“Asian Exclusion Disguised as Integration”AWA Condemns City Councilmembers’ Plan to Change Specialized High School Admissions and Restrict Discovery Eligibility

September 13, 2026 (New York, NY) Asian Wave Alliance (AWA), a nonpartisan political club representing Asian American New Yorkers, strongly condemns Council Members Nantasha Williams and Lincoln Restler’s proposals, the “Specialized High Schools: Excellence and Integration Plan” as well as City Council Resolution 167. These proposed changes are an attack against merit and are blatantly racist and engineered to reduce the number of Asian students at Specialized High Schools by:

1. Replacing the transparent, objective Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) with a subjective “holistic” admissions process for the five Specialized High Schools that were established during the Bloomberg administration;

2. Limiting eligibility for the Discovery program to low-income students from only 15 high-poverty school districts when in reality low-income students exist in all schools and districts citywide; and

3. Urging Albany to repeal the Hecht-Calandra Act, which established the SHSAT as the sole admissions criterion for Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science, and Brooklyn Technical High School.

   
   

Eliminating SHSAT-based admissions at the Queens High School for the Sciences and Staten Island Technical High School would remove the only test-based Specialized High School option in their home borough.* For many families, these schools provide an important geographic alternative to lengthy cross-borough commutes. 

Mayor Deblasio’s Discovery changes, which limited eligibility to low-income students attending only high ENI schools, still yielded a majority Asian Discovery pool (62%). Council Members Williams and Restler now want to restrict Discovery eligibility even further to only students in the 15 highest-poverty districts. 

“Asian exclusion is disguised as integration. The top 15 districts were chosen purposely and nefariously to exclude Asians. Based on 2025 NYC Public Schools demographic data, the 15th-ranked low-income district is less than 5% Asian, while the 16th-ranked district jumps to 22% Asian. With 32 overall districts, it’s hard to not see this as an Asian-exclusion agenda,” said Yiatin Chu, president of Asian Wave Alliance. (see demographic data table)

AWA demands to know why the co-sponsors would cut Discovery eligibility by more than half based on geographically zoned districts when the key difference between them is their racial composition—not the needs of low-income students. 

Finally, the plan urges Albany to repeal the Hecht-Calandra Act for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech through City Council Resolution 167. AWA strongly opposes any changes to Hecht-Calandra and instead supports expanding opportunities for all underserved students through earlier academic preparation, broader SHSAT access, free test preparation, more rigorous middle-school instruction, and expansion of high-quality Specialized High School seats. 

“We reject the premise that racial diversity requires reducing opportunities for one minority group in order to increase opportunities for another,” said Yi Fang Chen, First Vice President of AWA.

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*The five Specialized High Schools established during the Bloomberg administration created additional seats. While Queens students earn the highest share of the city’s SHSAT offers, only a small fraction of Specialized High School seats is located within the borough. Just 4% of the seats (139 of ~4000) are at the Queens High School for the Sciences. This geographic imbalance is well-documented by Community Education Councils. Staten Island Technical High School is the only Specialized High School on Staten Island with 294 of the ~4000 or 7% of the seats. Roughly half of its students live on Staten Island, while most of the remainder come from South Brooklyn.