Judge Edgardo Ramos denied an injunction to stop the Mayor from giving 1000  seats  to re-defined economically disadvantaged students that are way below the cut-off scores. Now, a student who missed making it to the lowest of the 8 schools, by a wide margin, can go to Stuyvesant*. Community groups also worry that re-defining** poverty would skip over students that are defined as low income by federal standards including many Asians.

This decision will embolden the Mayor to push his 7% quota bill in the coming weeks in Albany.. ~ Please donate to the Scholastic Merit Fund to help stop him. The SMFis  a 501c-4, and the only organization that is setup to lobby legislators to keep the Hecht-Calandra law and defeat the mayors proposal. We need funds NOW because by June, it may be all over for the SHSAT.  Donate at MeritFund.org

*Known as the Discovery Program, traditionally about 150-200 students who just missed the cutoff were given a chance to go to summer school and then gain entry. The Mayor has now increased  it from about 2% to 20%

**Rather than use the universal federal standard of low income, the city has created its own economic needs index (ENI) to define low income. Many students who are classified as poor under federal standards are not classified as needy under the city's ENI.