The mayor of New York’s largest city told residents that the goal of future education and police reforms was “to redistribute wealth” to fund new programs.
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, told citizens during his daily coronavirus briefing, according to The Post Millennial, that the goal of the city was to “redistribute wealth” to fund new policy proposals. de Blasio made the remark while discussing his plans to reform the education system and the New York Police Department. The policy proposals would hinge on the need to “profoundly change the distribution of resources.”
“I like to say very bluntly: our mission is to redistribute wealth.” Mayor de Blasio said regarding his education proposals. “A lot of people bristle at that phrase, that is in fact the phrase we need to use. We have been doing this work for seven years to more equitably redistribute resources throughout our school system.”
Mayor de Blasio further stated that the city could never “go back to a broken status quo,” and also said that the city could never go back to a past “that didn’t work.” The mayor cited the COVID era as a sign that the city needed “to do better” in terms of rebuilding. He highlighted that, for the city to do better, residents needed to commit to fighting “disparities and inequalities” in education, where it was highlighted as a major issue of equity.
In the educational proposals discussed at the daily briefing, Middle and High School admissions would have “expanded diversity planning to all of the city’s 32 districts over the next four years.” In addition, high schools would “eliminate geographic priority” over the next two years and middle schools would have a one-year pause on screenings. Grant applications would also open to five new districts during the school year.
The City has been preparing to launch a new education plan, called the 2021 Student Achievement Plan according to NBC New York, to “close the COVID achievement gap” that has occurred as a result of the shutdown of NYC schools.
Mayor de Blasio also highlighted an independent watchdog report during his briefing, as reported by The New York Times, regarding the N.Y.P.D.’s handling of the summer Black Lives Matter protests and accompanying riots. The report suggested that the police department had engaged in “excessive enforcement” to quell the protests. In addition, the report suggested that the tactics used violated the First Amendment rights of protesters.
Mayor de Blasio has made similar comments in the past, in which one instance during a 2019 State of the City address saying “the wealth is in the wrong hands.” Earlier this year, de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo went into a public feud on whether to increase taxes on the rich to plug a ballooning city deficit fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.
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