Bill de Blasio Uses Pandemic to End ‘Discriminatory’ Screening in Schools
19 Dec 2020
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is taking advantage of the disarray of the city’s school system caused by the pandemic “crisis” to make changes to how some selective middle and high schools admit students in order to allow more black and Hispanic students entry.
The
New York Times reported in June that de Blasio views the use of screening criteria such as “attendance, grades, test scores, school work and sometimes interviews and recommendations” for students to be admitted to selective city schools as a tool of “segregation” because many black and Hispanic students do not achieve the level required for admission.
It’s
almost like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has a checklist of things he wants to “accomplish” before he leaves office. Think about it.
New York City not only survived 9/11; it arguably came back stronger than ever.
Yet, after seven years as mayor, the ever-hapless de Blasio has brought The Big Apple to its knees. Between month after month of “peaceful ‘protests” and de Blasio and NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s draconian COVID shutdowns, nearly 6,000 small businesses have been shuttered, NYC’s bankruptcy rate has surged 40 percent in 2020, and untold numbers of New Yorkers have lost their livelihoods.
Sweeping application changes for NYC specialized high schools, middle schools
Updated Dec 18, 2020;
Posted Dec 18, 2020
In this file photo, taken before the coronavirus pandemic, students at Staten Island Technical High in New Dorp work with clay in the school s MakerSpace. (Staten Island Advance/Annalise Knudson)Staten Island Advance/Annalise Knudson
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Sweeping changes to New York City’s specialized high school and competitive middle school application process were announced Friday by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and vocal critics calling for more diversity in the city’s most esteemed schools.
New York City Will Change Many Selective Schools to Address Segregation
The pandemic prompted the mayor’s most significant action yet on integration: a major shift in how hundreds of schools admit students.
Mayor Bill de Blasio is making changes that will affect how about 400 of the New York City’s 1,800 schools admit students.Credit.James Estrin/The New York Times
Published Dec. 18, 2020Updated March 19, 2021
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Friday major changes to the way hundreds of New York City’s selective middle and high schools admit their students, a move intended to address long-simmering concerns that admissions policies have discriminated against Black and Latino students and exacerbated segregation in the country’s largest school district.
The Book of Henry
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March 1973 was a time of disarray. The Watergate scandal was engulfing the Nixon Administration and the last American troops were about to leave Vietnam. Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon had just been released, speaking to the sense of desolation taking hold of society. Meanwhile, the Russian lunar rover Lunokhod 2 began its third round of exploration around the actual moon’s surface, just as NASA ended its own manned missions, which had once seemed to signify the endless possibilities of America, itself.
Meanwhile, on March 12, a tall, dapper young man arrived at Manhattan Beach City Hall. The city was in the midst of pulling itself out of the rubble of the 1971 earthquake, so City Hall was housed in a collection of trailers. Henry Mitzner had just left a short career as an engineer in the aerospace industry, which was in a tailspin. He had worked odd jobs, gone to night school to become an accountant, and come to Manhattan Beach to begin a