The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Chancellor David Banks On The Eagle Academy, Reading Programs In New York Public Schools + More

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

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Because in order to make history, you have to make some noise. Listen to Historical Records on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy, Charlamagne Tha Guy. We are The Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks. Welcome, brother.

I'm very happy to be here. Good morning to you both. Man, happy to have you here, man. If you don't know who David Banks is, he founded one of the most successful and first public schools in the country that serves exclusively young men of color, the Eagle Academy. So talk to us about the Eagle Academy. How did that come to light? Well, listen, I was a member, I've been a longtime member of the 100 Black Men organization. It's a national, international actual organization, but started in New York

about 60 years ago. And, you know, we'd always work to support our kids in our schools and doing the right thing. But when we started really looking at the data around what was happening with young black men, we realized that we needed to do so much more. And so many of us had gone to the Million Man March years ago. And coming out of that march, we came away with a commitment that we had to go much deeper. And that march is what really gave birth to the creation of the Eagle Academy for Young Men. It was the first all-boys public school in New York City in almost 30 years when we opened. It's not a charter school. It's not a private school. It's a regular New York City public school that really had as its mission

to try to help to enlighten and transform the lives of our young men. And since that time, I was the principal of the school in the Bronx. Since that time, we've opened up an Eagle Academy in every borough in New York. We've got one in Newark, New Jersey. When Cory Booker was the mayor in Newark, he asked us to come there. So we've got six schools, over 3,000 young men. We've graduated over 3,000 young men and sent them to colleges and universities all around the country and it's essentially been a beacon and a blueprint what you can do to transform the lives of young men where's the one in Queens just curious Southeast Queens yeah it's it's it's actually housed in the facility that Alan Allen AME Church Reverend Floyd Floyd's check Reverend

Flakes Church Northside of Queensland yeah but it's it's but no it's southeast queens it's it's basically jamaica queens um and they used to have a school uh a few blocks from the church and uh we we basically took that facility and that's where we are it's the same neighborhood basically that i grew up in oh you grew up from queens you're from queens yeah i'm a brooklyn queens kid i was born in brooklyn Heights. Lived in Brooklyn until I was about 12 years old. My dad was a New York City police officer and moved the family. And I'm the oldest of three boys. And we moved out to Southeast Queens, Cambria Heights,

went to Hillcrest High School. Me and your story is the same. My dad is from Brooklyn, New York City police officer. Moved me to Queens, Queens Village, which is the city, the next town over. That's right. Same type of thing. It was that same migration almost, right? Same migration, yeah.

Brothers that were in Brooklyn and kind of making their way out to Queens. And I went to school with Naila, which is Floyd Flay's daughter. Did you really? Yeah, me and her went to school with each other. Where'd you go to high school? St. Francis. Oh, you went to St. Francis? Because my zone school was Andrew Jackson.

And you weren't going there? My parents would not let me go there. Same here. That was the first public school with metal detectors in the country was Andrew Jackson. And you weren't going there. My parents would not let me go there. Same here. That was the first public school with metal detectors in the country was Andrew Jackson. I lived about three or four blocks from Andrew Jackson. That's where I should have gone to school. Yep. A zone school.

And think about that, Envy, right? Like the fact that there was most of those kids who lived in the neighborhood, these were like smart, hardworking, committed kids. Most of us did not go to the neighborhood school because the reputation was so bad. The violence. And that's one of the things that I'm trying to do now that I'm in this seat as chancellor is to say that it's ridiculous.

We've got to transform all of our schools. So much of the conversation has been about specialized schools and, you know, an individual school here or there. I truly believe that you can transform the entire school system. Every neighborhood school should be a good, solid school. And there are things that we can do to make that happen. And that's the reason why I'm here.

Do you think they should take out the, I'm sorry, do you think they should take out the quote-unquote zone school, right? Because, you know, when I was a kid growing up in Queens, you know, usually the resources were in the quote unquote towns with more money. Right. Right. So that's where everybody tried to go, whether they tried to get a fake address or, you know, they wanted you to Catholic school. I know my parents wanted me to go to Edison or even Van Buren because those schools are better than my zone school. So do you think they should get rid of the quote unquote zone school where they make you go to depending on your zip code? Well, first of all, right now we have a lot more choice

of movement, particularly at the high school level. Most kids do not have to simply go to their zone school. There's a lot more movement where you don't have to change your address. You don't have to do all the other stuff to kind of sneak around the system. We offer kids lots of other opportunities. But the reality is that what we have to do is to ensure that every school is a high quality school. So you don't even need to do all of that sneaking around in the first place. And that's where the real work comes in. I'm very interested in knowing when you say you serve exclusively young men of color, what is different about the Eagle Academy than other schools, other public schools around the country?

