September 26, 2016Mayor Bill de Blasio: Alright, thank you so much, Olashi – very impressive. Olashi, you spoke really well, and I want to commend you for all the things that you’re doing to prepare yourself for college and that you’re involved in so many different activities. Olashi has set a goal of being the first college graduate in her family. I think she is going to succeed at her goal. Congratulations.[Audience]It is great to be here at FDR. This is a school doing some great work. And there’s such a clear college-focused culture here. And this is one of the things that we want to foster all over the school system. This is one of the core ideas of our Equity and Excellence initiative – to give the message early and often to our children that college can be for every single one of them if that’s what they seek, and that it can be accessible to them in ways that was not true in the past, that we are going to open the door much wider for kids who want to go to college.Now, we know that for so many of the young people at this school – I don’t know if you saw coming in, if you didn’t, go, and take a look afterwards – there’s this wonderful set of displays of photos of the kids who went to this school and where they went to college last year. And you see a huge, huge number of the kids who graduated went to college – from FDR went to CUNY schools.Now, CUNY is where more than half of our public school students go to college. It’s the most important opportunity for higher education for most New York City public school students. FDR is a crucial example of that, and it’s really striking to see the faces of these kids who made it and where they chose to go.Well, we want to see a lot more kids make it. We want to see a lot more kids have the experience of succeeding, of getting to college, and then flourishing in college. And that’s why we are so focused on making sure that the application fee is not an impediment.And I can tell you that for families all over this city who are struggling to make ends meet, application fees for college are a big challenge, and especially if you have more than one child. So, we have to go head on at that problem, take another burden off the hardworking New Yorkers, and eliminate that application fee. That was something we knew would make a difference. It would encourage kids to apply to CUNY. It would make it easier for them. It would say to them that we’re not going to let anything stand in their way.So, from this point forward, CUNY’s $65 application fee will be eliminated for any of our New York City public school students applying to CUNY. $65 fee – and, again, I want to remind you, $65 is a lot of money for many families in New York City. It’s part of the choices they make all the time. Are they putting money into rent? Are they putting it into food? Are they putting it into medicine? Are they putting it into clothing? A lot of tough choices people make all the time. $65 matters.So, for our young people and their families, knowing that that fee is eliminated, this clears the way and encourages students to believe that they too belong.So, this is something we think is going to make a big difference.
I want to thank so many folks who have supported this, in addition to the folks you’re going to hear from here who will speak.I want to thank our friends from labor who really believe in this idea – Nancy Esposito of CSA is here. Thank you. And I want to thank all the PSC CUNY members who are here who, obviously, understand the power of CUNY to uplift our young people and support making CUNY more accessible for all.So, I just want to put this in context. Those young people in the classroom a few minutes ago, when you listen to them, listen to the drive, listen to the ambition, listen to the hope of those young people. And it made me very, very proud to hear Olashi and hear her colleagues, how much they were thinking deeply about college and what it would take to get there. They know, they understand that college is necessary for so many professions. They understand that what young people today have to know is so much more than what many of us had to know when we were coming up – that education determines economic destiny today more than any time in human history.And it’s not to say – I always want to remind people – that’s not to say that you couldn’t get out of high school and go straight into a good job. That still does happen for some young people, and we certainly believe that there are many different paths to success. But I would say very clearly – for many, many jobs in today’s economy a college education is necessary. And many kids who could make it haven’t had the opportunity. And that’s what we’re here to address.I look at these young people and I think what a shame it would be if they didn’t reach their potential. I think it’s our obligation to find a way to reach each and every one. That’s one of the core concepts between our Equity and Excellence vision. We said Equity and Excellence from the beginning because we believed our kids could reach excellence.And by the way, with most things in human life, if you’re told you can’t make it, it starts to affect your thinking and your self-worth. You’re told, however, you can make it, that you belong, that you’re able to reach the goal, a lot