Transcript: A Year Ahead of Schedule, Mayor de Blasio Announces Opening of New Upper West Side School

August 10, 2016

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Alright, everybody ready?

Good afternoon – we have just crossed into afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody.

I love a very visual site – we have quite a visual site here. I want to welcome everyone. This is a really great day for the children and the parents of the Upper West Side, and it’s a day that a lot of people who are sitting here around me have been working very, very hard for. Anything like this takes a lot of effort, a lot of persistence – and we can certainly say of the elected officials and the community activists of the Upper West Side, they are legendary for their persistence and their focus, and this is certainly the day they can claim a victory on.

So, this community’s been growing like so much of the city, and it’s a really wonderful place to live. Long ago I used to live here. It’s a great place to live. It’s a very desirable community, and it’s certainly seen real growth – and we have to adjust that growth and make smart decisions so we can accommodate the needs of children and make sure they can learn in the best possible environment.

And there’s certainly been increasing pressure on the schools that existed because of that growth, and real needs that had to be addressed. We heard, so strongly, the voice of this community calling for the creation of more school seats, and a real demand that whatever happened in the development process, wherever the city could have an impact, that we focus on the creation of more school capacity.

And I want all of the leaders here around me, and I want the people of this community to know we heard you loud and clear. We heard you loud and clear that we had to invest in more school space, that we had to make the development process work for the community, and that we had to do it quickly because the need was right now. And we had to move this development, and particularly the development of the school space as quickly as humanly possible. And we had to be creative and innovative in the process. So, I’m very proud to say that the school that will be here in this building will be opening a year earlier than originally projected –

[Applause]

And we are going to be ready for opening day September, 2017 – so just a little over a year from now this school will be open to the children of the community. And I want to thank everyone who pushed for it. I want to thank everyone who’s going to be a part of getting it done. This space, as of September, 2017, 13 short months from now – will have enough room for 700 children – 700 kids – pre-K through 8th Grade.

And I’m going to acknowledge my colleagues here. Every one of them has played a role in the success. I want to say, since I was on the receiving end of this, that Councilmember Helen Rosenthal cajoled, reminded, accosted, pulled my lapel, found me at every event and meeting, and this was her constant demand and constant reminder to me that this school was desperately needed, and we had to find a way to do it faster. So, everyone here deserves a share of the success but I want to give honorable mention for sheer persistence to Councilmember Helen Rosenthal. Thank you very much.

[Applause]

And I want to thank the elected officials you’ll hear from in a moment. Again, every single one of them fought for this. Every one of them believed in it, and believed that we had to do more and quicker for the community – and fought for it, and I thank them all. You’ll hear from them in just a moment.

I want to thank the folks who do the work to create these schools and their fantastic teams – of course, the President of the School Construction Authority, Lorraine Grillo and our Deputy Chancellor of DOE, Elizabeth Rose. Thank you both so much.

[Applause]

And then the community leaders who worked very, very hard on this – I want to thank the Chair of Community Board 7, Elizabeth Caputo. Thank you for your leadership and your persistence throughout.

[Applause]

And if there’s anyone I’ve missed, I don’t know – I have two other names. I’m not sure they’re here but I’m just going to say them both – Joe is here, I’m sorry. Thanks – and I know the CEC has played a key role, obviously, in addressing these issues and the many issues that have to be looked at in terms of this district and how to approach the space needs for the community. Being president of a CEC is a very, very intense job particularly when there are so many moving parts that have to be addressed. So, I want to thank the President of CEC for District 3, Joe Fiordaliso. Thank you.

[Applause]

So, this space is going to be built out, and the children are going to come here, and they’re going to be very much a part of our new Equity and Excellence plan. This is the governing concept for our school system going forward. And this school is going to be one of the ones where you’ll see this idea in action. The idea underlying Equity and Excellence was to shake the foundations of our educational system. From the beginning, we said the status quo wasn’t working. We had to do things very differently. Too many kids weren’t getting a fair opportunity for a great education, and our standards weren’t high enough in too many cases. So, thus Equity and Excellence – this is a school where those words will come to life.

