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Transcript: Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Fariña Announce Highest-Ever Number of NYC Students Taking and Passing Advanced Placement Exams

January 17, 2017

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much, Dayne, and I really, really appreciate you telling your story and talking to us about your daughter, Emily. And I can see the pride you have in Emily and what it means to you that she has all this ability and all this wonderful drive; and she is looking to achieve great things. And I can see the pride you feel as a mother in your daughter. And I am thrilled that these advance placement courses are the right thing for her and that now this school has them. I know it is going to make all the difference in Emily's life, and your life, and you family's life. So, thank you and I want to congratulate you – you are living the American Dream.

Dayne Rodriguez: Thank you.

Mayor: You came to this country and you're making it a wonderful place for the next generation and the life that they are having in this country. So, it is really wonderful to see what you have achieved. I congratulate you.

Rodriguez: Thank you.

Mayor: Muchas gracias.

Rodriguez: Muchas gracias.

Mayor: Alright, I want to just say that Dayne's story – this is a classic New York City story of a family that came here seeking opportunity and that brings so much to our city. But for too long, there was no way for the children of these families to get the opportunity they deserve. For too long the doors were not open to them. And let's be abundantly clear, as we start here today, this was all about who you were and where you lived. In some parts of this city, there were high schools that had AP courses for decades and decades, even generations. In other parts of this City, there were high schools that never had a single AP course – talk about tale of two cities; this is one of the starkest examples. In the history of this city, too often your educational opportunities were in fact determined by your zip code, which goes against all our values as New Yorkers and Americans.

When we put together Equity and Excellence, as a vision for our school system, we believed this was one of the essential wrongs that we had to right. And we could not have a public school system that sent a profoundly mixed message; telling some students that their future was college from the moment they walked in the door of high school, and then telling other students that they really didn't have that path. It just doesn't work. It's not fair; it's not right, it holds young people back. So, we were determined to change that situation fundamentally. And that's what we want to talk about today, how advance placement for all – AP for all – is one of the game changers our school system needs; and we want you to know how far it is going already, and where we're going to go from there.

Now, this school is such a great example of a school system that is strengthening all the time. Young Women's Leadership School, in Astoria – and I want to take this moment to thank the wonderful principal Allison Persad for all she has achieved. Let's give her a big round of applause.

[Applause]

Allison, whenever I am in a school setting I honor the principal and respect the principal; and I flash back to when I was a student and so – as I said I went into the classroom, these young women were studying Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf and I remember –

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña: I've got to ask you something?

Mayor: What?

Commissioner Fariña: It's the same author [inaudible] –

Mayor: Help me – I said it wrong. I said it wrong, I said the movie title. See I had trouble with the book way back when.

[Laughter]

Unknown: You did say that.

[Laughter]

Mayor: 'Room of One's Own' by Virginia Woolf, which I had in high school -

[Laughter]

– and I struggled with. It's very important work – literature – and it is open to a lot of interpretation. And hearing these young women deeply, deeply connect with it and make it very personal, it was really fascinating and that they had such confidence in their interpretation in the best sense. So, I just want to say to you, Allison, that is really something to be proud of when you see our young people grasping the opportunity to learn like that and then it becoming personally important to them. So, congratulations to you and all of your colleagues in this school.

Now, this school is such an extraordinary example of this city and this borough of Queens. 60-plus languages are spoken in this school. It is as great an example of New York City as you're going to find. But this wonderful place, as of last year, had no advance placement courses. So, look at this school. It looks like New York City; it looks like every part of our city, it looks like all of the wonderful immigrant communities that have joined the city, and yet that door to college – that opportunity for advance placement literally didn't exist here. This year, thanks to AP for All there are four AP courses in this school right now. And young people like your daughter, Emily, are taking advantage of them and are growing because of them. That's what it is all about. AP courses mean a lot of things. They allow smart and driven young people to have an opportunity to go as far as they can go right now, which is what we want for them. They obviously help young people get into college and into the college of their choice. They allow young people to not have to take that course again in college, which makes college easier and cheaper. That, in the age of massive college debt is a very big deal to hardworking families. But the thing I also want to dwell on is the message it sends to young people, you can't for a moment – you can't miss the fact that young people are very perceptive. And if they are told from the beginning that they matter, they belong, and they have tremendous hope and potential, they pick up on that, and they live it out. If they're told college can be for them, it inspires them. If they are implicitly told that college is not their reality, they take in that message too. The presence of AP courses is a great equalizer. It sends a message to every student. College can be for you if that's the choice you make.

Now, I want to give you some good news on how AP for All is already progressing in our school system. We came into office in the middle of a school year. So the numbers I'm going to give you are for the following new year, which was the first school year in this – first full school year in this administration, first full school year that Chancellor Fariña governed over. So comparing that school year, 2014–15, to the following one, 2015–16, students taking AP courses in this city – the number of students has increased by 8.4 percent, from one year to the next – 8.4 percent more kids taking AP courses. The number of students passing went up 8.2 percent. That's in one year's time. It shows you how willing our kids are to take advantage of opportunity if only we would give it to them. And that's why AP for All is going to go so much farther.

But we also know there is another mission here, which is to close historic inequities to address gaps that have been unfair for decades and decades. So here's some more news you should know. 14 percent more Black students are taking at least one AP exam. And almost 10 percent more Hispanic students are taking at least one more AP exam. And the rate of passing is even more impressive. 18 percent more Black students have passed at least one AP exam, and almost 11 percent more Latino students have passed at least one AP exam – in the last year.

So this is making a difference right now. This school year we have 63 high schools that have new AP courses. 31 of them never had a single AP course before – none. And now they have them. By the fall of 2021, by the start of that school year, every public high school in New York City will have at least five AP courses available to its students – every single one.

I want to thank Chancellor Fariña and her team who have been absolutely devoted to this mission. And I also want to tell you – parents and students have been clamoring for this change and have been actively participating in making it work. And of course our teachers are the truest believers because they believe in the kids they are teaching, and they want them to have this opportunity. And they want to push them to take it.

So this is a crucial part of all we're doing with Equity and Excellence. And it is one of the building blocks for our goal of having two-thirds of our graduates college-ready by 2026.

