Senator Gounardes and Councilman Brannan want Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza to purchase Bishop Kearney High School and make it a NYC Specialized High School for students. There is a demand for more specialized schools in NYC.  Story here. 

While this is an okay idea, it would be better if the school became a Beacon School that any student in the area could go to and have a high quality education. A specialized high school will be open to all students in the city. Gounardes should grab the school and make it a community school. Maybe he doesn’t have the funding or authority to do that,  so he is hoping the city buys it?

Why didn’t Gounardes and Brannan meet with the Mayor or the Chancellor OR wait to hear from one of them before he contacted the paper. I noticed that this has become a trend lately, so there are a lot of articles, but not a lot happening (examples: Gounardes on the lowering of the Verrazzano bridge toll – see here OR Brannan calling for action on illegal conversions and nothing happening – see here and here). Golden and Malliotakis did this for years, so I am surprised the Democrats are doing the same thing.

Update: The Eagle had the letter from the politicians, which has yesterday’s date, so it’s weird that they ran right to the paper to discuss this when nothing has happened. 

Another thing that is strange is why would Gounardes announce this?  Is he trying to make the same thing happen at this school that happened at the last school location? The Nathan’s location on 86th Street was purchased by a developer for $12.5K and he turned around and sold it to NYC School Construction Authority for $25 million without any improvements to the property.  The sad part is that there was someone dumb enough to pay that much money for the property. It doesn’t take a business degree to know that was a bad deal. Story here