How school funding can help repair the legacy of segregation America’s schools spend less money on Black students. Closing the gap is key to equality. Feb 17, 2021, 8:00am EST Leanne Nunes, a first-year student at Howard University and the executive college director at IntegrateNYC, walks through her neighborhood in Mount Vernon, New York. Desiree Rios for Vox The walls at the high school Leanne Nunes attended in the Bronx were painted a color she likes to call “penitentiary beige.” The cafeteria, located in the basement, had no windows. About half of her classrooms didn’t have windows, either. “It felt kind of jail-like,” Nunes, now a first-year student at Howard University, told Vox. “It felt like the building itself was trying to keep you in.”