So when I was heading up the Eagle Academy, you know, you recognize, first of all, you have to start with disaggregating the data, right? Columbia University did a report that said that, this was years ago, 75% of the inmates from the entire state of New York

came from seven neighborhoods in New York City. Wow. Just think about that for a minute. You're talking about Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, the whole entire state of New York, 75% of the prison population for the whole state was not just from New York City. That's a big enough deal of its own.

Seven very specific zip codes within New York City. What were they? I'm just curious. You were talking about, and some of this has changed since the time that this report came out, but you were talking about- Definitely the Bronx. You're talking about South Bronx.

You're talking about Central Home. You're talking about Southeast Queens. It was the Lower East Side at the time. It was Ocean Hill, Brownsville. Brownsville. It was the neighborhoods where our folks are, where the greatest concentration of our folks are. 75%. That's crazy are for the whole state.

And the problem was that what you had were people were doing all kinds of analysis about it. And people were having conferences and panel discussions. And I went to so many panel discussions where people just try to play to the crowd and get everybody cheering. But nobody was really offering up any real solutions. We were just talking about how bad the problems were. And it seemed like the most you could hope for was a good after-school program for maybe 25 boys. That's about as good as it got.

That was the reason why we leaned into creating the Eagle Academy. And what Eagle really represented was a culture where young men got to see that we cared deeply about them right we had a we had a larger percentage of our staff who were men of color uh which is important because so many of these young brothers are growing up with our fathers at home and when they're little guys and they're lovable huggable and cute that's one thing and they're right up under mommy but as they start to get older and the streets start to have a greater influence, they need to see strong male role models in their lives. If they do not have that, they are so much more susceptible to the negativity that they will see

in the streets. Black boys, Latino boys are no different than anybody else. They want all the same things. They need the same things. So a lot of it had to do with the way that we trained our teachers. They had to understand, first of all, about boys. Boys bring a different kind of energy into a classroom. You know, boys love to compete, but they don't like to compete one-on-one. They like to compete my group against your group. There are ways for you to affect that in a classroom in a way that's positive as opposed to seeing some behavior and writing it off as negative.

Therefore, kids wind up getting suspended. They wind up getting in trouble. And then the boys themselves start to give up on themselves. So that's a huge part of what it is that we focus on is the culture that young men need to know. There are people who deeply believe in them. They have to see the power of possibility for themselves as well. So all of the folks that we would bring in on a regular basis that would speak into their consciousness,

it's not enough to tell kids about what you could do and particularly boys, you have to show them. They have this, you know, one of the young men said it's hard to dream of being an investment banker if you've never met one. Right? And so that's what we spent a lot of our time doing. We didn't just talk to them about going to college. Every young man that went to Eagle Academy probably visited 20 to 25 colleges while they were there.

We had them on the road going to colleges on a regular basis because you have to plant those seeds in their mind. They have to walk that campus. They got to see the fraternity and sorority. You come out and do a little step. They got to go into a classroom and see some folks who look like them. That's what makes it real. If you don't do that, it's just an amorphous notion that adults like to talk about amongst themselves.

But you have to make it plain for young men to understand the possibilities for themselves. One of my problems with a lot of the schools, and since you are a school chancellor, maybe you can give us some insight on it. I feel like a lot of the curriculums are old, right? And the reason I'm saying that is a lot of, you know, when we were kids and our parents were kids, people made money differently, right? But now a lot of these kids are becoming millionaire, wealthy, you know, damn near billionaires offer things that I don't know if school teaches, whether it's the social media bust

and how to do things on social media, whether it's little things as like, you know, these car wrapping companies that wrap the cars and like people are making millions off of that, or if it's real estate or if it's whatever it may be, you know, I don't see a lot of schools jumping into those curriculums. It seems like those curriculums are outdated and ancient. And a lot of these students, it is boring to them because what they're seeing online or what they want to do is like, I don't want to do this in school. I want to do what I enjoy doing. And I see a lot of times that you're not seeing that in those schools. Absolutely, brother.