We believe that a new school building, itself, obviously offers an opportunity to make real improvements, but it’s going to be a new school building with a new governing philosophy that’s suffusing the entire Department of Education. We also believe, as with everything we do in government – if we can do something faster, it’s our obligation to do so, obviously never sacrificing quality. But again, in this case, the demands of the community caused us to really think about if there was different and better way to do things. And with the great work of SCA, we found a way to do this a year earlier – again, thank you for that exceptional effort.

So you get a sense of what this school is going to look like – these beautiful drawings behind us – obviously, a modern, airy, open space. There will be art and music rooms. There will be a science suite. That’s so important nowadays where we’re focusing on STEM education to have that dedicated area for science. There will be a library. There will be two rooftop playgrounds – so really taking advantage of this space and maximizing it and making sure that our kids get the recreation they need and the physical fitness they need.

The new tenant here in this school will be P.S. 191 – now that’s pending the approval –

[Applause]

Yes. Shout out, P.S. 191 – pending the approval of the Panel for Education Policy. And the principal of P.S. 191, Principal Keville, who you’ll hear from in a moment, and her staff – they really deserve credit. They came into a school that needed some real change and needed some real improvement, and they have very consistently done that work and helped the school to get noticeably better. And to the principal, I want to say something that particularly deserves praise – this school, according to the state definitions, was on a list of persistently dangerous schools and under Principal Keville’s leadership, this school has come off that list and is on the way to a better future.

[Applause]

So P.S. 191 students will come into this wonderful new space. But at the same time, it’s going to help us address overcrowding issues in other schools in the community. And we’ll be working with parents and community members throughout District 3 on a rezoning plan that takes into account the many needs that exist and thinks about how we can rationalize for the future, and also address some of the other crucial concerns, such as ensuring that our schools are diverse. So we have a chance here to do a lot of good all at once.

[Applause]

This is part of a citywide effort in terms of creating new school space. As we know, there are some communities that have such distinct need. That’s why we increased our investment in our Capital Plan for new school seats, so our citywide five-year Capital Plan for Education includes $4.5 billion and will create more than 44,000 new seats. And that was a high priority for the City Council. We made that increase in the course of the budget process. That’s the physical part. But everything else that goes on in our Equity and Excellence Plan will be in evidence too. The investments we obviously have made in pre-K and in afterschool for middle school kids – that will be pertinent in what happens in this building – what we’re doing with college, access for all, what we’re doing with computer science for all. This will all play a crucial role in what happens here in the new P.S. 191, which again goes all the way up to eighth grade in this new building.

Now, for all the folks who work so hard in the Department of Education – I want to just give credit where credit is due. They’ve been working very hard. They’ve really been taking a set of new approaches and applying them very diligently and now we have further evidence it’s working. And I want to really thank them for the third straight year and the second full year on our watch, test scores are up – and very clearly so, across all 32 districts of this city. When it comes to the English test score – literally across the board they went up. First time in New York City history – graduation rates are over 70 percent. And part of Equity and Excellence – we’re going to be talking about this a lot – is our dedication to getting that number over 80 percent in the next ten years. We can do that with the kind of progress we’re making now.

So we – I think this school, the building we’re in right here is a bit of a metaphor – we have do things in a way that really listens to communities, we have to them well, we have to do them faster, we have to speed up the changes we’re making in our school system – shaving off a year in this case means for the families of 700 kids, their kids will have a better experience starting in September 2017 – not waiting until September of 2018. I can say as a parent – additional year where your child’s getting the things you want them to get is a very, very big deal.

So thank you to all and just a few words in Spanish before I introduce my colleagues.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish.]

With that – again, I said the principal deserves such credit for the work she’s done to improve this school and results have come very fast and she’s been very effective in the role. So it’s my honor to introduce the principal of P.S. 191, Lauren Keville.

[Applause]

[...]

Mayor: Thank you, Lauren.

[Applause]

I want to note – and Lauren deserves tremendous credit, and she’s not alone. Other principals and other school staffs and teams in schools all over the city follow the same path and improve their schools, and address some outstanding issues. So much so, that now the State list of persistently dangerous schools in New York City is down to four schools – just four schools. And for folks who remember how things were 10, 15, 20 years ago in this city – what a statement on the progress that’s been made consistently. And we look forward to continuing that progress because it’s so important for the safety and the well-being of our kids.