I'll conclude, in English before a few words in Spanish, by saying: I've always said it, I believe it more all the time – education determines economic destiny at this moment of history more than ever before. But if AP courses were given to only some and not others, we were literally closing the doors of economic opportunity. Today that ends, and we are on a course to open those doors wide and create an opportunity for all.

A few words in Spanish.

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

So, I want to thank again Chancellor Fariña because this has been a passion of hers, and she is showing that this can work and work quickly here in our New York City public schools. Our Chancellor, Carmen Fariña.

[Applause]

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña: Good morning. The figures themselves, I think, tell a good story. But I want to be very clear there is a bigger story behind this. And I went to an all-girls high school – did not take one AP course. They weren't really offered at that time. It was a long, long time ago. But most importantly, what I saw here today is also how the AP courses themselves have changed.

At one time AP courses were very skill and drill – you memorized facts and then you regurgitated them when you took an exam. This is not the AP of today. I want to be clear. The discussion you heard in classrooms was thoughtful, well-researched; and also means that when these students go to college, they will be able to defend their ideas. Every one of those young ladies I spoke to had an idea –

Mayor: Yep.

Chancellor Fariña: And was willing to say "but when I read" or "now I know." And those are something that the original AP courses did not have. So to me, having AP courses that are interactive, that require student engagement, and student voice is going to be one of the ways that they're going to succeed when they get to college. Because when you get to college, you have to think and need to start thinking in pre-K. So that's part of the continuum of the AP courses.

The second thing that I want to be very clear about: before a teacher teaches an AP course, they have to go through a lot of professional development. There's a lot of retraining. And I attended an AP training course two summers ago. And it's very clear to me that this makes the teaching much more rigorous and much more thoughtful. The teacher that was in that classroom today could actually tell you what each of her students were doing, what the assignment was that was given out, and probably would force the kids to even more thinking as she went around the room and asked them to do that. She was there as a facilitator, something that's not always easy for teachers. I know as a former teacher, we tend to want to do it all. But here, she had set a climate in this classroom that allowed the kids their own opinions and based on facts, which is much more learning. Right, Alison?

Principal Allison Persad, Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria: Yes.

Chancellor Fariña: It's much better. But I know that one of the heavy lifts that we have which we have embraced is the re-training of teachers who want to be AP. Teachers, this is not something you ask to be. You must be willing to be re-trained to be. And I think that is really important. And I cannot emphasize enough something the Mayor said because as I visit high schools, and I ask to visit AP classes, it comes up over and over again – went to visit a school in the Bronx recently where my student tour guide, and my student tour guide is here today from this school – this means that every time that a student takes an AP course that is certified for college, that's one less course they have to take and tuition they have to pay. And one of my tour guides actually said to me: I'm going to be starting college next year with one less year of tuition that I have to pay for. For a lot of our families, that's a real game changer. And it's not less rigorous. This doesn't mean they are taking something that's baby work in high school. It's as rigorous because it has been approved as a college course.

So there's so many takeaways from here. My only recommendation today is when you go to an all-girls school to make sure whatever the discussion is that at some point you bring some male voices in. And I said – well how do you manage that or bring some boys in to talk about their side of the book?

But I couldn't be happier. The more schools I go to, the more I am really encouraging principals to move in this direction. And really having David Coleman work with us on this process is really important because one of the things that we really need to kind of work on is that you have to pay money to take the test, and we're working on how do we get all that money, so we never turn a child away because they can't afford the admissions for an AP course.

Mayor: Thank you so much.

[…]

Mayor: Alright, we're going to take question about this – this announcement today, and then we're going to go to other topics. Questions about this – Andrew?

Question: Under the rubric of what took so long as you heard from [inaudible] why will it take until the fall of 2021 to finish this when you did UPK in one year? Why does it take four years to get AP exams into schools that don't have them?

Mayor: To get pre-K to full speed was two years, and because this is – and I'll let the chancellor speak to it – this is about preparing the teachers, preparing everyone in the system to do this the right way. This is college level course work, let's be clear. This is a really dynamic, important thing but it's also a tough thing, and we've never done it on this scale in the school system before, so we have to get it right. But the chancellor can speak to what we got to do to put the pieces in place.

Chancellor Fariña: For those of you who may have taken AP courses, remember that you had to have a certain level of grades before you took it. Our presumption is that a lot more students will be better prepared. If you think about my beginning time as chancellor I focused a lot on middle schools. I still spend a lot of time on middle schools. We need to get the middle school work done right, so that the kids go into high school better prepared. So a lot of it is about having students better prepared, so we're not saying anybody can take AP courses, but anyone who's prepared to take the AP courses. So that's number one. Number two is also – and I said – one of the major lifts about the AP courses is having teachers who are well trained, and it's not about teacher's knowing their content. It's how to teach the content. So it becomes the thinking curriculum rather than just a memorized curriculum. So those are the challenges. My hope is as more and more people step up to the plate to ask to be trained – we anticipate this summer more teachers will ask to be trained than maybe we expected – we will change our targets if that's what we need to do. But I'd rather be thoughtful and do it right and have high quality work everywhere. One of the other things we've done in co-located campuses. We're moving towards having AP courses in our co-located campuses that can be shared across the campus, so if you have six schools in one campus – I'm thinking of one campus in particular. Of six schools, only one of the schools had an AP course. Now all of the schools have at least one AP course that the kids can take in each other's campuses. So it's about changing the culture and changing people's mindsets, but I do expect us to be able to make real – this is going to be a real game changer for many of the students in our schools.

President Michael Mulgrew, United Federation of Teachers: And the last piece is that on pre-K it's one curriculum. For here, every subject area at every level is a different curriculum that has to be built, that has to be approved by certain people to say that it is up to rigor, and then you have to build the capacity at schools who for generations have not offered APs and we're now saying to them – and they're accepting the challenge of saying – we want you to create pipelines inside of your own school communities to do this. But it's also – it's a very huge labor lift in terms of getting all of this work done, designed, and approved.

Question: So how do you determine whether a teacher is qualified to move to this level, and another – you're saying teachers come forward and ask to be retrained but then is there – are they graded on how they do? Is there a pass/fail? Does everybody make it who wants to be trained or how does that work?

