Gov: Blasio’s elite-HS admission plan DOA
Gov. Cuomo on Monday all but dismissed Mayor de Blasio’s plan n to get rid of the admissions exam for the city’s eight elite public high schools as a nonstarter.
While saying de Blasio “raises legitimate concerns” about “an important issue,” Cuomo — who dodged saying where he stands on the test for a second day — nevertheless predicted Hizzoner’s proposal would be dead on arrival.
“I don’t know that there’s much of an appetite in Albany now to get into a new bill, a new issue,” he told NY1. “We will only have a few days left in the legislative session.”
Opponents also blasted the introduction late Friday of an Assembly bill that would permit de Blasio to go ahead with his plan to assign most slots to the top 7 percent of students in each middle school, which critics say would exclude many of the city’s smartest kids.
The Assembly’s Education Committee is scheduled to vote on the measure Wednesday morning.
A “memorandum of opposition” from alumni of two of the original three specialized high schools — Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech — called it “disappointing that such an incredibly complicated legislative proposal impacting the future of so many children and families is being considered without any public dialogue whatsoever.”
Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan (D-Queens) didn’t return a request for comment.
Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz (DBronx), whose district includes both Bronx HS of Science and the HS of American Studies at Lehman College, said, “The current exam is 100 percent objective. No one is saying it’s culturally biased.”
“It’s like the DOE’s motto is, ‘If it’s not broken, break it,’ ” said Dinowitz, a Bronx Science grad.
About two dozen Stuyvesant and Tech students interviewed Monday said they opposed the mayor’s plan.
“No one is here because they were handed something out. They all had to work for it,” said Stuy senior Nathaniel, 17, who charged that eliminating the admissions test would be “essentially dumbing down the school.”
Asian-Americans predominate in those eight schools, and the Association of Asian-American Citizens for Civil Rights said it would protest the plan at City Hall Tuesday.
“The mayor is pitting minority against minority and that’s really messed up,” coalition member Kenneth Chiu said during a news conference in Brooklyn.
Also at the event, IS 87 seventhgrader Dylan LaBella, the 11-yearold son of an NYPD cop, said he takes test prep for three hours ev- ery Saturday at the Chang Learning Center in hopes of getting into Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech.
“I have to tell you, it’s torture. But in the end, I know it’s going to help me succeed,” said LaBella.
“Now if the mayor decides to take away the SHSAT, you’re telling me that I’ve been working this hard, doing everything I have for absolutely nothing. That is the definition of unfair.”
Monday night, de Blasio told NY1 that if his plan “doesn’t get acted on now” in Albany, “it is going to be at the front of the agenda next year, and I think with a different Senate and a great opportunity for action.”
I don’t know that there’s much of an appetite in Albany. — Gov. Cuomo, on a proposal to eliminate the admissions test at elite city high schools, which Mayor de Blasio touted on Sunday (left).