Good morning. It is Friday. Mayor Eric Adams plans to restart the city’s gifted and talented public schools program. We’ll also look at a former New York Rangers player whose courtroom sloppiness brought back memories of sloppiness on the ice. And the Mets play their home opener today.
By expanding the gifted and talented program and doing away with admissions tests permanently, Eric Adams hopes to address what city officials have recognized for years: The program has contributed to racially segregated classrooms.
While 70 percent of students in the city’s school system are black and Latino, about 75 percent of students enrolled in gifted classes are white or Asian-American.
Adams said on Twitter that the changes he announced “wanted to give every child, in every zip code, a fair chance”. He wants 100 extra places for toddlers and 1000 more for third graders, in a system with more than 1 million students.
He would replace the citywide admission test with a screening process. Pre-K teachers nominated students who could then enter a raffle.
But there is a potential catch. Adams’ plan assumes the state legislature will agree to expand mayoral oversight in schools — probably a given, but lawmakers in Albany were unable to reach an agreement during budget negotiations, delaying the decision until the legislative’s remaining weeks. seat.
The reaction, pro and con
Michael Mulgrew, the chairman of the powerful United Federation of Teachers, said that “greater access to the city’s gifted and talented programs was long overdue.”
But there were concerns that the mayor’s plan wouldn’t go far enough and still provide only a small number of places for the city’s more than 70,000 preschoolers. And some officials questioned the value of the program itself. “Scaling up a program that segregates students, often along the lines of class and race, is a retrograde approach,” Brad Lander, the city superintendent, said in a statement.
Even defenders of gifted and talented programs were concerned. Yatin Chu, the co-founder of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, said immigrant families would like a “more standardized and less subjective” way to evaluate children than the screening process Adams and his school chancellor, David Banks, are asking for.
Weather
Enjoy a sunny day in the high 60s, with temperatures dropping to the low 50s at night.
parking on the other side
Today (Good Friday) and tomorrow (Passover) suspended.
No bail for suspect in Brooklyn subway attack
A federal magistrate ordered Frank James to be held without bail after prosecutors said he had fired a “completely premeditated” shot that injured at least 30 people. James’ lawyers, who said he had called a tip line to surrender, asked Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann to ensure that James received psychiatric care in prison.
James said little during a Thursday hearing, often answering questions from Mann with a single, quiet word — “Yes.” He made no plea.
Federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing that James’ lengthy arrest record — nearly a dozen minor offenses, including reckless endangerment, theft and trespassing — may seem “unobtrusive.” But they argued it was “a photograph of a person with a penchant for defying authority and unable or unwilling to comply with the law.”
Mia Eisner-Grynberg, one of his court-appointed attorneys, said outside the courthouse that “initial reports” from police and news outlets may be “inaccurate”, while warning against “a hasty judgment”.
Sean Avery, Defending in Court
Former New York Rangers star Sean Avery had a reputation as what my colleague Jonah E. Bromwich called a provocateur on the ice. Since leaving the National Hockey League, Avery has become a self-proclaimed bike lane watchdog, posting videos to Instagram of clashes in which he said bike lane rules had been broken. When he came across a car parked on a Manhattan bike path in 2019, he rammed into the car with his scooter.
That encounter has brought him to court, where he plays a sloppy and unorthodox defense game. During a lawsuit on Thursday, Avery said he wanted to represent himself — and his lawyer left, although Judge John Zhuo Wang appointed another lawyer to assist Avery.
Avery also demanded a jury trial, although court trials are the norm in cases with relatively minor criminal mischief charges.
After Avery’s objections, the judge set May 23 as the date for a trial – a trial in court.
The latest New York news
For the Mets, hopes and predictions
Bruce Bukiet will see the Mets play their home opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks this afternoon and he will hope because that’s what Mets fans do.
He’s not the usual dim hope of the Mets fan who’s used to getting so close and so far — that close to the World Series, that close to the playoffs or that close to a season above .500. He is exactly the hope of someone who reached the record last month with a prediction: The Mets would win 88 games this season.
And only finished second in the National League East, behind the Atlanta Braves, with 93 wins.
Bukiet is a professor and associate dean at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who for more than 20 years has predicted the final standings, team by team, with the wins and losses and games back on the opening day of the major league baseball season. He does not rely on clairvoyance – he is a mathematician – but on a statistical model he has developed.
He learned the hard way that some years are better than others. Last year, he predicted that the Mets would win the National League East, followed by the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals. As it turned out, the Braves finished first, followed by the Philadelphia Phillies. The Mets came in third.
He correctly predicted five out of 10 teams in the playoffs — “Last year was a crappy year,” he explained by way of explanation — and the Braves went on to win the World Series. “I had the Astros with a 55 percent chance of winning,” he said.
This time, second place in the National League East would put the Mets in the playoffs. He predicted that the Braves, Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers would make the playoffs by winning their divisions. Under baseball’s new and expanded playoff system, the other three teams in the playoffs would be the ones with the most wins, regardless of division. That would mean the Mets will play post-season for the first time since 2016, along with the Phillies and the San Diego Padres — if he’s right.
This afternoon’s game will be played to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major league-debut, which broke the color barrier. And this morning, the Mets unveiled a statue of Tom Seaver at Citi Field.
What we are reading
METROPOLITAN diary
Emergency repair
Dear Diary:
It was December 1995. I was working at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue and I was on my way to a new colleague’s party at Carroll Gardens. I was 22, ready to take on the world and quite flattered to be invited to the party.
My boyfriend and I were just coming out of the F train station when I felt like I had stepped into a deep hole. When I looked down, I saw that the heel of one of my new black boots was barely attached.
I wasn’t going to show up at the party with a broken boot, but I wasn’t going to turn around and go home.
There was a bodega nearby and we went looking for Krazy Glue, which I foolishly thought would be enough to fix the heel.
The young woman at the counter asked why I needed the glue. When I showed it to her, she shouted something in a language I didn’t understand, and a young man in military clothes appeared with a large toolbox.
He motioned for me to hand him the boot, then he began to drill the heel back into place with a drill. I stood there balancing on one leg like a clumsy flamingo while people came for milk and bananas.
The young man reattached the heel and even put a few layers of cardboard in the boot so I wouldn’t feel the screws.
I offered to pay him, but he refused and sent me away with a friendly warning: don’t dance too much.
— Alina Shteynberg
