Mayor Bill de Blasio said he is still trying to decide on whether to follow through on changes to public middle and high school admission criteria proposed last year.
In a major policy shift, last year de Blasio announced that the Department of Education would drop admission screens for middle schools for at least a year as well as geographic preferences high schools for the next two years.
But during a press conference on Monday, de Blasio said the City is “still reviewing” all issues related to middle and high school admissions. “There’s been some reporting that suggested final decisions have been made, they have not been made,” de Blasio said. “So, this is something we’re going to keep working on. There’s been a lot going on, obviously. But we’re going to look at this very carefully, look at some of the input we’ve received from communities, and come up with more specifics soon.”
The proposed changes to middle and high school admissions are meant to help remedy segregation in the New York City public school system. Although Black and Latino children make up 70% of all public school students, they only make a small fraction of the student bodies at the city’s most selective screened schools.
A Department of Education spokesperson told amNewYork Metro that the City is reevaluating “the year two component” of the proposed changes to high school admissions based on geographic preferences adding that last year 48 high schools scrapped their district preferences for admission. There are 235 high schools that offer borough priority for admission and only 27 schools give priority to students living in a certain zone for some seats and only one give priority to students living in a certain zone for all seats, the spokesperson said.
Although de Blasio has pledged to release more updates on school admission changes, the fate of the policy is really in the hands of incoming mayor Eric Adams.
