“Those students exist in every community, and it’s our job to find them, so we have spent the past several years investing heavily in outreach and engagement strategies to encourage bright students from all backgrounds to apply.” “The Hunter College Campus Schools are designed to serve intellectually gifted students,” Wexler said.
Hunter officials also note that multiracial students make up 18 percent of the high school, and that poverty is tough to track, since some families fail to turn in their free and reduced-priced lunch forms, the school’s standard means for collecting information about family income. As for Hunter and CUNY, he said, “I think it’s a shame that they have not chimed in.”ĭebra Wexler, a spokesperson for Hunter College, said the school has engaged in extensive outreach to find talented students from across the city. “There’s no question that this is another crown jewel when it comes to public high school in New York City,” said Maurice Frumkin, a former city education department official who now runs an admissions consultancy. The schools have avoided the spotlight for a constellation of reasons, including their unique governance structure and the fact that their admissions numbers are not released annually by the city, something that has drawn special attention to demographics at the specialized schools. At Hunter’s elementary school, less than 3 percent of students come from low-income families. But just 7 percent of Hunter high school students are black and Hispanic, and only 9 percent come from low-income families. And as New York City engages in a lively debate about the lack of diversity at eight elite city high schools - with Mayor Bill de Blasio calling the lack of black and Hispanic students there “a monumental injustice” - Hunter’s disparities in some cases are far starker.Īt the specialized high schools, 10 percent of admissions offers went to black and Hispanic students last year, and nearly half of the students attending are poor.
The schools look very little like the city its students live in, though, a fact that has been true for many years.