So I couldn't agree with you more. It's part of the reason why one of the major things I focused on was the reimagining of the school experience for kids. You can't do school like we did it 100 years ago. Correct. Or even 50 years ago. Even 25 years ago. Right? Like, the world has changed,

and it is changing rapidly before our eyes. And it is a major challenge for a bureaucracy as large as the New York City school system, which is the largest school system in the nation, right? And by far, it's the largest. It doesn't- Probably the most complicated too. It is absolutely the most complicated. The work that we do, but it can change. But it needs vision, it needs leadership that is courageous and bold. That's what we are trying to do. So one of the things that we're leaning into now, something we call bold futures,

creating career connected learning for kids. That idea that you just raised that school is boring. That's the major reason why kids give up on themselves. I'm just doing school. There's a difference between schooling and educating. Educating really connects to relevance. Why are we doing this? Kids ask that all the time. Even when we were in school, we always said, Why are we doing this? Kids ask that all the time.

Even when we were in school, we always said, why are we doing this lesson? And oftentimes you did not get good answers to those questions. We're helping to provide much better answers. I created a couple of programs that we're leaning into right now. Our Modern Youth Apprenticeship Programs and our Future Ready Programs. What those are, are career-connected programs. To some degree, they're what you all remember as future ready programs. What those are, are career connected programs. To some degree, they're what you all remember as CTE programs, right? Except that the old CTE programs were about automotive shop, building cars, doing wood

shop. The career connected learning today is not your grandfather's CTE stuff. Kids are coming out now with the opportunity to step into real jobs, even if they didn't go to college. They can make six-figure salaries coming right out of high school. So we're building a range of partnerships with the aviation industry, the biotech industry, financial industry. JPMorgan Chase is paying kids up to $25 an hour while they're still in high school,

where they go to school a certain number of days, and then they're actually working in the industry for at least two to three days, where we're merging school and the real world at the same time. I love that. Then kids understand why you need to be focused in this science class. It connects to something that's real and meaningful. So we've got thousands of kids that are doing that. I would invite you to come and join us, you know, come and visit what we're doing at some of these schools. But my goal is to scale this work to very significant levels. So the kids get real world experiences. Kids have an opportunity to get not only exposure, but to get paid while they're in high school. And so it prepares them. They get all the credentials that they need when they graduate.

So when they graduate, they get a diploma. You can't have it being an empty diploma that doesn't mean anything. I want them to be able to go to college if they want to go to college. But I also want them to have the credentials to step right into the world of work. We're doing that right now for all the reasons that you just laid out. Let me ask you a question. What's your thoughts on kids taking maybe a year or two off, right? And this is the reason why I say it.

In high school? No, no, when they graduate out of high school. I'm just curious. We'll be talking education. The reason I, oh, yeah, maybe after high school, before you go to college, I'm explaining why. So I went to Hampton University. But when I went to Hampton University, I went for a different reason, right?

I went because I had to. My parents wanted me to go, and I was just there to graduate, right? After I graduated and I spent some time in the real world, I realized there's so many things that I should have took serious in school, so many classes that I should have take that I didn't take. And I feel like that's because I didn't know myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do. They make you pick a major.

They make you do it now, do it now, do it now. But if you don't experience the world, you don't know what you're going to want to do. That's right. So I feel like sometimes what you're saying where you're saying, okay, well, I can take these classes, but I can work at JP Morgan and Chase to see if I like it. That's right. I can work at an automotive company to see if that's what fits me. And I feel like that is better because I get a little time to see what I want to do and be like, you know what, I'm going to focus on this opposed to focus on classes that don't make sense to me. And I feel like that is better because I get a little time to see what I want to do and be like, you know what, I'm going to focus on this opposed to focus on classes that don't make sense to me. So what's your thought on that? First of all, that is a big part of what we're trying to do with these programs. The more, the earlier you can provide that kind of level of exposure for kids,

the better it is. Because nobody should, you know, you shouldn't necessarily know what you want to do for the rest of your life when you're 14 years old, right? So you can, kids change every year about what they want to be. And a lot of it is based upon what they see and what they experience. And what we want to do is create more opportunities for them to see different things and to experience different things. You know, the model of the 100 black men is they will be what they see. Well, if what you see is very limited, then even your imagination can be limited.

But when you have an opportunity to see more and to see what it means, you know, when I was in high school, you know, I did an internship at the York College Computer Division. This was back when they were doing computer languages of Cobalt and, you know. That's when they had floppy disks.

Yeah, exactly, right. And this was way before the personal computer. computer languages of cobalt and you know that's when they have floppy disks yeah exactly right this and this was way before the personal computer um but but what it was an eye-opener for me because i had a chance to see in real time what the career could potentially look like and i said i don't really think i want to do that um i was an engineering major when i went off to college and and i did not have enough exposure to that because i stayed as an engineering major when I went off to college. And I did not have enough exposure to that because I stayed as an engineering major for two years before I switched to political science. I said, boy, if I had more exposure to

this, I probably wouldn't have chosen engineering. I was a good math and science student, but I didn't really want badly enough to be an engineer. I try to provide as much exposure for my own kids. I raised four kids and my daughter graduated from Hampton as well. All my kids went to HBCUs.