of young people dig deeper and find that ability to succeed.So, excellence is going to be a message we send all over the school system. We’re not going to accept anything less than excellent schools.Equity – because every child should have the same opportunity. And that has not been true for decades and decades in this city. It just hasn’t been. Everyone in the world knows it, everyone knows that some schools were given tremendous opportunity to succeed, others weren’t. And some kids in some neighborhoods were told from day one that they were college-bound, others weren’t. We need to overcome that. That’s a core notion of Equity and Excellence.College Access for All – one of the pillars of Equity and Excellence – it means that college, again, is not supposed to be a privilege, it’s not supposed to be something that only those who are born into well-off families experience. It’s supposed to be a part of the American dream that anyone could make it to college. And that’s something we have to reinforce through action.So, College Access for All is part of the plan that we put in place. It means there’s a college-going culture in every school, that that message is sent constantly, and there’s a sense of everything you’re doing is leading up to that chance to go to college.We’re making sure every junior has an opportunity to take the SAT for free. That’s another crucial initiative of this administration that the SAT will be there for them. It will be free. It will be at their school. It will be easy for them to access.And every child going forward will have their own college or career plan as part of their progression through high school. A specific plan will be built with and for them. Again, that will say to them that they’re on the way to something good.We have now 100 high schools, as of this year that have the resources in place and have been trained to get their kids on that future pathway, and to include college as one of the options every child can and should reach for.FDR is one of those 100 high schools, and you can see how much everyone here at FDR has embraced that goal. And this year, we’re starting our initiative to expose middle school kids all over the city to college. One of the things we want to get clear to every child is they belong. So, one of the simplest ways to do it to take every single middle school child in New York City to a New York City institution of higher learning. Show them from early on this is your path, this is available to you.A lot of kids, I can say with assurance, who come from families that have not experienced college previously – and that includes a lot of our immigrant children – they look at college sometimes with a sense of mystery and a sense of a barrier. We want to overcome that. So, we’re starting this year. And this year alone, more than 20,000 middle school kids will get a free visit to a New York City college to start that thought pattern, to start sparking that ambition.This application elimination that we’re talking about today, eliminating the CUNY application fee will reach over 37,000 New York City high school students a year. Over 37,000 kids will qualify to have the CUNY application fee eliminated. And that is up from just about 6,500 students in the previous year. So, over five times as many kids will have this opportunity.There’s a variety of criteria that will determine who qualifies. If, for example, they get free or reduced cost lunch, that’s one of the ways kids qualify. Important thing is – it’s going to allow them to know that one less hassle, one less barrier.And CUNY, by the way, once you get to CUNY, the sky’s the limit. CUNY has been, historically, the gateway to opportunity for this city. And we know some of the famous names that went through CUNY. We know Shirley Chisolm and Jonas Salk and Colin Powell, and so many outstanding people who got a CUNY education and then went on to do truly historic things. But for everyday New Yorkers of all walks of life, all backgrounds, CUNY has been the difference, it’s been the opportunity creator.And we want to continue that tradition. We want to deepen it. We’re also putting a lot of resources into strengthening CUNY. We have a strong partnership with CUNY in terms of the community colleges. We’ve invested $142 million into community colleges – the largest investment by the City in almost 15 years. And we’ve done that to strengthen STEM programs, we’ve done that to strengthen the ASAP program which helps kids strengthen their own abilities while in college, and helps them to get all the way through college successfully.These are investments that we think are making a very big difference. We look forward to thousands of more kids now having access because the college application fee will be eliminated.Very quickly in Spanish –[Mayor de Blasio Speaks in Spanish]With that, my honor to introduce our Chancellor who is leading the way on Equity and Excellence – Carmen Fariña.