Now, I want to turn to someone who, when it comes to the development process among many, many issues that she has focused on – Gale Brewer has been someone who has demanded a lot of the City, and that the City do more and better for communities in the development process. She’s been one of the people that has very aggressively pushed for –

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No, I’m trying to say it nicely, Gale – aggressively pushed for better deals for the community, and this is an example of one of them. So, Gale I thank you for always being that – I was going to say conscious, as a nice phrase – Borough President of Manhattan Gale Brewer.

[…]

Mayor: Amen.

[Applause]

Thank you, Gale. And Gale, you were right. We needed more space, and thankfully we have it. As I mentioned, all the things that we are going to be doing under Equity and Excellence that are going to be a part of the school, we have to always remember that our colleagues in the state government play a crucial role in the achievement of pre-K and the achievement of our afterschool effort for all our middle school kids – guaranteeing that all our middle schools kids had access to free afterschool programs. And someone who’s been deeply concerned about those issues and helped fight for them in Albany is Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal. We welcome you.

[Applause]

[…]

Mayor: Thank you very much, Linda. And now, again, with points for persistence and focus and finding me with incredible consistency everywhere I went, and being on message – I want to thank for her excellent efforts – Councilmember Helen Rosenthal.

[…]

Mayor: Thank you very much, Councilmember. Finally, because Lorraine Grillo likes to give credit where credit is due, I just want to give her a chance to acknowledge some of the other folks who really deserve praise here.

[…]

Mayor: Thank you, Lorraine.

Okay, we’re going to take questions about this announcement and then we will be taking questions on other topics as well. So, anything related to this announcement, please?

Question: So, I hear that this school is [inaudible]. I just wanted to ask – some advocates and elected officials have said your administration hasn’t done enough or even said enough about the broader challenges of integrating schools. What’s your response to that and why do you think it’s [inaudible]?

Mayor: It’s a great question. I would say – let me do the second part first and then go to the first part. The – I think it is difficult to talk about because it is about American history; it’s about the reality of this country and this City going back, not just decades, but hundreds of years. And that has to do with discrimination and segregation in housing, let alone education, employment etcetera. So, I think it kind of gets – it strikes the central chord of American history that we’re all in so many ways trying to address. But I think the best thing to do – and we certainly saw this in Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO in Downtown Brooklyn – is to bring it out in the open, talk about it at the community level and work it through because you remember some of the apparently very intense controversy in Brooklyn that – over the course of the civic dialogue actually people worked through very productively and found a lot of common ground and rethought some of their assumptions about their local schools and who went to them and where they wanted their children to be. So I am a believer that that dialogue happening out in the open is good and I am absolutely convinced that is what is going to happen here on the Upper West Side.

To the bigger question, I have always appreciated advocates who are pushing us to do more. I would say there are a couple of obvious facts; one, our vision around education required setting some very fundamental building blocks in place – whether it was pre-K, afterschool, professional development, the contract with the teachers – so many of the things that we had to do to start the process of bigger changes and that had to be the first priority. But we’ve made clear from the beginning that we were going to increasingly focus on the question of diversity and balance. Certainly I have talked very vibrantly about that topic when it comes to our specialized schools and I intend to continue that work, but we’re also going to be doing this at the district level. Rezoning’s are one tool in that, but they have to be done with communities and they have to be done with many imperatives in mind. The other thing we’re finding in the DOE and I think it has been well reported is that there’s some really great new models that look at economic diversity and other factors that allow us to do the work of diversifying schools in a way that is legally appropriate and very effective and that gets a lot of buy-in from communities. So, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of that. So to folks, who say we want to see more, I understand where they are coming from and my simple answer is you’re going to see more.

Yes?

Question: I just want to clarify, is P.S. 191 [inaudible]?

Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Rose, DOE: P.S. 191 will be the only school in this building. It serves students in grades pre-K through eight and will have all grade levels when it moves in – when the building opens next year. So, the Department of Education has presented two draft scenarios for potential rezoning to the CEC and has already gotten some community input and we are continuing to engage in a dialogue with the CEC, with parents in the community to get additional input before a final proposal is made.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I think the good news is that because everyone up here – and I give them all credit – we now have options. And we can talk about how to strike the balances that we need to in the process. So, that’s exactly why we’re having a process with the Community Education Council, with the Community Board, with the elected officials – to figure out what gives us the best balance. We want schools where there’s not a crowding problem to the maximum possibility given all the development pressures; everything we’ve talked about – growing population. We want to try to make sure that we address overcrowding as much as possible. We want quality education, obviously in all settings. We want to address diversity. So, we’re looking for what is that balance point and there’s going to be a very open public process about it. As you said, whatever is decided would not take effect until September 2017. So we have time to work that through, but the x-factor is now being able to have moved this up into the equation where we are sitting right here – up into the equation so we’re dealing with a much greater supply as we make those decisions; and everything sort of put on a level playing field now.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I would question the premise of the question. The – again, these are huge historical trends we’re dealing with – meaning to say acceptable, unacceptable. We’re not dealing with a world where we got to set the ground rules decades in advance, we’re dealing with a world that has been as it has been for a long, long time and as we’re moving as a society away from that, thank God, to a more diversified, integrated place. That’s happening in families, that’s happening in neighborhoods, that’s happening in schools, that’s happening through our affordable housing program, but it is a real departure from what was the dominant reality for a long, long time. So, I don’t think we can say, you know, we look at a societal trend decades or centuries old and say can we will it away overnight. My question – my way of responding to you would be are we taking the steps we can take right now to make major changes. And that answer is yes, here’s a process where we get a chance because we have new space to really factor diversity into the equation effectively. I think it is a community that cares deeply about the issue and is going to work productively on it. And then behind that, again, I think you’re going to see diversification through the affordable housing program; I think you’re going to see diversification through the new initiatives that DOE has been creating school by school and have been experimenting with that have been working that we’re now going to be applying elsewhere. There’s going to be a bigger discussion. I want to just foreshadow, we  have to bring the people of New York City a bigger vision of how we’re going to do this now that we have some tools that are working – and we don’t have that all worked out yet, but my argument is I think we’re going to be able to make real progress here.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I’ll let – I think Helen may want to jump in this too, but I will say because it gives us options now.

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal: So, in the rezoning scenarios – the drafts that we have been discussing with the community – we are proposing approaches that would balance the diversity particularly of students in poverty across multiple schools, so that – whereas today we do have one school that has a much higher concentration of students living in poverty than another that is very nearby the proposal covers multiple schools and tries to equalize the sources of students so that all schools will be more diverse.

Question: On the list of [inaudible] dangerous schools – what’s unusual this year is that the only school, the four schools are all elementary schools – not a single middle school, not a single high school. I’m wondering what you make of that. It’s a pretty unusual scenario, and also what do you say to skeptics like the School Safety Agents’ Union that sees those figures and makes them doubt the accuracy of the numbers.

Mayor: The State has been keeping these figures for a long time. We have often said we don’t always agree with the State’s definitions, but let’s be clear we’ve all lived by them. And this has been an objective analysis by the State. I think it tracks with huge improvements in school safety over 15 years now. And I give Mayor Bloomberg and his administration a lot of credit for the changes they made, which are well-known. We’ve added to those and built upon it. And the City is getting safer, the schools are getting safer – it’s quite distinct and obvious. We also have been approaching school safety in some different ways, both in terms of how we train and utilize the school safety agents and how they interconnect with NYPD, but also in terms of the disciplinary process – reforms that we’ve made that we think are helping to create a safer environment. So, I think it indicates progress and is something we’re going to have to earn every year.

Mayor: Anything else related to this announcement before we go to other topics?

Going once, going twice – let’s do some other topics. Other topics. Yes.

Question: Mr. Mayor, what do you think of the response from the DOT to Council Speaker Viverito’s request for assistance on the light post?

Mayor: I thought it was stupid.

Question: Do you think –

Mayor: I think they should recognize if the Speaker of the City Council – one of the leaders of the City government – is raising an issue that, that obviously demands respect and demands attention. Now, the good news is that should be true for any citizen, and in fact that issue was quickly resolved – as I understand – in a manner of hours. But she should not have had to say what she said.

Question: Other regular citizens who are not an elected official, should they be expecting that same kind –

Mayor: I think the response should always be that we’re going to fix the problem right away. Now, look, I say I’ll give credit where credit is due. Again, 3-1-1 is a great system. It has its challenges but in the main it’s done a lot of good for this city. I give Mayor Bloomberg credit.