Chancellor Fariña: Well, I think to some degree teachers have to show some aptitude for working. You know, there's an assumption that teaching on a high level is easier than working with struggling kids, and the reality is both have their own challenges. So it's about who is willing to be retrained. It's a whole summer course. I mean there's a lot of work tied into this. I think also that's where the principals' decisions come into play. Which teacher do they encourage to take some of the courses? And again, like it was just said – this is in every single course work. We have it in literacy. We have it in math. We have it in social studies. So it's really a matter of school by school. We have teachers in maybe some schools that many more want to teach AP courses. One of the things that we're encouraging is to have teachers go work with students in other schools. Like I said in the high schools a lot of our schools are in co-located campuses, so this is something that we're working on on a constant basis, but I do think right now all teachers who apply and are willing to go through the rigorous retraining – the most difficult thing I think in terms of the retraining is the teaching style. You go from a teacher in front of a room preaching at kids to a teacher who becomes a facilitator and gets students to talk to each other.

President Mulgrew: It really is about a specialization, and it's – as every other profession now, we are becoming more and more specialized. There's specific training if you want to teach AP classes. There's specific classes if you want to deal with at risk students. It really is the inclination of the teacher themselves. My recommendation to all teachers is if you're thinking of doing that, you should find an opportunity to spend some time in a classroom that's already doing it to see if it's something that you really would find fulfilling in your career.

Mayor: Okay?

Principal Persad: At Astoria we use a few different measures. Teacher experience was one of them, but teacher interest was also really important to us. As the Mayor mentioned that's the critical factor in any classroom that will change the entire course. And so if you have a teacher that's passionate about their subject that really wants to learn about it, that's engaged in professional development before they engage with the class, as well as the professional development that the City is providing, it changes the experience for the students, so those two things were critical for us. Going back to the first question around – the timeline for the AP from a building leader perspective, programmatic changes have to happen in order to embrace these courses, and the whole program and course structure of the school has to change and that takes time, so one of the things I want to thank the Mayor for and the chancellor is allowing us to engage not only in AP for all but in Algebra For All which allows us to move Algebra to the 8th grade with the hope of eventually having an Advanced Placement mathematics course in the coming years, but that initiative will funnel another initiative, and so I thank you both for allowing us to do that.

Mayor: Excellent, thank you.

President Ernest Logan, Council of School Supervisors and Administrators: This is also a PROSE school by the way, which allowed them – and most of you are familiar with PROSE, which allows school the educational zone so it's been –

Unknown: The education reporters.

[Laughter]

President Logan: Oh, the education – oh, I see, great. And it allows the school to really look into themselves as a school community what they like to change, and here the teachers are spending more time talking to each other and planning together, so that helps this.

Mayor: Thank you.

Question: You highlighted several Equity and Excellence over the last few months, obviously including AP for all. Can you talk about if there's going to be a more narrow focus over the next year or what elements – obviously of a very broad plan – that you're focusing on over the next year through the election?

Mayor: We're going to be certainly talking more about Equity and Excellence in the State of the City. It's going to be one of the important things that we go into more. How it's being implemented. How we want it to grow. What our goals are for it. So you're going to be hearing a lot about it. I know when we started out it was a blue print that we had to find out, you know, if it would work or not. Now we increasingly believe this really is the plan that's going to get us where we need to go and I'm going to go into detail on that as a part of the state of the city.

Question: Sort of a two part question on increasing enrollment. I'm sort of surprised, and it looks great that enrollment is increasing and, you know, they're around the same percentages in terms of enrollment and passing. As you increase enrollment, how do you protect against pushing students who are not prepared into AP courses where they move so fast that you know there's a lot of risk for failure there? So how do you protect against that? And secondly how do you keep class sizes manageable because AP courses obviously are given – in some ways more in need of smaller classes like the one we just saw?

Mayor: Before the chancellor, just want to make a point to establish. It gets to the question about Equity and Excellence as well. The whole idea – the chancellor referenced middle school – the whole idea of Equity and Excellence is to rebuild the school system from the beginning. As Michael said we knew for decades and decades, for example, that early childhood education was one of the huge difference makers, but we didn't do it in the city. Now we have reached that plateau. We're now moving on very aggressively to getting our young people on reading level by the end of second grade as they go into third grade, that again – when I came into office that was just under 30 percent of our kids. That has to be ultimately all our kids. So we're building a school system that can prepare kids year by year to get high school ready to take on AP courses and to graduate and be college ready, but it literally had to be rebuilt from the beginning and other elements like Computer Science For All are going to help to energize that critical thinking that Carmen was talking about. So they'll tell you about – I think your question is very important about how does it actually work, but I want you to hear that to – for it to work really in the long run the whole school system had to re-envisioned and that's what we're trying to do.

Chancellor Fariña: I think one of the questions as far as class size and programming goes to Allison's point that the whole school has to be reprogrammed. So it's a matter of more flexibility about how many classes teachers teach; what the preparation is for those teachers. The average class size in more of our AP courses is 20 or less, so the class size has not gone up, but it also means that other teachers then may have to do some other things. In terms of the quality, there is a presumption that students who take AP courses have certain prequalifications. But don't underestimate the prequalification of the desire that a student has to succeed, and I think in the past if I was going to take AP courses – I'm going back to my high school days – based on just my test courses, I don't think I would've taken too many AP courses. If it was based on my ambition, my willingness – multiple assessments – to do the hard work? Then I think I would've been able to do a lot of the AP courses. So I think it's how we balance all those things, but again there's a mentoring program for students. There's Saturday programs for teachers and student to get you ready. One of the things we've done with the AP work – how do you get ready to take an AP course? So, I think there's a lot of things we put in place, which is one of the reason – going back to your original questions – that this cannot be done overnight. It requires a lot different shifts in any given school.

Principal Persad: We actually have a really rigorous application process that we borrowed from our sister school TWYLS Queens that includes student interviews and a panel among their peers of teachers. It includes a teacher recommendation. It includes a student written work sample that's reviewed by the teacher that would be the teacher of that course, and one of the most inclusive factors is actually having parents attend an AP parent night where they signed an Advance Placement parent contract saying that we are all committing to this mission together to have our students succeed and we're going to do it as a school, as a student, and as a family.

Mayor: Beautiful. Thank you, I want to finish on this side and then we'll come over here. Grace?

Question: What – I just wanted – hoping for a little more explanation. I was confused about the new numbers. There was an explanation at the front of this about how the numbers were recalibrated. I guess I'm confused as to how – it looks like now you're saying 1,000 fewer students took an AP exam?

