Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on WCBS 880

September 7, 2016

Tanya Hansen: New York City school kids head back to class tomorrow. Mayor de Blasio is joining us live to talk about the new school year, and he is on our news line. Mayor, thanks for joining us.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: My pleasure, Tanya.

Hansen: Mayor, will you be greeting some of those students on the first day of school?

Mayor: I am looking forward to it, Tanya. I will be in all five boroughs, and I'll see kids in all different kinds of schools. Look, it's such an exciting day. I miss it. Dante just finished his public school career about a year-and-a-half ago, and I miss it all the time because it was a great part of our lives. But, I'll tell you, we're going to go all over tomorrow.

And the first thing I want to tell your listeners is we expect more kids in pre-K than ever before. But if your child is four years old and still not signed up for pre-K, please call 3-1-1, or go online to nyc.gov. There's still plenty of spaces for pre-K and it is free.

Hansen: Mr. Mayor, last year City schools did see gains in test scores. How do you plan to build on that this year?

Mayor: Well, we're very hopeful that the progress we're making will continue. First of all, it has been sustained really throughout the mayoral control era which goes back now almost 15 years. We've seen progress on graduation rates and progress on test scores. You know, about the time mayoral control was instituted under Mayor Bloomberg, the graduation rate of this city was hovering around 50 percent. Now, for the first time ever it's over 70 percent and we're going to keep driving that up – the same with test scores, they've continued to improve. In fact, this last round of test scores, we saw improvement on English scores in all 32 local school districts around the city.

So, really unprecedented to see progress in every kind of neighborhood, and it has to do with all the building blocks we're putting in place under our Equity and Excellence plan. It's pre-K, it's free afterschool for our middle school kids, it's Computer Science For All which is going to be across all grade levels, it's things like making Advanced Placement courses available in all our high schools, not just the privileged few – all of these things – and especially focusing on getting our kids up to reading level by 3rd grade. That's going to be a citywide initiative to get us to 100 percent over the next ten years – all our kids on reading level by 3rd grade. That's how we [inaudible].

Hansen: And Governor Cuomo just signed a new law requiring all schools in the state to test drinking water for the lead contamination. Are City schools prepared for that cost?

Mayor: Absolutely. The City has already had, for years, a very rigorous system. And I want to tell you, going back to 2002 we have not had a single child who got a lead sickness from our drinking water in our schools. That's all the way back to 2002 – constant testing has gone on ever since. We're very confident about it. We've added additional measures recently just out of abundance of caution but I'm very certain – and I say this again as a parent who had both of my kids in public school the whole way through their school careers – New York City is at the top of the line when it comes to making sure there is not lead in our drinking water.

Hansen: Mayor de Blasio, City Charter School Center statistics show charters now enrolling ten percent of all city school kids. Is that a stat you're concerned about?

Mayor: [Inaudible] it's been a natural evolution over time, and I've talked about the fact that we've expected that kind of number. Look, we want our kids to succeed whether they're in a traditional public school or a charter school, religious school, any kind of school – we want all our kids to succeed. They're all going to be the future of New York City.

But the real foundation of our education system is our traditional public schools – still, over 90 percent of our kids. And that's where we're making the big changes with the Equity and Excellence plan. You know, for a long time – and I want to be very blunt about this – for a long time unacceptable things were status quo in this city. For example, when I took office only 30 percent of our kids were reading at grade level by 3rd grade which is a crucial education marker. I don't accept that. That's why we came up with a plan to move it up to 100 percent over ten years. It's going to take a lot of investment and a lot of work.

But, you know, if we're serious about improving the lives of kids across the board, the number one thing we have to do is fundamentally improve our public schools.

Hansen: And there is a new bill, Mr. Mayor, to have every public school serve halal and kosher lunch options. Do you think that's something that's possible?

Mayor: I think it would be logistically and cost-wise a major endeavor. It's not something we would take lightly. It's certainly something we will look at. We respect all the communities of the city, and we obviously made a major step forward by recognizing the Eid holidays for Muslim students just like we recognize the Jewish and Christian holidays.

But in terms of the different meals, that's something we'd have to look at very carefully. We already have put a lot of effort, as did the previous administration, into improving school meals, making them more nutritious, making them more appealing because a meal's only good if a kid decides to eat it, and offering more vegetarian options which also are good for folks of all sorts of different dietary restrictions.

We have to think long and hard about what next steps we could take.

Hansen: Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for joining us.

Mayor: You're very welcome.

Hansen: Have a great day.

Mayor: You too.