[Applause]Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña: Thank you. Good morning. For me this is actually a very personal initiative. I was the first in my family to go to college, and I almost didn’t make it there because after my freshman year of high school I was told I wasn’t college material. So, they put me – in those days we had the commercial track, we had the academic track – and I ended up, we were sharing stories today, the principal and I. And it was a statement, almost, like you’re just not good enough.And if a teacher hadn’t taken a stab to say to me at a certain point, “What do you want to with the rest of your life?” And when I said teacher, she said, “Well, you’re not going to make it doing this” – and she actually took me under her wing for almost three years from sophomore to junior year. And I did a lot of the work on my own.But even then when I got to college, it was a real foreign experience. No one prepared me for what was going to happen when I got there. I remember telling my mother I didn’t have to school on a Monday. She said why, and I said because we are on a different schedule. We only go to school Tuesday, Thursday – and I found out later because many college professors don’t like to teach on Fridays and Mondays.The reality is that it’s not just about getting to college but it’s about what you do when you get there. And you heard the students today talking about the difference between what they expect the college work to be and what they high school work – they expect to go deeper into topics, they expect to do more comparing and contrasting.But this is a wonderful school for us to be today because I was at an event this summer where the staff – the hundred schools were being prepared for this work – and Principal Katz had six members of her staff there. And they were talking extremely seriously about what each of them was going to do when they came back to the school. And this is a school that has over 1,000 students who are ELLs – English Language Learners. So, for a school like this to take this on and to take it on at this level, I think it’s extraordinary. Because you do not speak English doesn’t mean you do not have a bright future.In fact, if you can speak two languages – I’m sure one of the students who spoke to you today has a Russian background. And she will now have the ability to go to college, learn, and perhaps use her Russian language in terms of future job opportunities.So, we have to start rethinking who are the college students of tomorrow, what opportunities do we have to give them, and also how do we prepare them starting, by the way, in pre-K. To me 11th Grade is great but pre-K – and we have been very conscious of College Awareness Day where we talk about colleges in all our schools, visiting colleges in middle school but also in this school and many others like it, they will start forming 9th Grade advisory groups to talk about the college application process as well as what courses you need to take in high school in order to get to college. You don’t want to get to 11th Grade and find you don’t have the coursework.So, this is an all-hands-on-deck kind of effort. And it’s about training more and more people, including parents. I met with a group of parents on Saturday and one of the things they said – “Give us more information so we can help our students at home and we can be part of the process.”As I was talking to one of the students today, one of the things I said to him is, “What do you go to college for besides learning?” And he kind of said, “Hmmm.” And as you know, you go to make friends, you go to network – think all of our parents who are maybe second, third generation college students themselves in their families. You know which college to go to so that you’ll have a friend when you want to get a job in certain company.We need to give all our kids that same equity. And I think CUNY is a phenomenal partner. I particularly want to thank Executive – there you are – Vita Rabinowitz for her leadership on this and for understanding that this is a two-way street.Colleges have to be ready for our kids in the sense of things that they need to teach that we’re really getting better and better at, and then how do we also work with them so that it’s not just you get to freshman year of college, and then that’s the end of the job. We know that freshman year of college is one of the toughest grades to go through, and that many of our kids drop out at the end of freshman year.So, our goal in this program is to also have freshman students come back and talk to their high school friends, and keep talking about what their challenges that they have met, what they need to do. And also preparing the students that are behind – they’re the models for those students.So, I’m really excited about this initiative. This is a real – Equity and Excellence, saying to parents. $65 to a lot of parents is not a lot of money. To some parents it’s an unbelievable stumbling block to the best future for their students. So, this is really a great initiative today, and I’m proud to be part of this team today. Thank you.[Applause]Mayor: As I said, we have focused this administration on supporting so much of what happens at CUNY and the community colleges in the area where we play a particular role. And we’ve tried more and more to connect all of our strategies for education and for helping our young people to our strategies for supporting our community colleges at CUNY. The person who is leading our efforts at City Hall to work with CUNY and strengthen CUNY is our Deputy Mayor Richard Buery.