Mayor: Let me have Michelle Palladio join us who is the Senior Director for Research and Policy at the DOE. So why don't you state that question and Michelle will jump in?

Senior Director Michelle Paladino, Department of Education: Hi, so in previous years we would get the data directly from the College Board, right? So when a student sits down to take the exam, the exam goes off to the College Board, and then those aggregate numbers would come to us, and that's what we would report. However given the introduction of AP for All we need a little more nuance, so this time around we would get the data, match it up to our own data, right? So we can look at other characteristics of the student, but that means that some students are not going to match.

Question: I'm just confused as to how data from the College Board who over count by 1,000 students – saying a 1,000 more students took an AP exam than actually did?

Senior Director Paladino: Well, data is a little messy right? So for – in some cases those students were our students at one point, but were no longer, and in other cases they are actually our students but we're missing them because of the match.

Mayor: David, you want to?

David Coleman: Yes, just a word on this. What she's saying is that the College Board typically gave data, but of course the College Board does not have the deep data system that the New York City Department of Education has which tracks its students over time. When they did this much more intensive matching of their students we can only tell on T1 that students from the district took this exam. They're looking much more richly at exactly the student [inaudible] who took and when they could get a match and hence get richer data, they gave that richer data set to the public. In that set of cases they couldn't mind a match where that student moved on or for those matching procedures didn't work, so they reported the data on which they could get a full match. I hope that makes sense. It's because the different ways the organizations house data. All the student's specific information is housed in the department.

Mayor: We can follow up and go into detail with you. Go ahead.

Question: Two part question. First for you Mr. Mayor, do you have any concerns that President-elect Trump's education – nominated education secretary Betsy DeVos – that her kind of views about pro-voucher education could actually take money away from the City's schools and therefore put programs like this at risk? And is there anything that you feel you can do to kind of guard against that? And the second part of the question is for the chancellor, which is do you have any thoughts on Ms. DeVos theories about education?

Mayor: So I would say on the first one, of course I'm concerned, but one the things we're doing now are really getting ahead of steam, and we are putting our resources in, and I think we're reaching a critical mass point on this. So even if there were a threat down the line on the federal front I think we know just the way budgets goes one thing or another, how legislation goes that a year or two down the line before it would have any impact. It's not going to stop us from doing everything we're doing. But I also don't want to overstate the threat. I'm sure Michael and Ernie have a keener sense of what's going on inside Washington on these issues. I think there's tremendous hesitation about vouchers, and that that is not just among Democrats. I think there are Republicans who either because of their own beliefs or because of the people they represent – the people they represent – know that vouchers are a very slippery slope. There is a tremendous feeling for public education in this country including in rural districts, including in red states, and anything that might undercut resources for our public schools is going to meet with a lot of opposition. Just look at the whole movement nationally on some of the high stakes testing issues, and it tells you a lot. So I think it's a real concern, but I don't think it will be easy if she is confirmed – I don't think it will be easy for her to move that part of her agenda. I don't know if you guys want to jump in?

President Mulgrew: She does not have an educational philosophy. She has a business philosophy. She believes – her entire career has been about removing funding from public schools. She does not believe in neighborhood public schools. She believes that education should have no accountability, and anyone who wants to open a school and run it, can run it, and they can make as much profit as they possibly can, and if they can get away with it God bless them. That is her belief. It is a business belief. It is not an education ideology.

Chancellor Fariña: First and foremost, nothing succeeds like success, and that's exactly what we're focused on – being successful with all our initiatives. It's not by chance that this year alone we have hosted 14 foreign education ministers to New York City. They have come to see how we're doing CTE, pre-K, how we're doing our social studies curriculum. Our social studies curriculum that went out this year has just been adopted by the United States Defense Department as the curriculum to be used internationally for all the students in all their schools. So our job is to keep our eye on the ball, to keep focused on what we're doing, and then I always love the fact that there are bureaucracies and bureaucracies have a lot stop gaps along the way. So I thank god for bureaucracy when it comes to New York City right now.

Mayor: You meant the federal bureaucracy?

Chancellor Fariña: Absolutely. That's what I mean.

[Laughter]

Mayor: We're trying to always improve our own.

Chancellor Fariña: But success – we're focused on our work.

Mayor: Okay?

Question: This question of why this took so long – AP for All – why it took so long has come up on the panel a few times today. I'm curious what you think the answer to that question is. Was this intentional? Was it a case of benign neglect? Why did it take so long for leaders in this city to try to provide this for kids across the board?

Mayor: I think there was a lack of boldness about what we really had to do to transform the school system. And I think early childhood education is an obvious example, and I think AP for All is another obvious example that – and I would say this goes across many administrations that we as a city tolerated an unacceptable status quo, and, you know, I came here to break down the status quo. What's amazing to me – and I really want you all to hear this because I've reflected on this now for three full years – was how available change was all along. That this status quo was just waiting to be broken down, and it has been real work and hard work, but each piece has been moving on schedule, which you might not have predicted in the biggest school system in the country. So it wasn't the priority it should've been, and there was I think too much of a sense of what couldn't be done as opposed to what could be done, and once we started the ball rolling it's amazing how all of the stakeholders have picked up on it. We saw that with pre-K. You know, again, pre-K was a theory until we put it in action. We were stunned at how everyone up and down the line participated and made it their own including as I've talked about to you guys – Catholic schools, Islamic schools, Jewish schools, charter schools, nonprofit organizations. It became something greater than we even originally envisioned. I think that's happening on AP for All as well. Parents – as Dayne's example is powerful one – parents desperately want this for their kids. They want their kids to aim higher. They want them to get into a great college. They want them to be able to not have to pay as much once they get to college, so they can actually succeed at finishing college. So boy, talk about people voting with their feet? They believe in it, so they're doing something about it. The same with students; the same with teachers, but the match was never lit before. So we never got to see how far we could go.

President Logan: Could I add to that? Also I think it's – and this comes back to David – we had a partner here who was willing to work with us on the course structure to be able to do this, and so often students in poor communities and poor circumstances couldn't afford to take the exams. And so we've come up with a way to do that, and I think that's what's critical here. I think – one of the things you see in this administration is the partnerships that we're doing. The more that we bring in partnerships it helps to cut down on the costs that the City has, but we also found out that the business community is buying into the work that we're doing in public schools whether it's CTW of universal pre-K or the AP. They realize that the work force is here, so let's build the work force.