I have two sons who graduated. Your daughter went to Hampton? My daughter went to Hampton. She's teaching in the Bronx now. I love it. My oldest son, Jamal, is an assistant principal. He's also in education in Washington, D.C. with the Virginia State. And then my other two sons, Ali and Malcolm, are both graduates of Morehouse.

So while I didn't go to an HBCU, all my money went to HBCUs. And the reality for me is that I tried to help provide as much exposure for them to see what was possible. Correct. And I often tell folks, we'd never see the genius of a Tiger Woods

if his father didn't put that golf club in his hands and put him out there on the greens, right? And so the more we expose kids, so I want to expose them before college. I want to expose them while they're in high school so that they can get to their aha moment, which then when they're in college is more instructive around what they actually want to major

because then they know why they want to focus in that area. That's right. As a chancellor in New York City, like we said earlier, the largest, most complicated public school system in America, was there any pressure stepping into that position? Well, stepping into the position, that's a great question. There's always a lot of pressure.

I would tell you that the biggest pressure, though, Charlemagne, was the pressure that I put on myself because I hold myself to a very high standard and a standard of excellence. I didn't come in here and take this job just to play at it. I've known Mayor Eric Adams for over 30 years. He didn't even interview anybody else to be chancellor. He said, you're my guy. If I become mayor, you're my guy. so uh I didn't go through an interview process he tells the story that he was interviewing me over 10 years but but that interview was him watching the work that I was doing over all of those years the pressure that I feel every single day

is to ensure that I am living up to what my ancestors laid out for me to do that I know that I'm standing on their shoulders and that they have paved this way for me at this moment in this time to do what needs to be done on behalf of all of our kids, right? So that's the pressure that I feel. It's not the day-to-day pressure of the media or what's actually going on in our schools. It's just knowing that these kids are counting on me. They're counting on me.

And I have to set up a structure that's going to allow it to happen. it's just knowing that these kids are counting on me they're counting on me and and and i have to set up a structure that's going to allow it to happen so let me tell you the biggest the biggest thing that i have learned since i've become chancellor and it is the driving force behind everything that i do far too many of our kids can't read i saw that recently you made up you made a lot of news saying that we should they should focus on literacy in schools and it kind of blew my mind a little bit because I'm like what the hell are they focusing on? I've had

some guys that I grew up with out there in Southeast Queens who you know we get together we watch the games on the weekends and what not and they'd say hey Dave when I leave the room they say you just teach the kids to read right and you start to say well what else are we doing? Now think about this 51% as we came into this administration,

51% of the kids in the New York City public schools fundamentally do not even read on grade level. 64% of black kids. 63% of Latino kids. But it's a national phenomenon. 66% of the kids in Philadelphia don't read on grade level. 80% of the kids in Chicago. And can you imagine it gets worse?

In the city of Detroit, Charlemagne, the city of Detroit, 91% of the kids don't fundamentally know how to read. You could get those same results if you never even had a school system. If the kids didn't even go to school every day. If they just stayed home, and then one day at the end of the year, you said everybody come in and take a test, you would get those same results. What does not knowing how to read mean? Because I know these kids on their phone reading Instagram and Twitter and everything.

When you say not know how to read, what does that mean? What I mean is the ability to fully decode text and read for meeting at a level commiserate with where you are. So here's what we've done in our schools for years. We have taught our kids how to read through an approach that's called balanced literacy. School teachers know about this all over the country. It is a fundamentally flawed approach it involves a lot of what they call queuing which is a fancy word for guessing where basically you open a book you might not know how to say the word read the word purple but if you see a purple fence

they'll tell you what what do you think it's saying? And because you see purple fence, you may say it's a purple fence. But if they remove the picture and say, read the word purple, you don't even know how to read because you've not been properly taught. I want to be very clear. There's nothing flawed with our kids. The approach that has been taken in our public schools all across the nation has been deeply flawed for at least the last 25 to 30 years wow so i'm taking the system back to the old school we're putting phonics back into our curriculum kids are going to learn how to do the basic decoding of words which is the way that i learned how to read and i was going to ask you that because as a parent right i i don't know charlamagne if you do homework with your kids or if your wife does, but some of the stuff I can't teach my kids, right?