[…]Mayor: Thank you, Richard. Well, since we’re saying so many nice things about Vita Rabinowitz, I think we should hear from her. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of CUNY, Vita Rabinowitz.[Applause][…]Mayor: And now I want you to hear from the elected officials who are with us, who have been very, very supportive of Equity and Excellence and of College Access For All. First, our Public Advocate Tish James.[Applause][…]Mayor: Thank you very much. And now, the Borough President of Brooklyn, Eric Adams.[Applause][…]Mayor: Beautiful. That is – No, I will always invite the press to see the wall being – I like that. We’re going to dismantle the wall, build a bridge. I’ve never been given a brick before.[Laughter]This is a very special moment. I like it. Thank you, Eric.[Laughter]I look forward to my next brick.[Laughter]And now, the man who represents this community, City Councilman David Greenfield.[Applause][…]Mayor: Well, David we’re glad you went to high school. And Chancellor Fariña, we’re really glad that that teacher supported you and told you you could make it because it is amazing to think – and it’s really a little sobering to think about the fact that someone who now leads the biggest school system in the country might not have even gone to college at all and had that opportunity but for one teacher who saw what she had to offer. And that is a credit to our educators who do that every single day in this city – find a child who has potential that has not gone noticed and they uplift that child. So that’s – that is part of what we are celebrating today. Okay, we’re going to take questions on this initiative.Rich?Question: Mr. Mayor, how much will the elimination of this fee cost CUNY and are you making up the difference or CUNY just taking the hit; or how does it work?Mayor: We are splitting it with CUNY and the investment from the City is $2 million a year.Question: So, what do [inaudible]?Mayor: So, it is a couple of different things. I’ll start and if someone wants to join me in adding criteria I welcome it.
It’s kids who get free and reduced lunch; it’s kids who are homeless – let me see if I have some others – temporary housing; so homelessness and temporary; foster children, public assistance is right; and wards of the State. Those are the categories. But the – you know – the most straightforward and sort of general one you will find is free and reduced lunch.Question: Do you know how much [inaudible]? So do you know much the [inaudible]?Mayor: We can get you that. I don’t know that offhand, but we can get you that for sure.Yes?Question: [Inaudible] get your fee waived [inaudible]?Mayor: So let me say again this is a fee elimination. So, part of the power of what we are doing here is that you don’t have to go through that extra step. That it is something that will be identified up front to make it easier. I don’t know if someone can talk about the mechanics. Vita, do you want to – do you want to come up?Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Vita Rabinowitz, CUNY: [Inaudible]Chancellor Fariña: And Vita, you can join in with me.The schools will have a list of the students that are eligible and that will be put on some [inaudible] – someway on the application. So, we – and we expect this not to be a public statement. This is something – you know – when students fill out applications they go automatically into the system and we just expect this to be some kind of either a paper or a stamp that verifies this.Question: [Inaudible]Chancellor Fariña: Yes.Mayor: And we obviously appreciate all of our colleagues in the media in getting the word out. Schools will do it, obviously, but it is really great for parents to hear this is something they will not have to deal with, with the applications that their kids will put in this year.Yes?Question: Two questions Mr. Mayor. One, what was it that made the difference here and made this decision and decided this was a priority? And two, back to the funding, is this something that if the economy goes – you know – in the wrong direction and things need to be reevaluated; is this something that could be on that chopping block?Mayor: This is one I can editorialize on that, even though every budget year is different and we don’t know where the economy will take us. This is one I think will be very durable. It’s a very high impact investment. It’s in the scheme of the overall City budget – not too heavy a lift. This is one we want to stick with for the long-term. So, you know, you never say never, but I think this is one that is going to be with us for a long time.Why? Because when we locked on to the idea of Equity and Excellence it was a long process that got us to it. We basically said what is the direction of our schools? Where are we going? What is a simple idea that will animate everything we do? And it really boiled down to those two concepts. We knew there were too many schools that just were not good enough in terms of the quality they needed to achieve, especially for the modern world. We knew that there was a fundamental inequity between schools in our system. We wanted to go at those two things simultaneously. So, all of the building blocks are universal in the sense of every school, of course, got pre-K; every school got afterschool for middle school kids; and we’re bringing all