De Blasio hopes to convince Eric Adams to scrap Gifted & Talented in NYC schools: ‘This is a better approach’

Hizzoner is mighty sure of himself.

Mayor de Blasio voiced confidence Tuesday he’ll be able to change Eric Adams’ mind after the Brooklyn borough president poured cold water on his plan to phase out the controversial Gifted & Talented program from city schools.

Over the weekend, Adams’ campaign said the likely next mayor believes in modifying G&T to “ensure fairer outcomes” — as opposed to outright scrapping the program, which uses a single admission test to pick out talented 4-year-olds for advanced elementary school classes.

But de Blasio, who rolled out a blueprint last week for eliminating G&T over complaints that it has exacerbated segregation in city schools, said Tuesday morning he’s hopeful Adams will come around to his point of view.

“This is a better approach,” de Blasio said in his daily briefing when asked about Adams’ opposition. “And then, you know, in the future, people will make their own judgments, which of course is their right, but I think what we need to do right now is have a strong engagement process and keep moving forward.”

Eric Adams and Mayor Bill de Blasio
Eric Adams and Mayor Bill de Blasio


Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Luiz C. Ribeiro/)

The mayor also predicted “a lot of support” from the public for his push to end G&T.

“Any new mayor is going to weigh that,” said de Blasio, who’s reportedly in the running to become an informal City Hall adviser to Adams next year.

But Adams, who’s a shoo-in to win the Nov. 2 mayoral election against Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, did not sound convinced when asked later in the day about de Blasio’s comments.

In fact, Adams said he believes in expanding G&T — not doing away with it.

“We have too many districts where you did not have a Gifted & Talented program,” Adams told reporters at an unrelated event in Brooklyn.

“I think it should be altered, expanded,” he added, “to find the accelerated learners and give them what they need to continue to accelerate.”

The Mark Twain Middle School for the Gifted and Talented in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.
The Mark Twain Middle School for the Gifted and Talented in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.


The Mark Twain Middle School for the Gifted and Talented in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. (Todd Maisel/)

The current iteration of G&T dates back to the Bloomberg administration, and de Blasio has for years railed against it as an outdated formula that causes racial segregation and unfairly stakes out educational paths for students based on a single test they take as 4-year-olds.

On the segregation issue, de Blasio has lamented that roughly 80% of kindergarteners who qualify for G&T classes are white and Asian, even though those groups only make up about 30% of the city’s preschool students.

Nonetheless, de Blasio didn’t announce a plan to replace G&T until this past Friday — one day after the city’s Department of Investigation released a damning report finding he and his family misused his NYPD security detail.

Dubbed “Brilliant NYC,” de Blasio’s plan doesn’t roll back G&T right away.

Rather, it envisions several months of community input before replacing G&T with a new system whereby all students receive “accelerated instruction” courses featuring real-world projects about topics like robotics and community organizing beginning in kindergarten.

That timeline means the meat and potatoes of any post-G&T program will be left up to the next mayor — and while he said he shares de Blasio’s concerns about segregation, Adams was not gung ho for “Brilliant NYC.”

“I don’t believe what he did speaks for me,” Adams said of de Blasio’s plan. “I’m going to look at the best way to do it. I’m going to sit down with parents, advocates, teachers and sit down and really put in place something that I’ve talked about for years: expansion.”

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