Because I can't teach them the way that they're learning now. Right. So we all learn purple and you have to say purple. Right. And then you got to keep going through that. So until you say the word purple. Right. They don't teach like that, which is very difficult. And I was going to ask you with those percentages that you said was that before covid after covid during covid because during covid we got a lot of kids that mommy and daddy can't teach them and talking to the screen every day on on facetime or classwork they're not paying attention like my son would be in class the bird fly he'd be he outside looking at the birds he outside looking at the people cutting the grass. He's looking at his siblings. He's like, Ma, can I get a snack? Because they're not in.

So I felt like COVID and the pandemic affected them a lot because it put them behind where they needed to be. They were already behind. And that's that's my point. They've been behind for the last 25 years. What COVID did was reveal what was already there. And it was an eye opener for so many of our parents who had already been struggling to understand what is this? What is this new way that they're doing with the kids that even the grandparents were saying, this is not the way you learn to read. Right. So folks knew that something was wrong, but weren't sure what to do about it. We make jokes about it. I knew math. Yeah. And and and it was very frustrating for parents who said, I don't even know how to help with the math or even with the reading. And it shouldn't be that way because a sound educational system is so clear and basic that parents can be real partners in helping to do the work.

But we were using this very progressive way. A lot of it came out of Columbia University Teachers College. And the average educator believes that the folks at the university level, they must know, right? They're the deep researchers. They're the really smart folks. So we just kind of followed a script that they laid out. And like the dance of the lemmings, they marched us off the side of the mountain all across the nation. But my message to kids is, it wasn't your fault. My message to the educators is, it wasn't your fault. We gave them a flawed playbook, and I'm giving a very different playbook that's going to

put folks back in place. And you know how I know it will work? In the state of Mississippi, they went from using that approach of balanced literacy and took it back to the basics of phonics and vocabulary development and what we call the science of reading. Mississippi, for decades, has been the lowest performing state in the nation. Even other states that did poorly said, well, at least we're not as bad as Mississippi. Wow. Mississippi has gone from last to basically first because they completely shifted from that Florida approach. And so a state like Mississippi can do what they did. All eyes are on what we're doing here in New York City. So we've trained up all of our teachers across the city. Half of our school districts have rolled out this new approach this September. The other half are going to be rolling it out next year. We're not leaving it up to every school to do it the way

that you think works best. We're given a very prescriptive model here and say, we know what works. We need everybody to do it this way. And we're going to be able to monitor this in a much more significant way that really has a level of fidelity that's attached to it. I'm not going to leave this up to just willy-nilly, everybody just doing this because we have failed kids for far too long, and that stops with me. I guarantee. You think schools are still recovering from the COVID homeschool years? Yeah, yeah, schools are still recovering, but I do think that we're seeing the signs of the recovery. Our attendance is up. You know, we have this issue around chronic absenteeism,

which essentially means kids still missing too many days from school. But those numbers are lowering as well. So we got more kids back in school. Listen, kids need to be in school. Their families need their kids to be in school. Nobody should just be home hanging out or otherwise out on the streets. So we're seeing folks back. But I think what we're also seeing is because of what we're doing around our literacy

work and our career connected learning, really giving more purpose to schools. Kids have a reason to be back in schools in a way that's making sense. I see parents, talk to parents. I speak at churches and whatnot all over the city, and people are saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. It's an amen corner because they know what we're doing is getting our kids back on the right track and is going to give a greater degree of hope for our kids. There's nothing worse than for a little boy or a little girl

to feel like a failure when they're eight years old in the fourth grade. Chance, I was just going to say, if you do the comparison of kids that you feel are failures, that can't read or can't do math, and you compare it against mental problems or mental illness, and I'm going to tell you why, right? If a kid can't read or understand correctly and they're in a classroom, right,

and they feel like a teacher's going to say, young man, you read, and he's going to be embarrassed, what is he going to do? He's going to a classroom, right? And they feel like a teacher's going to say, young man, you read. And he's going to be embarrassed. What is he going to do? He's going to act out, right? He's going to act out so that teacher does not call on him. He's going to want to get in trouble, right? And then he's going to get sent to the principal's office,

and he's going to be deemed as a kid that is a problem or troublesome or not focused, right? Then they're going to put him into a conversation with a therapist, where a lot of times school therapists will be like, the first thing that they do is they want to give the kid medicine or give him something that he might not need. When really the problem might be, he just can't read and he's not confident in himself. Man, Envy, let me tell you something, brother. You are spot on because when you can't read, you wind up giving up on yourself. The system gives up on you.

