their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,67,1208,57,9,24,980,63,58,10403],"class_list":["post-357222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-education","tag-media","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-times","tag-nyc","tag-us-news","tag-woke-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}