Rant #2,156: School Daze

I'm back ...

This June is going to be a kind of tough month for me.

I have numerous medical appointments that I have all set up, and there will be days that I won't be writing this column because I am not going to work that particular day, or I am going to work later, like yesterday.

Nothing serious, just normal upkeep.

And I can say that I have them morning, noon and night.

It just makes me want to get back in the saddle here, and here I am.

But you know who makes me sick? The guy who is supposedly the mayor of New York City, although he seems to only govern a portion of the city's residents.

And that is Bill deBlasio, quite possibly the worst mayor the city has ever had ...  and that is saying a lot when you count in losers like past mayors Abe Beame and David Dinkins.

Anyway, deBlasio pushes most of those on the left more to the right, because he is really the lefty to end all lefties, someone who is so PC that it comes off his body in a sweat and a stench that reaches far beyond the New York City environs.

His policies are insipid, and yet the New York City populace has given him two terms to show how incapable of running a city he really is,

Remember, this is the guy who originally won the position using the race card--he heads a mixed race family and his wife is a black lesbian (self-professed).

Anyway, his latest proposal is perhaps the most insipid of all, one that will once and for all enable the New York City school system to come crashing down at his feet.

New York City has eight specialized schools--including Stuyvesant and the Bronx High School of Science--and he has proposed opening up the doors of these schools because their rolls do not include enough minorities.

Although 67 percent of New York City students are black and Hispanic, the percentage of these students who attend the specialized schools is a fraction of that number.

Again, these are specialized schools for the city's most elite students. One has to take a test to get into these schools, but deBlasio first wants to allow those minority students who take the test and fall just below the passing line to be let in because, well, they are minorities and from generally poorer sections of the city, where education is not as good as it is elsewhere.

Then, eventually, he wants to do away with the tests entirely, so that anybody who wants to can go to these schools for their high school education, which would effectively make these schools non-specialized.

Let me tell you, his proposal will continue the death knell of the New York City school system that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, his predecessor, started during his three terms in office.

Look, we all went to high school. There are kids who we all knew who were very bright, and there were kids who we all knew who were, well, above even that level of brightness.

In New York City, these kids have, for generations, had the opportunity to either stay in their area's high school, pick another high school, or try out for these elite schools.

And these schools are very difficult to get into. Kids who want to try to get into them take a long and arduous test, and probably most of them fail to make the grade.

Those kids are smart, but they don't belong in these schools.

So what happens when you open the door to others who are only in the school because of their race and where they live?

You dilute the system, a system that has worked for generations, and you create an artificial quota system that chooses a minority over some other child who actually deserves to get into the school because of his or her innate intelligence.

Let me tell you, plenty of minorities have attended these schools over the years from all areas of the city, both hoity toity and impoverished.

But deBlasio ignores this, ignores the history of these schools, and simply wants to destroy them.

Years and years ago, in 1971, as I was about to graduate junior high school, I went with a bunch of my friends to take the admissions test for Bronx High School of Science, one of New York City's long-time elite high schools.

I knew my family and I were moving to Long Island, but at that point, I didn't know when or where we were moving to, so to cover myself, I went for the test.

Let me tell you, it was not an easy test at all. If I remember correctly, it took hours to do, and when we were done, the whole lot of us were shaking our heads, thinking that maybe this test was a bit too difficult for us--and we were all pretty bright kids.

A few weeks later, we were either told that we had made the cut--a few of my group passed--and in my case, I was contacted during gym class that I had made BHSS, but with one stipulation: they wanted me to take a summer class to make sure that I could handle the curriculum, so I probably passed the test by the skin of my teeth.

I politely and very reverently turned them down, moved to Long Island during late summer 1971, and the rest is history.

Based on my personal experience, no, not every student should be permitted to go to high school at these schools, and that includes kids who are very bright.

These schools are truly for the best of the best, whether you are black, white, yellow, brown, green or purple, and whether you live in Harlem or Kew Gardens Hills, or South Jamaica, like I did at the time.

They are not for everybody, and deBlasio's proposal destroys these schools, makes them like any other high school in New York City, and is the death knell of a school system that was probably the best in the world through the mid 1960s, but has fallen on very hard times, for a variety of reasons, during the past 50 years.

deBlasio should keep his nose out of areas he knows little or nothing about. The elite schools are just that for a reason, and by virtually taking away that status by first allowing kids to get in there due to the color of their skin and/or where they came from, he is simply perpetuating a racial stereotype while thinking that he is further advancing these kids' cause.

Rather then do this, he should explore why certain areas of the city do not get the same education that other areas do, and try to fix that.

Don't fix something that is not broken.