But it also has to be managed to be courteous and effective and quick in the response. That’s something we work on across all City agencies. We want to see anyone raising a concern treated with respect, and we want the turnaround time to be very, very fast. So, it’s what we call a teachable moment.

[Inaudible]

Question: The elected official two spaces to your right [inaudible] your conscious –

Mayor: One – one of my consciouses. I don’t want her head to swell.

[Laughter]

Question: [Inaudible] your failure, if you will, to use the leverage that you have with a development [inaudible] West 18th Street where they need a special permit –

Mayor: Yes, I’m familiar with the case –

Question: -- change the shape and the height of the building [inaudible] special permit. Given your professed priority in this area, why aren’t you –

Mayor: Because it’s an apples and oranges situation. The fact is that the law we passed – the MIH law, the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing law – is abundantly clear. It referred to rezonings. It referred to up-zonings. It did not refer to a situation like this where, you know, working within the existing FAR. And that doesn’t mean the ball game’s over. I want to – this is what I want to be very clear with you about. This is not a case – my deepest respect to Gale, and I think she and I share the exact same impulse – we want to maximize affordable housing everywhere in every situation we can.

On the narrow question of does MIH apply here – no.

On the question of can we get affordable housing out of this project – that’s still a live option, and we certainly want that. That’s something where the City Council member’s going to play a particularly important role.

On the question of why we’re not getting more affordable housing right there, right now – you got to look at the situation with 421-a. We firmly believe that if 421-a were in place, this is exactly the kind of development that might have chosen to go market-rental, and if it had gone market-rental using 421-a we would have been able to get affordable housing as part of that package under the vision that we’ve presented of 421-a.

So, a lot of different currents but on the specific question – what will be the outcome on that site? That has not yet been determined, and I do think there’s a chance for affordability there.

Question: Just following up here – MIH is not really this issue. The issue is can the City use it’s leverage in this case – a special permit [inaudible] to force the developer to reserve a certain percentage of units as affordable. And if the Planning Commission or planning board [inaudible] says, “Oh you can have the special permit [inaudible] the reserve of affordable apartments.” You’ve basically contradicted –

Mayor: [Inaudible] I understand – I understand the construct but the point is, there’s more than one imperative in every land-use decision. We are going to look for every opportunity to create affordability. We’re certainly going to look to partner with the Council and the role they play to look for every opportunity to create affordability. As I said, the jury is still out on this one.

But when you say – when you raise the special permit point, again, that has more to do – that has more than just affordable housing in that equation. There’s other things we have to consider as well. And the bottom line is we’re going to look at any and all scenarios where we see a pathway for affordable housing, we always want to take it. Or if the Council has a pathway, we always want to encourage them to take it.

Yes.

Question: Mayor, Christine Sloan from CBS-2. Can you tell us about the changes to the NYPD detail contract, and what would happen if big venues like the Yankees and the Mets don’t accept that liabilities that have been placed on them on the contract –

Mayor: I’m not familiar enough with the contracts. I want to make sure to get you a more complete answer. I think the way we’ve handled things has been fair to the venues we’ve dealt with. But let me get you a more expert answer.

Question: [Inaudible] do you promise me –

Mayor: I promise you.

Question: [Inaudible] but can you comment on reports that Hillary Clinton did not fulfill her promise of creating –

Mayor: That she what?

Question: That she did not fulfill a promise of [inaudible] in upstate New York during her tenure as –

Mayor: I’ve never heard that before, so, I can’t comment on it. Obviously, it’s the political season so all sorts of things are being thrown at her, many of them imaginary but I just don’t know that specific report. I’d have to look at it.

Question: The DOT Commissioner, Polly Trottenberg has announced that this Saturday they’re going to have a first ever “Shared Streets” and that is a 60-square block area from Brooklyn Bridge to Battery Park for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists to share a street. They’re going to ask the drivers to five miles-per-hour in that. Do you think that’s a good plan?