Coleman: I just want to say a word about this because when we see something not happening we too often assume it's out of some cruelty or neglect. I think part of what's prevented AP for All is the tyranny of economics of scale. What happens is that large high schools get Advanced Placement because the classrooms are big enough. And I think for too long not only the City but the College Board turned a blind eye to the inequalities that arose. But we are a nonprofit organization, so we joined with the Mayor in the notion that even if – no matter how small a high school is, no matter how small the AP classes are going to wind up it's worth the investment to make AP in every school. And I think something that's really important today when we think of New York urban leadership versus rural leadership is this is exactly what's gone on in rural schools around the country. That's why we've promised the next three to five years every high school no matter how small, no matter how rural will have an AP Computers Science principles teacher – trained if they choose to. I think the Mayor is showing leadership in more than an urban way, but also in a way that shows what it might mean for their country to reembrace the idea that even when the economies don't work, even when things don't work, you give everyone opportunity, and this is a very diverse city. This will mean as much in Staten Island, with the white working poor, with a whole diverse community of people who have not had access, and I think it's really a model for nationwide work and making it in small schools is at the heart of the issue not only here but in rural environments.

Mayor: Thank you. David?

Question: [Inaudible] how many schools of the roughly 400 high schools still don't have AP – at least one AP class?

Mayor: Michelle, why don't sit at the microphone, so they can hear you?

Senior Director Paladino: 140.

Question: 140?

Mayor: And what's – David's asking an important question – let's just hold one second. What's the – 140 versus how many? What's the formal count of schools?

Senior Director Paladino: 500.

Mayor: 140 out of 500 don't have [inaudible] but 360 out of 500 do?

Senior Director Paladino: Correct.

Question: So we're talking today about adding 30 schools to this? I mean – are you on pace to –

Mayor: 30 this year.

Chancellor Fariña: 63 schools will have more AP courses – 31 that didn't have any at all.

Question: And that's since the beginning of the administration, correct?

Mayor: Okay, let's do – remember what I told – I don't know if you got the signal about – let's go on the progression of how many schools have had it over the last few years. Do you have that?

Senior Director Paladino: Yes.

Mayor: I anticipated your question, David.

[Laughter]

I'm here to serve. So the question is when we came in before – I'll just narrate as Michelle gets it read – before AP for All there were efforts to school-by-school, individual schools deciding they were ready for AP courses or more AP courses – so specific principals, specific districts trying to make individuals moves. AP for All, which was announced in September of 2015 as part of the Equity and Excellence vision, formalized that and said now we're on a pathway as a whole school system that every school would have five courses. Now why don't you give the last few years progression?

Senior Director Paladino: So we have it in terms of the number who did, so in '13-'14 there were 301 schools that did. In '14-'15, 316 – so it went up by 15. And in '15-'16 we have 339.

Question: So 31 got [inaudible]

Senior Director Paladino: 31 on top of [inaudible]

Mayor: That's '15-'16, so now '16-'17?

Senior Director Paladino: Well, we're adding the 31.

Mayor: 31 more? Just do that one more time for clarity. We started at?

Senior Director Paladino: 301.

Mayor: Right. Next year added?

Senior Director Paladino: 316.

Mayor: 316, okay next?

Senior Director Paladino: 339.

Mayor: And now plus 31 gets us to?

Senior Director Paladino: 370 – is that good math? Did I do mental math in front of –

Mayor: Check your mental math?

Senior Director Paladino: 339 and 31 is 370.

Mayor: I have it as 380 there.

Question: It looks like the rate of passage from [inaudible] 53 percent – that was before the increase. It's increasing at the same rate, so now you have about 53 percent are still passing. So that's good in that adding it in more places is not developing lower pass rates. But still you have – or almost half the students – who are not passing the AP. Are you concerned that then creates, you know, a feeling in lots of students that maybe this isn't for me, college isn't for me?

President Logan: I think just the opposite. I think you get just the opposite. I think if students – one of the things that I find as an educator, a career educator, is that we don't challenge students enough.

Question: Why aren't more students passing in the education system that we have here? [Inaudible] Why aren't more passing?

Chancellor Fariña: Well I think one of things is – as we said – that the preparation has to start much earlier. It's one of the reasons why we have also started algebra younger. We have AP – not AP, we have algebra in some of our 5th grades starting this year – 100 schools. We have now said that all students will have algebra before – by 9th grade. So it's about how do we reinforce all of the work before they take these courses. That's been a major shift. Again, it goes back to why is this taking so long? We want to make sure the students who take it are prepared and that requires also – are they doing a lot more writing in all their other classes starting in middle school and up? So I think that's part of our challenge. I don't think any education done by a good teacher is ever wasted, and if it means that you go back and take the coursework again, I think that's all to the better.

President Mulgrew: I think it's clear that that shows that we're building this correctly because as you pointed out, the same amount is still passing as we grow the school system and grow that. That is a clear indicator that the rigor is still in place. What we should see over the next couple of years is as we're telling all schools that we want access for all students, you should gradually start to see the passing percentage go up. If you see a significant jump in one year, that's a signal to us that something might've went wrong, okay? So this is being done in a very responsible way, and this is how you actually move education properly. I've always said for years as I've been president of this union, I remember a couple years – we had these huge significant jumps in numbers, and I'd sit there going something's wrong, and it was. We're being responsible. We're building it properly. As the whole school system understands that we are now building this, so that all students can have an opportunity, you should see those numbers go up, but these are tough classes, and we are now – what we're doing is we're giving more children an opportunity to actually see what will be required to them in higher-ed, and that's the other wonderful part about this because it also opens them up. And then you should look at the stats – which we don't have right now – who failed first time, how did they do second time? Now that they understand the responsibility and the level of the work.

Chancellor Fariña: I also want to say if you look at statistics as we move more students into graduation, our next challenge is how – when they get to college, how do we keep them there? If you look at the retention rate freshman year of college it was one of the statistics that I first got here that was a real challenge, and now we're saying if you take harder work in high school, you're much more likely not only to get into college but stay there and complete over four years. So one of the things I've said from the very beginning that any real change in the system to be long lasting has to be what happens in the classroom. You can change structures. You can change leadership, but if you don't change what happens in the classroom, ultimately you're not going to get real gains. And to me the literacy – all students reading on second grade level – the algebra, the pre-K all that is in classroom work that will ultimately give us the achievements that we want.