kids up to reading level at third grade. All kids will get algebra during middle school – by ninth grade. All schools will have Advanced Placement courses. There is this concept across the board of creating that equality, but the equality aligns to excellence. Within that you had to create a college culture. And we knew that that was one of the great bellwethers of the difference between our schools, sadly. That some had that rich college culture and others didn’t and it was communicating a lot to our kids the wrong way. So, when we looked at all of the pieces we started baking them in to Equity and Excellence; obviously, the visits to the colleges during middle school; the AP courses, which are college-level courses. So, if they are in your school that’s communicating a lot about the potential of each student. But we recognized – even something as narrow as the application fee was standing in the way. So, as the Chancellor just said to me a moment ago, the combination of free SAT tests and free application to CUNY that is a really big one-two punch because it clears the way for talented kids to have an opportunity that those hundreds of dollars they might have – had to spend otherwise could have stood in the way of. It’s really about we need to create a momentum in the entire school system that each and every child has an opportunity to go to college. And we thought this was one of the ones that would send the clear powerful message and also be very, very practical and, obviously, more than half our kids go to CUNY. So, this is what we need to make the focus.Question: Who and when brought it to you that this is something we should really do?Mayor: That is an excellent question because many good ideas emerged during the Equity and Excellence strategy sessions.Chancellor Fariña: [Inaudible]Mayor: Wow, that was – that was like Mary Poppins came to our press conference, okay.[Laughter]Alright, what else? Yes.Question: How will the students be made aware of whether they qualify [inaudible]?Mayor: That is a damn good question. How are we going to – do you want do that? Vita, do you want to?Vita Rabinowitz: I’m going to turn to the University Director of Admissions, Clare Norton, who will --- yes?Mayor: Claire, step right up.University Director of Admissions Clare Norton, CUNY: Glad to help. Details, that’s my department. So yes, so we have been working collaboratively with the Office of Postsecondary Readiness at the DOE to determine the number of students at each school who are likely to be eligible. And we looked at all this information on students’ income, how many students are likely to graduate at a given school to determine how many will be needed. So we’ll be communicating that or the DOE will be communicating that to the principals via the Principals’ Portal, and then CUNY will be able to electronically process the fact that those students have had their fee eliminated.Mayor: How does each – I want to just get the question [inaudible] – how would each student and their family know?Director Norton: So schools will be communicating to students and their families, primarily. And the University will be communicating, obviously, with schools regularly to ensure that they understand that message.Question: [inaudible] place to make sure that the schools don’t [inaudible]Unknown: Absolutely.Director Norton: Yes, so absolutely. We’ll bring my partner Andrea Soonachan from the DOE up here to talk more about that.Associate Director Andrea Soonachan, College and Career Planning, DOE: So first I want to clarify the start date. So these will go live in October for our College Application Week celebration, which Claire – is October 15th?Director Norton: Is October 17th.Associate Director Soonachan: The week of the 17th. I’m starting on a Saturday. So they will go live for College Application Week. And we communicate with students and staff through a variety of ways, through our website. We have mailing lists of all the counselors who ever have gone to training with us. We will be sending out email blasts. All of our staff for College Access for All who are in our hundred schools are going to be working closely with college advisors on those sites. We’ll use all of our social media resources and working with our Office of Family and Community Engagement to make sure there’s lots of communication out to students and families for the start of College Application Week.Mayor: Thank you. I’d like you to hear from the principal as well – how she’s doing it here at FDR.Principal Melanie Katz, FDR High School: Hi, good morning. Welcome to FDR, once again. We have some specific plans. This is all very new to us. It’s very exciting. And we will communicate it the traditional ways that we communicate with our parents. We have a parent coordinator who is our first line of defense and our first line of communication. We have an online grading system that allows us to email parents who are registered. We have a webpage – please visit www.fdrhs.org. It’s great, and we’ll communicate on there. We find that backpacking letters home with high school students is more optimistic than it is. We can go through teachers. We generally work with a lot of the college application process either through the college [inaudible] office, or the English class, or