Mayor: I think there’s more and more desire in our society for people who are walking, are on bikes, etcetera to have more opportunity. It’s healthier, it’s better for the environment, etcetera. So, we’re obviously trying different things whether it’s Citi Bike and bike lanes or what we’ve done – excuse me – with Vision Zero. I think it’s all pointing in the same direction. People have to recognize this is both in the interest of health and our environment, and also safety. So, this is something we’re trying. We, obviously, will look carefully at the results but I think it’s a perfectly good idea to try.

Question: [Inaudible] five miles-per-hour –

Mayor: I think you’re talking about a limited area that’s obviously going to be well posted. You know, we’re talking about only certain times that it’s going to happen. I suspect a lot of drivers will just avoid the area, and that’s fine too.

Question: Hi, Mayor. May I have your interpretation, please, of Donald Trump’s Second Amendment remarks yesterday, but also you’re impression of his argument afterward that the media –

Mayor: This is – it’s not even close. When the question is – did Donald Trump say something that might be incendiary or not? It’s always incendiary. You can just bet it. He never says things with nuance. He doesn’t do nuance. He never looks to find a way to say something more gently. For better or for worse what you see is what you get. To say it like that, obviously implied that those quote-unquote Second Amendment people would use their guns wasn’t even close in my mind. And it’s obviously exceedingly inappropriate. And the fact that the Secret Service had to comment on it I think is indication enough – that that was way outside the boundaries of what’s considered acceptable in this country.

Yes, Hannah?

Question: There have been a lot of muggings in Clove Lakes Park –

Mayor: A lot of muggings?

Question: Muggings in Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island. It’s got a lot of people concerned. And there’s also been a spate of vandalism across the South Shore. Any comment on either of those instances, and what Staten Islanders should do, and maybe what the NYPD is going to do?

Mayor: Well, it’s with everything else the NYPD is doing – when we see any kind of pattern, we’re going to address it very aggressively. And I think Chief Delatorre is doing a fantastic job in Staten Island, so I’ll certainly talk to him about it. But I think when you see one of those trends, the answer is almost always the same – put some additional presence on it, do some strategic work to find who’s behind it. And the NYPD almost always gets their man or woman. I mean I think one of the things that isn’t being recognized enough because we sort of evolved and we haven’t fully taken stock of it is that the rate of finding perpetrators is improving all the time. And people don’t get away with it. Some of it’s just the presence of video cameras and things like that. But also the NYPD has – more serious crime continues to go down – can focus more on quality-of-life crime. So we’ll definitely put attention on it, we’ll definitely put resources on it, and I think we’ll find the people behind it.

Question: Do you think people should feel safe using that park?

Mayor: Of course. Of course.

Question: The independent monitor overseeing the NYPD released another report today and as part of that report today – the body camera program would be delayed another six months. This is another delay [inaudible]. Are you concerned that [inaudible]? And are you concerned that with Bratton’s departure that it could somehow [inaudible]?

Mayor: No, no. There’s no – there’s no – there’s nothing about the Commissioner’s departure that will slow down anything we’re doing because the guy who has been the architect of so much of the day-to-day work is taking over. And Chief O’Neill unquestionably is devoted to the body camera program, as am I. We’re going to work it through very quickly. It is complicated, logistically, technologically, in terms of legal issues, confidentiality issues. There’s a lot of things we’ve said from the beginning have to be worked through. But once we get it all worked through, it’s going to be increasing consistently. It is the shape of things to come in New York City. In the meantime, I think the other things that we’re doing to improve accountability and improve police-community relations – neighborhood policing, the retraining – all of these measures are having their effect. So once we get it right on body cameras, in terms of all the outstanding issues, we will then be rapidly increasing the amount of them.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Say again.

Question: Detective Gregory Gordon – the NYPD has been investigating him for Facebook comments. They referred to your wife as a former crack head. And since then, it’s also emerged that he – that he hit a pregnant woman’s car and [inaudible], and that he was involved in a shooting, in which it was questionable whether the person was armed. I’m just wondering, given that pattern of conduct, if you think he’s appropriately [inaudible].

Mayor: I don’t know the status of any review of his situation. I’m going to say, as a human being, what he said about my wife was reprehensible. And I would say that about any other human being. I don’t care if they wear a uniform or they don’t. You shouldn’t say that about someone, especially because it’s not true and it’s just inappropriate. But in terms of the professional issues and how the NYPD looks at it – I don’t know the current status of any outstanding issues or any review related to him.

