Impartial mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo stated Saturday he plans so as to add extra specialised excessive colleges throughout NYC and broaden gifted and gifted packages, hitting onerous on a key schooling challenge that has turn out to be a divisive flashpoint within the mayoral election.
Cuomo’s essential rival, Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani, sparked debate lately when he stated in a New York Occasions candidate survey that he’d finish admissions to the gifted and gifted program for kindergarteners. Mamdani’s stance reignited a heated controversy over the favored program in New York Metropolis public colleges that carves out a separate studying observe for choose college students.
In his Saturday announcement, Cuomo stated he partnered with the group Mother or father Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Schooling or PLACE NYC, in creating the plan, a keystone of which might be to construct one other specialised faculty in Queens.
The borough at present has just one specialised faculty, Queens Excessive College for the Sciences, which accepts simply 130 new college students a yr. Different present specialised colleges are far bigger, resembling Brooklyn Tech, which accepts round 1,400 new college students a yr, and Bronx Excessive College of Science, which enrolls round 720 new college students annually.
Cuomo’s long-term plan is to lift the whole variety of specialised seats in Queens to 1,000 to be extra on par with Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island colleges, in addition to double the variety of specialised excessive colleges all through New York Metropolis from 9 to 18.
“Every child deserves the chance to reach their full potential, regardless of zip code, background or income,” Cuomo stated. “Queens is home to extraordinary families and talented students, yet it has been overlooked when it comes to specialized education.”
The plan would assist tackle the issue of lengthy commutes of as much as three hours that Queens college students can face to attend specialised colleges in different boroughs.
“Gov. Cuomo’s plan to expand specialized high schools and create a second one in Queens is about basic fairness,” stated Yiatin Chu, co-president of PLACE NYC. “For too long, Queens — the city’s most diverse borough — has been left behind while other boroughs benefited from greater access to accelerated education.”
Cuomo’s schooling plan focuses on the objectives of constructing eight extra specialised excessive colleges, increasing Gifted & Gifted packages in each borough, modernizing school rooms and strengthening early faculty and pathways in know-how, or P-TECH, packages.
The ex-governor’s plan additionally requires changing colleges which can be thought-about “chronically failing” with constitution and specialty colleges, aligning schooling with job abilities and investing in trainer coaching.
Mamdani, himself a Bronx science alum, had at one level advocated ditching the controversial single take a look at that decides admissions to most of the metropolis’s specialised excessive colleges, the SHSAT. However he has since modified his stance on that, citing “the need to focus on how we can … transform the conditions that then are the basis of that specialized high school test.”
Initially Printed: October 11, 2025 at 5:00 PM EDT