Mayor: Okay, last call on this topic. Please?

Question: You guys are considering passing to get a three on the test. A lot of colleges don't actually let you exchange that for a course and sometimes they only take fives. Do you guys know how many of the passing grades are fives or fours?

Mayor: Let's let the experts speak to the question.

Coleman: Yeah, actually, overwhelming – and I'll get you the exact data – overwhelmingly colleges accept a three. You're thinking of very few, highly elite schools that demand a five and often only in certain departments just to give you a sense of the data just so you know. So the reason it's pegged at a three is for a very interesting reason, and it speaks to your question. The data showed that it's at this level that a student is very likely to succeed at the second course. That's why it's called Advanced Placement. So these students who pass have full confidence that whatever university they go to they'll be able to pass the second course. What I'm trying to say to you is an interesting thing. Whatever college's policies are – and I'm saying it's extremely beyond rare for it to be at a five level, only some you know by name. We can check the data together, we can look at it, I can prove that to you – but the more important thing is no matter what college they go to they will be able to succeed in the next course if they earn a three. That's what sets the standard.

Mayor: Last call on this topic. Going once? Going twice? Alright let's give – oh I'm sorry, Rich.

Question: Quick question – is there a cost number associated with this expansion, and maybe I missed it?

Mayor: No, there is for sure. Do you have that handy or do you want to get back – we're going to get that back to you. It was announced in the original vision, but we'll update you.

Mara, do you have something on this?

Question: No, sir.

Mayor: Okay, hold on, you'll go first in the next round. Let's give these folks a chance to go onto other good works.

[…]

Mayor: Okay, Mara, go ahead.

Question: So, this is a two-part question. The Richard Haste trial starts today, Mr. Mayor, and the mothers of Eric Garner and also Ramarley Graham are having a rally outside of that court house. And they're upset – mostly that they haven't been given, or they say they haven't been given enough information about the departmental charges against the officers involved in these deaths.  I know that you said that you want to change the 50-a statute –

Mayor: Yeah –

Question: First of all, what steps have you taken or has your administration taken toward that? And, you know, so, what do you say to those mothers today?

Secondly, there are two more days –

Mayor: Why don't we stay on the first part? The – two points. One – weeks and weeks ago I asked our Corporation Counsel, Zach Carter, to make sure that the family of Ramarley Graham was getting updates on how the process would proceed. It is an objection process. It's due process. But to make sure that if they had any questions, they were getting answered by the Law Department or the Police Department – which he has been doing. And there has been a very conscientious effort to keep the family informed. So, we believe we have done that very carefully and conscientiously.

On the question of the reforms needed in Albany – we need that change. It is a statement of fact that for political reasons there were real prohibitions put on the release of disciplinary records related to law enforcement officers. I think that's been exactly related to a lot of the discussion we've been having in this city and this country for the last couple of years very intensely. And it's time for change. And I'm going to work with legislators and advocates in Albany to achieve that change. And I think the moment in history is right for that change.

What's your second question?

Question: Have you done anything toward that change?

Mayor: We're just starting the legislative session and it's going to be one of the things that'll be on the City's agenda as one of our priorities to change.

Question: Okay. The second question is – there are two full days left of the Obama administration –

Mayor: Yes –

Question: There's been no resolution to the civil rights case in the death of Eric Garner. Are you disappointed and have you spoken to anyone at the AG's office about this [inaudible]?

Mayor: Over the last year, I've spoken several times – as I've told you I think at each time – with the Attorney General just to ask for clarification. And the answer always was, you know, by the end of the administration there would be some kind of answer on how they were proceeding. So, obviously, we've come down to the wire here. We will be ready to respond, obviously, either way. If the Justice Department brings charges, that will be one path. And if they don't, we will proceed with departmental charges.

Question: Mr. Mayor, speaking of the Justice Department, last week they announced that they were joined a lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections saying that they violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. I'm wondering, from your perspective, the evidence that they detail in their motion talks about something that was going on every day in the Brooklyn borough office by staff for a year. I'm wondering, from your perspective, what responsibility did the Brooklyn borough Board of Election's Commission bear for [inaudible] oversight in that.

Mayor: I haven't seen the Department of Justice report but it obviously raises tremendous questions. I think even before it though we knew the fundamental problem. And I'll go back to what I've said before. We need to change the Board of Elections. Albany has the opportunity to do that literally. They can do that this week. They can do it next week. They can do it the week after. The legislation is there which would empower the executive director and make the Board of Elections more professional. That needs to be done.

And further, the Board should vote formally – it's been months and months and months since I offered them $20 million in exchange for a set of reforms that would stop something like this from happening again, and they haven't done it.

So, it's broken. It needs a major fix. I'm going to work very hard for legislative change in Albany – part of the whole electoral reform package we'll be promoting in Albany. But I, for the life of me, don't understand why the Board just doesn't get together and vote to accept the $20 million and the conditions attached.

Question: Just to follow up on that – why is the City defending the Board?

Mayor: Again, this comes up so frequently and I'm going to refer you for a better detailed answer to the Law Department. But we have a responsibility as a City Government to defend agencies that we have a certain affiliation with. And it is just like the Attorney General defends the State of New York regardless of the subject matter. Now, specific cases might be handled a certain way but when something affects an agency that we, obviously, help to fund we have some responsibilities to deal with the legal ramifications. That doesn't mean we agree with what the agency did and a lot of things can happen in the context of a case. But I'll have the Law Department explain that to you in more detail.

Jen – and as I take your question, I hope you've enjoyed this sojourn. And it's good to see that people from Massachusetts can contribute a lot to New York City.

Question: Thank you, thank you. It's been an honor.

I wanted to see if you have any information about Sherling Camacho, the three-month-old that died. The family said [inaudible] Daily News [inaudible] –

Mayor: They were saying what, again?

Question: That ACS wasn't allowing the mother to see the baby in the hospital in the final days. I'm just wondering if there's anything you can tell us about this case.

Mayor: I don't have all the details yet. I know, again, this is me personally based on any information I've received. So, I'm not saying this is definitive. But I know of no prior ACS history. Now, that being said, if the baby was found to have been injured and ACS intervened at that point, that might be for a very good reason obviously. So, we'll get you more details on that.