Question: [Inaudible] the teachable moment that the Speaker and the DOT Twitter [inaudible]. Have you spoken to the Speaker or to Polly Trottenberg about this? Have you told DOT that they’ve got to have better customer-friendly –

Mayor: I think they’ll get the message. I have not spoken to them. But I think they’ll read what you write and get the message. I think it’s self-evident.

Let me do a couple more here.

Question: Mr. Mayor, on Rivington House, you have said back in April – you were livid, [inaudible], you said the City [inaudible] misled by developers. We now know from the DOI report – you were right that Slate Property Group and Allure had been conspiring to mislead the City about their plan for Rivington House. But two-parter – what do you think of Slate doing that? We talked a lot about Allure. But what do you think of Slate doing that? And secondly, with Slate poised to do a big project in Crown Heights, the Armory project – are you going to re-open that RFP or re-look at them getting that project?

Mayor: We’re going to take a very hard look at that situation. That contract has not been finalized. And I think what they did was inappropriate. The DOI report makes it quite clear. And I think anyone who seeks to do business with the City of New York and misleads us needs to know that there will be consequences. So we’ll take a hard look at that situation.

Question: And the DOI is investigating Hornblower, the Citywide Ferry Service provider. The DOI is doing an investigation into Hornblower, the Citywide Ferry Service provider, for their connection to aggressive ticket sale tactics. Just wondering – were they vetted before they were awarded –

Mayor: Yes, they were absolutely vetted. And I don’t think this issue had emerged at that point. It’s perfectly normal. This decision was made months ago, and then the issue came up after. But we’ll have an investigation. Obviously, we want to know what happened. I think there’s some early public evidence that this was well downstream and some bad apples that have nothing to do with the management of the company. But we’re going to certainly look very carefully. In the meantime, everything we’re going to do on the ferry system is full steam ahead.

Go ahead – last question.

Question: Mr. Mayor, the recent test scores that you were celebrating recently –

Mayor: Yes.

Question: A lot of people have pointed out that while the city test scores grew incrementally that charter school scores outpaced that growth almost double. Why do you think that is?

Mayor: I don’t want to get into a big analytical discussion of the different approaches to test prep and other factors that might be at play here. We’re very comfortable with the approach we’re increasingly taking, which is to de-emphasize high-stakes testing, de-emphasize test prep – focus on actually assessing the child. We want to know how kids are doing. We want to look at multiple measures – tests are only one of them – and then continue to improve. You know that there was too much emphasis – I would say, I shouldn’t say you know – I would say I believe there was a lot of evidence there was too much emphasis on test prep in our traditional public schools, as well as in charter schools. So we have a different approach, but we think that approach is yielding better results in terms of actually teaching kids. We certainly believe other factors like professional development are contributing to why we’re doing better. So I like the direction we’re on. We have a very open door to charter schools to learn from good practices and to share our practices, and there’s much more of a spirit of collaboration. But, I will also say – in some cases, that’s because of a heavy focus on test prep, which is just not the philosophy of this administration and of DOE, nor do I think it’s what the vast majority of parents want to see for their kids.

Question: Just a quick follow-up – when you see those scores, do you say to anybody, whether it’s the Chancellor or anybody else – hey, what do you think is going on there? Do you look at the difference in those scores and say is there something else we should be learning there?

Mayor: I think there’s a micro and a macro there. On the micro level, we want to learn from any and all schools, and that’s where there’s a lot more collaboration at the district level between charters and district schools for sharing specific approaches that are working. We want to do that for sure and we think that’s very, very positive. On the macro level, it’s not a state secret that some substantial piece of that is based on charters that focus on test prep. And if that’s where they put a lot of their time and energy, of course it could yield better test scores. But we don’t think that’s good educational policy. So we’re going to do it the way that we believe is right for our children. The Chancellor is literally an educator for fifty years – she adamantly believes we need to focus on teaching kids, teaching them critical thinking, teaching them problem-solving skills – all the things that have become clear are the essence of education today in the 21st century. That’s where we need to put our energy, not on test prep, not on effectively teaching kids how to do well on a test at the expense of broader learning. So that’s the direction we’re going to take.

Thanks very much.

[Applause]