It's a direct alignment pathway to prison, to homelessness, to unemployment, to depression. It's all those things. The die gets cast very early on. That's why I'm making my biggest bet that if I can ensure that kids are all going to be on grade level by the third grade,

because all the research says if you get the kids on grade level by third grade, they're good from there. Because from there, they can see the success, they feel a level of success, their confidence kicks in. Now you can start, they can start to

read to learn, as opposed to just learning to read. But if you don't teach them how to read properly, it's like building a house starting on the second floor. You didn't have the foundation. And so we're going to make sure that the foundation is solid and strong. It doesn't happen overnight, but I believe it can happen sooner rather than later. And it certainly won't happen if you don't start. So we have started, I'm all in on this. I've been in this education space for over you know, over 35 years now. And,

and I, and I've seen some things and, and, and I'm from New York. I've been here all my life. We're going to change this system, man. We're going to get, we're going to get these kids back on track. And as I travel all around the city, the, the, the educators around New York City are saying, thank you. Right. Because they also have been told that they are failures because they can't. The reading scores are so low. The math scores are so low. And these are smart people who are committed, who do care about kids. But the narrative on them has been they're racist. They don't care about kids. They don't care about our kids. That's really not the case. People do care. You have to give them the right script on what they need to do. And that's what we're giving them. And we're going to be monitoring it very closely.

How are New York City public schools addressing mental health issues in young people? Well, first of all, there are a whole wide range of things. And kids talk about this all the time, right? So, I mean, we've got over've got over 5000 social workers across across our schools, a whole several thousand guidance counselors who all stand in a gap really around those issues. When when when you see your Kwame shows up and you can see things are just not quite right and they need some help. Right. So we we stand in a gap for them. We have over 300 of our schools right now today who have mental health school-based mental health clinics in the schools so there are real resources in those schools right now to help to address those those needs for our kids who just have some extra supports that they need then we have

we have close to 700 more schools charlemagne where they they don't have the school-based health clinic but they have a partnership with with the local hospital or some community-based organization that also provides those supports. So we got close to a thousand of our schools that already have these kinds of supports that are actually in place. One of the things I'm really excited about is this December, together with the Department of Health, we're going to be launching our telehealth program. That program is designed for high school kids. A high school kid who's going through some stuff, whether it's suicide, ideation, or just some level of depression, some level of trauma, whatever it might be, they don't have to make an appointment. They don't have to wait until school starts to go and try to find a counselor.

They can just pick up their phone. We're going to have, everybody will have this app and they'll be able to call right into and get somebody in real time who can be on that phone, who can talk them down, who can give them in that moment, just what they need. Because there are a lot of kids who are crying out for help and we can't afford for them to have to wait to get the help. So that's going to start in a couple of months. We're really excited about that. Department of Health is rolling that out. And they're going to be working in strong partnership with New York City Public Schools.

So that's another thing. And we're going to continue to build from there. I want to go back to something Envy said. How do you know when a child is actually going through mental health issues versus them just acting out because they want to get out of work or school? Yeah, yeah. That's a great question and and that's that's i think when in doubt make sure you err on the side of thinking that there's something really wrong correct right um but a lot of that comes from just knowing the kids right these kids are not robots and the people that work in their schools are not robots when you ask me about what's the secret sauce to like an Eagle Academy? Again, it's our relationships with the kids.

When kids are in school where they're well-known, somebody knows them well, that's how you keep your hand on the pulse of what's going on. And you can see when the kids are just something is off from its normal course. And then the other kids themselves, their friends will let you know. You know, all those years I was principal, I probably learned out, I learned more about kids from their friends who would say, Mr. Banks, you need to really go talk to Charlemagne because he's going through some stuff right now.

He's not going to willingly come and tell you about it, but there's some stuff happening at home. I know about it. Just see what you can do. When you're in a school, when a school works well, it's a family. And we keep our hand on the pulse. And the kids are not like

just factory workers. You know what I mean? So we know what's going on with them. And then when in doubt, you know, that's why you have those social workers in there. Because they're trained to look with that extra eye and have a better sense me what i did and i encouraged school principals all around the city um i didn't always know because i wasn't a trained social worker but but but i cared deeply about these

kids every single day envy every single day charlemagne i greeted all my kids at the front door every day i was not in my office as kids came into school. I shook the hand of every single young man of Eagle Academy when they came into that building. Not most days, every single day. At the front door, greeted them, I dapped them up, gave them a hug, and I could look in their eyes. And I knew right away if they were going through something because I knew them. And I'm telling you, most of our leaders around the system operate the same way.