Question: Can I just ask you one more?

Mayor: Sure.

Question: The Daily News has a cover story today about the eighth wealthiest people in the world have more wealth than the bottom [inaudible]. I just wanted to see if you wanted to comment on this, I know this is something –

Mayor: Yes, that you for asking –

Question: It includes Mike Bloomberg.

Mayor: I'm not shocked.

[Laughter]

I didn't make that list, Jen. The – it's profoundly troubling. I thank the Daily News for putting it on the cover because this is the issue that has permeated the discussion, first, in this city and now in this nation over the last few years. And it's profoundly unresolved. The election of Donald Trump, we don't know yet, but it could easily make this crisis worse because the people he has nominated for top offices are almost uniformly millionaires and billionaires. So, I am very, very worried about even growing income stratification and a greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. The people will not stand for it. I can tell you that right now.

You say the anger in this country in the last couple of years. Well, if that trend continues, the anger will grow, and people will demand much bigger changes. So, I've talked to a lot of people who are in the elite and it amazes me how they still haven't gotten the memo that the public will not stand for this.

Question: There's a woman on Staten Island who has had the same pig for about five years now and it provides her father with comfort. He's dying of cancer. I was just curious – the City is making her get rid of the pig –

Mayor: I don't know about the case. I don't – I can't speak about it. I don't know about it but we'll be glad to get you more on that. Go ahead.

Question: I have a different question on the State budget but just to follow up on what you said to Mara. You said if there's no DOJ charges against Officer Pantaleo, you'll proceed with departmental charges. Can you just explain that a little bit more –

Mayor: The department, again, let me be lawyerly even though I'm not a lawyer. The department will proceed with whatever its approach to the situation would be. So, that's for the department to speak to. I should say it more perfectly. The department acts when all other parts of the legal system are finished acting and then that's when they announce what they're ready to do and how they will proceed.

Question: Do you know how they –

Mayor: Again, I'm not going to comment – I'm not going to comment. I'll let the Commission speak to that.

Question: If you don't mind – just on the State budget. Have you gotten a briefing – the Governor's briefing State legislators today. Apparently, now, he's going to do a livestream budget briefing at 7:30pm tonight. What's the latest you're hearing from –

Mayor: Coming in the door, we still had not been given the details of the State budget. Obviously, that's frustrating but not surprising. So, we're hoping to learn more in the course of the day and then we'll be able to say very squarely what it means for New York City, and I'll be very straightforward with the people of New York City of what we think it means for the lives of everyday New Yorkers.

Question: Mr. Mayor, can you talk about Thursday's rally that you're going to be attending and the reason for that.

Mayor: I think it's important to defend the needs of our people. It's as simple as that. The people of New York City are very concerned at this moment what the new administration will mean for us. And my job is to defend the interests of all New Yorkers and we do that from a position of strength. We do that by speaking up and standing up, and we do that by continuing to protect the progress we've made here. So, it is very important to send a message on day one that this city will be vigilant and that people are going to work very hard to protect all that we have here.

And it's also, for a lot of us, it's the last day of the Obama administration and that's a very poignant moment. There's a real sense – you know, let's just talk about healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act. The fact that President Obama's signature achievement that got health insurance to 20 million more people, that a century of presidents tried to achieve and he finally achieved, and that the House and Senate Republicans have already voted to repeal – just a devastating blow to New York City if that actually were to happen. 1.6 million New Yorkers got insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.  So, we have to stand up. We have to make our voices heard.

Question: [Inaudible] Sir, what are you hoping for as far as turn out?

Mayor: I don't project turnout. I'm sure there'll be at least several thousand people.

Question: I wanted to get your take on Scott Stringer's remarks yesterday at NAN. He was arguing that the way to fight Trump is to make progress on some areas that he has said you have not been making enough progress on like homelessness or minority-and-women-owned businesses, affordable housing. Wanted to get your response –

Mayor: I'm not sure I follow his logic a lot of the time. I will simply say I think it's quite clear, and I laid this out at Cooper Union, a host of things we can do to challenge the President-elect – to demand fairness for New York City, to demand that our people are treated with respect, and that we have to do that every day in the work here in New York City. And we're doing that.

I think that the way we challenge Donald Trump is by continuing to make progress in this city and then working with mayors and other leaders all over the country to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, to stop any policy that would try and institute stop-and-frisk as a policy nationwide, to stop our police forces from being turned into deportation forces. There's a host of very specific things that I've laid out that are quintessential to stopping the extreme impulses of the Trump administration and that's the plan we're working on right now.

Question: Just a quick follow up – for an issue like homelessness. Do you link that in your mind or at all with Trump? That improving the homeless situation somehow pushes back against –

Mayor: Again, I'm not going to work from someone else's logic. We have more work to do to address homelessness. We're doing it every day and I think we're going to be able to turn the tide on homelessness but I don't necessarily see the connection. Rich, and then we'll come over here.

Question: Mr. Mayor, the PBA has sent out a release saying police officers are resigning at an alarming rate. This is the headline – "Many seeking better pay with other police departments." And Lynch said eight out of ten PBA members said in a survey they would leave the job if they could and they're indicating that this has a lot to do with pay level.

Mayor: Look, this is a classic union play. It's not surprising. We've seen it many times before. We have, when you take into account pay and benefits and pension, we have one of the highest compensated police forces in the entire United States of America. We're – this police force is doing amazing work. You saw what the NYPD achieved in 2016. I talk to officers all the time who are very proud to be members of the NYPD, proud of what they've achieved, proud of the records they've set, proud of the way that they've taken on terror and held it back, and who want to keep doing this work. I meet officers all the time who have had 20 years and are going on for more.

So, the mission of the PBA sadly is often to denigrate the work of our own police force which I've never understood, and to lower moral rather improve it which I've never understood. We're very, very proud of what the NYPD has done and, boy, you go to those graduations – there's a whole generation of New Yorkers who are clamoring to become members of the NYPD who are ready and willing to join this great this department. There's no lack of people who want to do this work.

Marcia –

Question: Mr. Mayor, I have two questions. The first is this – I wonder if you agree with Congressman John Lewis and five members of the New York Congressional delegation who believe that Donald Trump's presidency is, in his words, illegitimate.