the social studies class. And if you walk around the building, you’ve seen we’ve got digital displays. So this is all hands on deck. We’re going to let the parents know about this great opportunity.Unknown: [Inaudible] Parent Engagement Office is working with all high school parent coordinators to ensure that they have the information as well.Principal Katz: We’ve got the structure with the Superintendent’s Office where we have two – two people in place that also are going to be helping us with the initiative. My name is Melanie Katz. Thank you.Mayor: How are we spelling Melanie?Principal Katz: It’s Katz with a “K.” And Melanie like Gone with the Wind.Mayor: Okay, I’ve got to think about that. Yes?Question: Of the existing 6,500 who are eligible for the waiver – just curious if you have any sense of how many kids actually took advantage of this?Mayor: That’s a great question.Executive Vice Chancellor Rabinowitz: They did.Mayor: Come on over. Come on. Speak into the microphone.Executive Vice Chancellor Rabinowitz: That’s it. 6,500 waivers were actually awarded – all of them to very low-income students. And also I understand, veterans, and also any student who was in foster care, whether currently or is transitioning out – was also eligible for the waivers. Claire, did I get that right? All right, good. So that’s – but again, the Mayor is quadrupling the number of students who will be eligible – quintupling, quintupling. Sorry, yes.Mayor: [Inaudible]Question: Just to clarify. So there are 6,500 eligible for the waiver and all 6,500 –Executive Vice Chancellor Rabinowitz: 6,500 getting the waiver.Mayor: [Inaudible] Up to date. Now 37,000 will be eligible.Executive Vice Chancellor Rabinowitz: That’s right. Okay, good.Chancellor Fariña: And I just want to do a little P.S. here. At the end of every year, we have a celebration for salutatorians and valedictorians, as well as students who have overcome obstacles. And a vast majority of those students in the past have not necessarily applied to colleges because of a lot of obstacles. So we anticipate that those are the students that we will need to [inaudible] colleges. So it’s very exciting.Mayor: Okay. Other questions on this initiative? See if there’s anything else before we call it a day. Anything else?Question: Can the Chancellor just go to the microphone and say what she just said about the salutatorians and valedictorians.Mayor: Yes, because radio wants that. Say it again.Chancellor Fariña: We have several events at the end of June. One of them is students who have overcome major obstacles, and these are students that in many cases are in foster care, temporary housing, have overcome unbelievable obstacles. And many of them will now be able to go on to CUNY with their fee waived. The same thing with salutatorians and valedictorians.
The Mayor and I attended the event this year, and it was amazing how many people in that audience – vast majority – are first in their families to go to college. So this is going to be a real boon, I think, for a lot of students to see a reward for all their hard work.Mayor: Good. Yes?Question: Do you have any data on how many students did not apply because of financial constraints?Mayor: Okay, let’s – I want them – anyone who wants to offer? I’m going to offer my layman’s view because I think it’s important. Data – data tells us so much. But one thing we do know – we know for a fact how many families have been struggling in this city. We talked about it when I ran – at the time, 46 percent at or near the poverty level. And we know the $65 means a lot to people. And we know on top of that, we not only have the financial burden question, but the psychological burden – that because so many kids felt maybe they didn’t belong in college, every additional impediment really hurt. So we’re convinced this is a difference-maker. In terms of the data-specific – have anything to offer on that?Executive Vice Chancellor Rabinowitz: Just a word. Just a word, Mayor. And this doesn’t get directly to your question, but I have a feeling it’s a piece of the puzzle. As the Mayor and Chancellor know well, every year there are students who could go to college – that is they are college-ready by any measure, by CUNY’s measures, and yet they do not apply. I don’t know if it’s quite 20 percent, but it’s not insignificant. And we suspect that for some of those students, it is indeed, the financial burden – again, not 100 percent. But – so we know it matters. It’s hard to quantify how much.Mayor: But the final point on that is – now we get an opportunity to study the positive impact, meaning this was not studied enough in the past. We’re now going to do it and see what the pick-up on it is, and see what the impact is. We think it’s going to be a big difference-maker, but of course, we’ll now have the perfect laboratory of New York City to see if this makes a big difference.Question: And if I could just – Mayor: Please.Question: I have to ask – what is the reason for today not allowing questions on other topics?Mayor: Because we do that when we’re ready to do that. So that will be Wednesday.Question: [Inaudible]Mayor: I’m going – I’ll see you out there. We’ll have – that will be a timed –[Laughter]I’ll see you out there. We’ll have plenty to say on that. Thanks, everyone.