City 'Gerrymandered' Elite High School Program, Lawsuit Says

NEW YORK — Some opponents of New York City's plan to diversify its top high schools took their fight to court Thursday, saying the city racially "gerrymandered" a program offering seats to disadvantaged students.

The complaint filed in Manhattan federal court challenges Mayor Bill de Blasio's expansion of the so-called Discovery program for specialized high school admissions. The mayor plans to offer 20 percent of seats in eight of the nine elite schools to students who score just below the cutoff on the schools' admissions exam.

The city also plans to alter the program's eligibility criteria to focus on students in poorer schools. But the lawsuit — brought by a parent-teacher organization, two civil-rights groups and three parents — argues the change will disproportionately harm Asian-Americans, who were offered a majority of this year's seats.

"In practice, Defendants’ reorganization of the Discovery Program operates as a set-aside, disproportionately prohibiting Asian-American students from competing for 20 percent of the seats at each Specialized High School," the suit says.

The Discovery initiative is one piece of de Blasio's plan to racially integrate the specialized high schools. Just 10.4 percent of seats for the current school year were offered to black and Hispanic students in the spring.

The mayor also wants to eventually abolish the Specialized High School Admissions Test, the standardized exam that's the sole basis of admission to eight of the schools. The ninth, LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, requires an audition and an academic review instead of the test.

The city expects that the revamped Discovery program, set to start in September 2019, will nearly double black and Hispanic enrollment across the specialized high schools. But the changes to the criteria will shut out many Asian students, with 11 of the 24 mostly Asian-American schools with eighth-grade enrollment set to lose eligibility, the lawsuit argues.

The expansion of the program "also disproportionately harms Asian-American students by decreasing the number of students who can gain admission without Discovery," the suit says.

The mayor's plan has reportedly faced other criticisms. At a public meeting in Brooklyn this week, members of a group called Parenting While Black said de Blasio should do more to better city schools starting in the earliest years, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for the Department of Education stood by the plan.

“Our reforms will expand opportunity and raise the bar at our specialized high schools," the spokesman, Will Mantell, said in a statement. "Our schools are academically stronger when they reflect the diversity of our City."

(Lead image: Stuyvesant High School is pictured in Manhattan in 2005. Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)