They know their kids. They love their kids. Our New York City public schools have gotten a really bad rap as though we're an industry of folks who just don't care. And the kids can't read and the kids can't do math and the kids can't, can't, can't. And the kids also take on that persona. I'm here to change that.

And I believe that we can change that. But you gotta, you have to breathe a level of hope and optimism into a system for it to believe in itself. And then you have to start to see some victories so that people recognize that, you know, we really can be better.

You got to help convince them. That's right. And so and that's why I keep telling you the reading thing is so important. And I've already seen some signs. I've already spoken to some parents in such a short period of time who've already said my son. I had a woman in the Bronx who told me my son every day, I had to like push him to go into school. I think he was in the third grade. Little boy.

She said, I had to push him, like, come on, you've got to go to school. She said, but because of the work we've already done with the reading, she said, I'm at home, and he's like, Mommy, come, I want you to read, I want you to read with me this new book that I'm reading. She said, he's reading like he never read before. I love it. She says, so now when I walk him to school, he's running into the school. I had his mom tell me that it brought a tear into the eyes of everybody that was in the room. And what it said was we are on the right track. Stay steady on this course and make sure that we're doing that. Because when kids learn to read, they believe in themselves and they get that we're doing that because when kids learn to read they believe in

themselves and they get that confidence and when that confidence kicks in sky's the limit you can do all kinds of things after that how can people get involved man and continue to make a change in their local public schools how do we help help you do your job yeah yeah yeah i need you first of all i think uh uh you know we we need the philanthropic community first of all to continue to invest in this and to believe in the public schools. You know, a lot of great charter schools out there, and I believe in choice, and I'm not knocking any schools. But 90% of the kids in New York City and across the nation still go to regular public schools. So if you don't lift up those public schools, you're just playing around on the margins.

You're never going to fully affect real change. So, first of all believe make those investments um our folks in the community and folks like yourselves um but one of the things i say to folks is when when people come in don't just ask them how they're doing ask them what they're reading you know what i mean like like like like i'm i just started this this new book the age of ai this whole notion around artificial intelligence is critical. We're doing some stuff with our kids right now trying to build out a whole new system. The New York City public schools and schools around the nation and, in fact, around the world

are going to look drastically different within the next 10 years because of artificial intelligence. I'm reading a book right now about the dangers of it. And the dangers are real. The dangers are real. And if we're not careful, they'll make people obsolete that's right so so we we have to be careful i read a book when i just finished the summer on the bluff so he lost his book right uh you know i get a chance to to go to the vineyard in the summer and spend some time and relax but but the deal is ask folks what they're reading right and and And let's just help make sure that

let's make reading the new sexy. Absolutely. You know? The Shaman's Path to Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Right. And I'm reading Self Reliance. It's a book of original essays

from Ralph Waldo Emerson. You know what I want? I want everybody that comes on your show. I want them to come in with their book. I agree. I want them to come in, even if you just take a minute or two, because what your show represents, better than anybody, is culture. And the millions of people that you have watching this, if these folks are all like, what are you reading? And you can't show up with Envy and Charlamagne unless you're showing them the book that you're reading and talking a little bit about it, if that becomes part of our new lexicon, if that becomes

part of the culture of what we're talking about, you can transform minds. You can transform the way we show up in our schools. I really believe that. And so I would just say continue to promote it. I just did that this morning because I was talking, you know, my donkey of the day today was a public library in Huntsville, Alabama that's banning a book. I can't remember the name of the book, but they banned it because the author's last name is Gay. It's not Roxane Gay.

It's another one. Wow. But they're banning it just because that word Gay comes up as a keyword. Wow. And so they're banning the book. The book has nothing to do with sexuality. Just his name. Identity.

Is that crazy? Nothing. And so I did donkey donkey the day to that library but I was talking about how much I love reading because my mom was an English teacher and I grew up on

the bookie program I got two books I'm a New York Times bestselling author I got a book imprint and I'm also from South Carolina where the first

anti-literacy laws were created so when you ask me about reading and books it's business and it's personal to me

it's personal I truly believe reading reading man. You know, it's personal. Like I truly believe reading, reading helped me change my life. See that? Absolutely. And, uh, and it can help to transform the lives of so many young people. Let me tell you, these kids are brilliant, man. I have the best job in the world. I really do. And it's because first of all, New York city, there's no place like this. And we know that, but I get to live it every day because every single day I'm moving around the whole city, right? Like like like where in the world can you go where one day i started in the bronx at a school with cardi b who it made a million dollar donation to her middle school that she graduated from and and and and and and the kids go crazy and she shows up in all her

cardi b-ness and and then i leave there and at the end of the day i'm meeting with jewish yeshiva leaders from the orthodox jewish community at city hall where else can you see that range but a place like new york city right the whole world lives here i'm at a school last week in brooklyn all the kids are ukrainian when you represent when you understand like what that diversity is and you figure out how diversity can represent the ultimate beauty of what a nation should really be, it's an amazing, amazing opportunity. But if you don't do it right, you can see some of the craziness like we see in other parts of the country. Absolutely. Where they're banning books.

