NY POST: Marc Held, Partner at Held & Hines Quoted in Article Re: SHSAT Lawsuit
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Parents of NYC students waiting to take the entry exam for the specialized high schools are being Scrooged by Mayor de Blasio, a new lawsuit complains.
Several fed-up moms and dads filed the holiday-season suit Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court for the parents of more than 27,000 kids who normally take the SHSAT, the sole criteria for admission to eight top-performing high schools, including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.
The suit demands that the DOE administer the exam within 30 days.
The highly competitive test is normally given in late October or early November, but the Department of Education postponed it indefinitely, purportedly because of the pandemic.
While unveiling changes in middle and high school admission policies on Friday, Mayor de Blasio finally announced that registration for the SHSAT, will be open from Dec. 21 through Jan. 15.
The DOE said it will administer the exam in students’ own middle schools to minimize travel and intermixing as a COVID-19 precaution.
But the DOE still gave no exact dates for the exam. In a letter to families, Carranza said it will be administered “in late January.” Spokespersons told reporters it will be given “starting the week of Jan. 27.”
No mention was made of giving the test online, an option used for Advanced Placement and SAT exams during the pandemic. If NYC middle schools are still closed that week, the SHSAT would have to be canceled.
Attorney Marc Held, who represents the parents in the suit, called the mayor’s announcement a “ruse.”
“By not scheduling a date, it is in essence canceled. That remains the mayor’s ultimate goal,” Held said.
De Blasio and Carranza have “intended for quite some time” to avoid giving the exam, it alleges, saying the DOE has not budgeted or planned ahead for site preparation, proctoring, scoring — or even finalized the content with the testing vendor.
The DOE “has not put in place the infrastructure or even drafted the test to be administered to the students,” the suit says. “The 2020 SHSAT has not been scheduled, and it is de facto canceled, in violation of state law.”
The suit notes Carranza’s statement to principals in May at the height of the pandemic, “Never waste a good crisis to transform a system.”
De Blasio and Carranza have long wanted to get rid of the SHSAT, saying it suppresses black and Latino students from entering the elite schools. The mayor reaffirmed his dismay at specialized school admissions at his press conference Friday: “That is a broken status quo that needs to change.”
Lidra Joyce, the mother of an eighth-grader and a plaintiff in the suit, said she’s still in the dark about her son’s future.
“The mayor’s empty promises have left us and many other parents not knowing where our children will be attending high school or what steps to take,” she said.
Another plaintiff, Haim Cohen, whose eighth-grade son attends Q300, a citywide gifted & talented school in Queens, called the mayor’s announcement “smoke and mirrors.”
“I just don’t believe him,” Cohen said. “There is no date. Very non-committal. More of the same.”
The mayor and chancellor have twice lobbied the state Legislature, unsuccessfully, to repeal the Hecht-Calandra Act, which mandates the entry exam for at least three specialized schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech.
They contend it results in segregation. Last month, 17 community and activist groups, including Teens Take Charge, sent a letter to Gov. Cuomo pleading that he issue an executive order to suspend the SHSAT because many students have suffered from the pandemic and fallen behind.
Last year, about 27,000 students took the SHSAT, with 4,265 scoring high enough to land a seat.
Asian-American kids received 54 percent of admission offers, followed by whites (25.1 percent), Hispanics (6.6 percent), and blacks (4.5 percent). Blacks and Hispanics make up 70 percent of NYC public-school students.
Others argue that eliminating the SHSAT will only put a Band-Aid on the real problem — lax instruction in many elementary and middle schools.
Lidra Joyce and her husband Troy have no doubt their son Bryston, on the honor-roll at JHS 190, can score high enough to get into any specialized school, including his top choice, Stuyvesant.
Diversity at NYC’s top schools is crucial, his mom said.
“Being a biracial child, Bryston has to work extra hard to remove the social stigma associated with children who look like him,” she said.
Their son’s education began at a Montessori school, and continued through fourth grade at the pricey Berkeley Carroll, , a private school in Brooklyn.
After their second child was born, the couple moved to Forest Hills, where Bryston attended fifth grade at PS 174.
Bright and athletic, Bryston took part in the school’s debate team, the math club, a STEM program at St. John’s University, and the basketball team, among other sports.
At the end of 7th grade, Bryston and his parents trained their sights on the specialized high schools.
JHS 190 offered an after-school SHSAT prep course for $450, but when Joyce tried to sign up her son, she was told, “We don’t have any more seats,” due to a lack of staffing. “There was no apology. I was told to explore other options because they could not accommodate me.”
They wound up choosing Kweller Prep, a private service that tutors students for the SHSAT, as well as the SAT and ACT for college. Bryston completed a 12-week, $2,500 course over the summer and is currently taking a $1,500 refresher course on Saturdays.
“While we were in a position to pay, I know a lot of families are not, and they should have affordable options to give this prep to their kids,” Joyce said.
Instead of abolishing the SHSAT, she said, the school system should offer or subsidize tutoring and test prep for all students who need extra help to pass the exam.
