Mayor Says He'll Reconsider Changes To Elite School Admissions

NEW YORK, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to "revisit" his lawyers' opinion that he's largely powerless to make the city's elite high schools more diverse. The mayor on Friday said he'll have his Law Department take another look at the state law that experts say gives him latitude to change how students are accepted to five of the nine specialized high schools.

"I want to have that power, unquestionably, and so far in the view of our Law Department, it sadly is as not as straightforward as that," the mayor said on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show." "I certainly will go back and look again and talk to our lawyers again because I think this is a matter of injustice that has to be addressed."

A 1971 state law requires that three of the original specialized schools — Stuyvesant High School, Brooklyn Technical High School and Bronx High School of Science — base admission on a single standardized exam, the Specialized High School Admissions Test.

Five other specialized high schools created since then also require the test, which has proven a barrier to entry for minority students. Just 10.4 percent of next year's seats at the eight testing schools were offered to black and Latino students, Department of Education figures show.

Education experts say the city could act on its own to change admissions at the five newer schools not mentioned in the law. De Blasio passed the buck to Albany last week, saying the state Legislature would have to act for anything to change. But on Friday he said he'll review the city's current understanding that it can't do anything.

"We do not have the total independence that I think would be ideal for a mayoral control system," de Blasio said. "But that being said, I’ll revisit it because I want to find any form of action that I possibly can find."

A Law Department spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment on Friday.

De Blasio has railed against what he's called "high-stakes" admissions standards at specialized high schools, saying kids should be judged by their overall talent and not just one test score. His 2013 campaign website contained a pledge to "remove single-test criteria for all admissions and gifted and talented decisions, including selective schools."

To change admissions at the five newer specialized high schools, experts say, the city's Panel for Educational Policy could remove their "specialized" designation, freeing them from the state law's testing requirement.

But the DOE has said the law doesn't lay out how that could be done, and any effort to do so could face some sort of challenge. In lieu of doing that, the city has tried to get more black and Latino students to take the specialized high schools test, but those efforts have seen mixed results.

As Politico New York noted, mayor hasn't shied away from other big legal fights. He's taking oil behemoths and drug companies to court over climate change and the opioid crisis, and his Law Department has defended the city's interpretation of a state civil rights law shielding police personnel records from public view.

Some advocates and officials, including Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., want de Blasio to change admissions at the five newer specialized high schools right away. But such an effort could meet opposition from students, staff and alumni at those schools, said David C. Bloomfield, an education policy professor at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center.

De Blasio seems cautious about wading into the racially fraught debate, Bloomfield said, but the existence of political challenges doesn't change the fact that "justice delayed is justice denied" for black and Latino students whom the test disadvantages.

"He (the mayor) still seems to be pussy-footing, but it’s a positive sign" that he wants to take another look at the state law, Bloomfield said.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio visits a second-grade class in September 2014. Photo by Susan Watts-Pool/Getty Images)