Banning books because the author's last name is Gay. How do you feel about that? Just the overall banning of books, especially the black books. Man, it is not only ridiculous, it is so dangerous. And it is a form of indoctrination. Because education is ultimately about the enlightenment of the mind. You can't enlighten your mind if you're limiting what folks even have access to. Right. And so so we should never be about banning books.

Certainly there's some books that are appropriate at certain grade levels. And that's that's true of any good school system. But what we're seeing, which I think is very dangerous, is the banning of books for political reasons. That's right. And I don't stand for that. I want New York City to be a beacon of enlightenment. You're looking at this issue, what's going on in the Middle East right now. As horrible as it is.

And we pray for the peace for the people over there. But kids need to be studying. Why are folks dropping bombs on each other? That stuff goes back centuries. Let's study that. Let's talk about that. Let's not limit the books. You limit access to knowledge.

That's a recipe for indoctrination. That's a recipe for authoritarianism. And it leads you down the wrong path. That's not what any healthy republic or democracy should ever be about. So so I'm about consciousness raising. I'm about knowledge. And every side has a little something to offer. And we need to be paying attention to what everybody's saying. This issue of immigration that we're watching every single day and how it's playing out in New York and all across the country. I want our kids studying the

issue of the day, not just being told this is the right way. And the only thing we're going to read and study is one person's point of view. That's not education. That's not education. So not for it. And we need to continue to make sure that we lift this up. I got one more question because we talked about the mental health piece earlier. And, you know, I have an organization called the Mental Wealth Alliance. And one of our biggest things that we want to do is we want to get social and emotional learning in public schools K through, you know, 12. What are they doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. First of all, let me tell you, we would love to work with you on that because there's a way for us to take that work and really scale it

up. And particularly coming off of the pandemic, the social emotional learning work, and this happened well before I even became chancellor. There's a lot of work that is being done in our schools in support of social emotional learning. I visited a school in Staten Island, like maybe within my first two weeks of being in this position. The school designed a wall, and the wall represents, and it lights up, it's a wide range of the feelings that you're having at any given moment in time. And they designed it as a fun wall. And you get a chance to kind of walk along this wall there's a little path that

you walk through and and you get to touch different parts of the wall that reflect the feelings that you're having in that moment and the folks in that school so get to observe that and figure out who they need to try and support who's feeling a certain way because you have to remember kids don't always they won't always articulate how they're feeling at a given moment but this is another way for them to kind of physically express where they are they're feeling anger they're feeling happiness are they feeling joy they're feeling sadness like what is it that they're feeling because ultimately that tips you into a place where somebody needs to sit with you and say, I'm here. That's right. I'm here. You know, next year when I do my mental welfare expo, cause we just had it

this past Saturday and on our world mental health day, I want to bring like 200 kids, man. Like we got to figure that out. How we, how we just have 200 kids in attendance. Charlamagne, we could do 2000 kids. Oh yeah. We, I mean we did 3,000 people this year right you know but I want to have like and there's always kids there but I want to do something specifically but we just have a bunch of kids from New York

just there brother all you got to do is let me know where and when and we will absolutely make it happen we would love to be in partnership with you on this

when we go to the schools the mayor and I we talk to kids mental mental health is one of the major things that kids talk about, not just for themselves,

but for their friends, right? Because they care about their friends and they can see the stuff that sometimes that their friends are going through. So yes, let's make that real. Let's partner on that because young people, and they follow your lead as well

on so much of this. And if we work in partnership, we have an opportunity to truly impact the lives of just... Let's do it. Let's do it, man. I'm with you. Well, there you have it.

David Banks, we appreciate you for joining us. Thank you so much, brother. Thank you. New York City Schools Chancellor and thank you, brother. Thank you. That's The Breakfast Club.

Good morning. Wake that ass up. In the morning. The Breakfast Club. As a kid, I really do remember having these dreams and visions, but you just don't know what is going to come for you. Alicia shares her wisdom on growth, gratitude, and the power of love. I forgive myself.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeart

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