\u201cI do have to agree with Cooper,\u201d Kyle, the sole senior in the group, said. \u201cBefore him, I always felt like the world was unchangeable. Like, this is the way things are; we have to follow this structure.\u201d Mamdani\u2019s unexpected electoral triumph had called such received wisdom into question.<\/p>\n
Scattered on the classroom whiteboards were equations, a few desultory doodles, a thunderhead cloud of cramped A.P. U.S. History notes about the Spanish-American War (\u201cProgressivism \u2192 idk\u201d), and, written in Japanese, \u201cI like Stray Kids,\u201d referring to a K-pop boy band. Shelves of small cacti under grow lights filled one window. Joan, a junior in glasses with thick black frames, said that he was impressed with Mamdani\u2019s 2-K and 3-K efforts. Child care was something that his parents had worried about after arriving from the Dominican Republic. \u201cI know a lot of family and friends who would have really benefitted from a program like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mariam, a junior, wore a loosely draped black head scarf. She said that she liked the degree to which Mamdani seemed immersed in New York\u2019s daily life. \u201cThe fact that he took the subway,\u201d she said. \u201cIsn\u2019t this guy supposed to be in a limousine?\u201d Her commute involved taking the 2 train to the 4, with a transfer at 149th Street, a stop that she called \u201ca red flag to transit New Yorkers,\u201d because \u201cdrug use is extremely prevalent\u201d\u2014something she hoped Mamdani could address.<\/p>\n
There were knowing nods from the rest of the group regarding 149th Street. Namira, another junior, said that she didn\u2019t take public transportation very much, in part because of her parents\u2019 safety concerns.<\/p>\n
Namira, whose dark hair had burgundy streaks, wore hoop earrings and a tangle of gold necklaces. \u201cMy parents are really supportive of Mamdani, because I come from similar religious and cultural backgrounds,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m Bengali.\u201d Namira lives in East Elmhurst, where several bus stops had recently been removed, disrupting her mother\u2019s commute to Times Square and inspiring her to action. \u201cMy mom has a history of not being trusting of politicians in general,\u201d Namira said. \u201cBut recently she took the liberty of e-mailing Mamdani.\u201d Namira\u2019s mother often asks her children to copy-edit her e-mails. This time, Namira said, \u201cWe made her send it as it was, because we just thought it added to the factor of, like, Mamdani would understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mayor was, the group agreed, someone who they could easily imagine as a Bronx Science student. To judge by the present company, this meant ambitious and busy. The students had a dense roster of extracurriculars among them: student government; debate; Model U.N.; National Honor Society; newspaper; and groups that, variously, opposed bullying, promoted restorative justice, and provided test prep. Namira hoped eventually to study journalism and international relations. Cooper, a self-described \u201cwell-rounded student,\u201d professed an interest in education policy; previously, he had worked for the Bronx congressman Ritchie Torres.<\/p>\n
As the students held forth on community, diversity, and under-resourced schools, they all sounded slightly as though they were running for something, however yet undefined. They spoke like people who were accustomed to being evaluated, and accepted it with good humor. The ordeal of admissions was still present in the minds of upperclassmen, as was the fact of Stuyvesant, the public-high-school Harvard to Bronx Science\u2019s Yale. Mamdani, for one, has admitted that he didn\u2019t get into Stuyvesant. (\u201cMamdani plans to convert Stuyvesant High School into a government-owned mixed-use building,\u201d the Stuyvesant Spectator reported, in a humor piece.)<\/p>\n
Cooper volunteered that he\u2019d ranked Bronx Science as his first choice, against his parents\u2019 wishes. \u201cThey wanted me to go to Stuyvesant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilar to Cooper, I did choose Bronx Science over Stuyvesant,\u201d Kyle noted.<\/p>\n
Mariam explained that she\u2019d been admitted to Bronx Science through a program called Discovery, for students from disadvantaged backgrounds whose test scores fell just below the school\u2019s cutoff line. \u201cI got that e-mail\u2014I was, like, wow, the school must really want me to come here,\u201d she said. Her story was a reminder that the school\u2019s promise and its limitations were difficult to disentangle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI do have to agree with Cooper,\u201d Kyle, the sole senior in the group, said. \u201cBefore him, I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11874,1092,9,24,55,54,56,77459],"class_list":["post-194273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-high-school","tag-mayor","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-specialized-high-school-admissions-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}