Jamaica High School in Queens has serious bragging rights. It counts Pulitzer prize winners, Olympic athletes and scholars among its graduates. But by 2011, the school was defined as failing and in 2014, it closed.
That bothered Jelani Cobb, who is an alumnus of the school and a professor at the University of Connecticut. Cobb wrote about Jamaica High School and what its loss means to the neighborhood in The New Yorker magazine. We sent him out with a tape recorder to share his thoughts.
You can hear a longer version of this piece on the New Yorker Radio Hour.