Mayor: I have immense respect for Congressman John Lewis. I think John Lewis is one of the greatest American heroes living today. But everyone has to look at this personally. This is a matter of conscious. I have a different interpretation. My interpretation is that this was the most unusual presidential election probably in the history of this country. We've never seen as much of a skew between the popular vote and the electoral vote as we saw this time. Literally, almost three million people – never even close to anything that extreme. And there are huge question marks about this election – the role of the Russian government, the Comey letter. There's so many things that happened here that there's just no parallel for before, and obviously particularly the Russian role needs full investigation.

So, I think there's a lot of open questions but I believe the electoral college vote reflected the votes of those states and so the question to me is not was that a meaningful vote it's that this president does not have a mandate for an extreme agenda and that's the starting point for a lot of us to work from to make sure that extreme agenda does not come to be.

Question: [Inaudible] just want to follow up that and then I have a budget question. Do you think that the [inaudible] on the Senate and the Congress and whatever committees that [inaudible] the Justice Department to pursue these investigations, pursue whether the Russians had a role, to pursue that. And if they find that that happened, what do you think the remedy is?

Mayor: Look, two of the most respected Republican members of the Senate – Lindsey Graham and John McCain – spoke up very forcefully and said there needed to 'be a full investigation of the Russian government's role in this election. And I want to put this in a little context. I think people should reflect on this for a moment and this may be a little bit a generational perspective.

Look, anyone my age or even a little younger grew up with the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and understood the desire of the Soviet Union to interfere all over the world including interfering in elections all over the world.

If Vladimir Putin had nothing to do with that this might be a different discussion. Vladimir Putin came out of the KGB. He was a fairly senior Soviet official engaged in this kind of work. Now he runs the country with an iron hand and systematically attempted to subvert our election.

I think, for those of us who lived through that previous time, it's not hard to connect these dots. And I don't think it's a surprise that people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain are leading the charge. I think when two of the consciences of the Republican Party say this must be looked into it's going to be very hard for the Senate not to look into it. And they should take that investigation wherever it leads.

If it turns out, in retrospect that the Russian involvement had a bigger impact than we think, that has to be fully aired. The public deserves to know and we have to figure how to stop it from happening in the future because Lord knows I don't think Vladimir Putin is done. If he tried to subvert this election, who knows what he wants to do next to affect this country.

Question: So, should there be any sanctions against the president –

Mayor: Again, I think we have to have a full investigation to understand what happened.

Question: [Inaudible] budget question –

Mayor: Yeah, go ahead.

Question: So [inaudible] Governor is going to propose a budget and one of the things that's at issue is the millionaire's tax –

Mayor: Sure.

Question: – which is supposed to expire at the end of the year. What's your position on whether it should be extended?

Mayor: We absolutely need to extend the millionaire's tax. It's a matter of fairness and it's necessary for the State of New York to be able to do its work and to be able to provide support to the people of New York City who by the way are 43 percent of the state's population. I agree with Speaker Carl Heastie who believes adamantly that the millionaire's tax must be renewed.

Further, if Donald Trump and the Republican House and Senate have their way, there will be vast tax cuts given to the wealthy and corporations at the federal level – all the more reason why they can certainly afford the State's millionaire tax. Andrew –

Question: Mr. Mayor, did you ask Vicki Been to resign and if not did you ask her to stay?

Mayor: Vicki Been had left the Furman Center at NYU to come join this administration. And we all knew that with a tenured professor position it was a matter of time before she had to go back to it or else lose it. And it's a very prized position and one that she made clear from the beginning she intended to go back to at the latest possible moment. And NYU was very gracious about the timeline but the time had really come. She's done an extraordinary job.

Vicki Been has so much to be proud of, here – 62,000 apartments either already preserved or in the process of being built. That's enough for between 150,000 and 200,000 New Yorkers who will have affordable housing for decades to come. I wish she could have stayed. She did an amazing job. But I understand that anyone who is a tenured professor is not going to let that go.

Question: Did you pick up the phone and say, "NYU, she's the quarterback of my affordable housing plan –

Mayor: I'm not going –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: I'm not going to go into details about all the dialogue. I assure you there was much dialogue but the fact is that three full years was a long time. You know, typically, a year or two is the amount of time that normally people are allowed to go off and do something else. We feel very, very grateful to Vicki and to NYU that it was three years. She leaves us in a great, great situation and this team has – we have a deep bench. Maria Torres-Springer has done an amazing job at EDC. She's going to be a great HPD commissioner. James Patchett is going to be a great president of EDC. This team is going to move on seamlessly. All these folks have been working together so all of the work will continue.

Question: I just wanted to ask a question about Torres-Springer. She doesn't really have any experience in housing. What makes her the right person to lead HPD?

Mayor: I think that's a misstatement, respectfully. EDC has been deeply, deeply involved in all of our work around affordable housing and she has been a key player. There's really been a strong alliance between HPD, EDC, and City Planning to achieve everything we've done and she's been at the table for all of that. So, she's been one of the architects of the three years of everything we've achieved on affordable housing.

She also has a personal history – from a family that could never have made it in this country without help from affordable housing programs. So, this is not just intellectual for her. It's very personal. And I think she's done a great job everywhere she's been and we love the fact that we'll have total continuity in our team.

Question: [Inaudible] fundraising for the last period it's going to be. Your team wouldn't tell exactly how much it was but it will be around what you raised for the previous period. Are you disappointed that you're not accelerating in the pace of [inaudible] –

Mayor: No, I'm thrilled that so many people are contributing. Look, our goal here was to move our operation towards what I think is the shape of things to come – a lot more donations from the grassroots and a lot more involvement from the grassroots. It's been over 20 years since a candidate for mayor got this many donations for this particular filing at the beginning of an election year. The last time anywhere near this number occurred was 1993. And we're thrilled about that and we're going to keep deepening that grassroots effort. And we've been pretty explicit about the fact we are borrowing very lovingly from the Bernie Sanders playbook and we've actually gotten a lot of the same people involved in that campaign to come help us do it. And it's working.

So, when you combine what we raised in immediate support with the expected matching funds, that's over two million dollars for this filing. That puts us, I think, pushing on towards $5.5 million overall. We're well on our way to fully funding the primary and we feel very, very good about our position.

Question: Do you think it was appropriate for Trump to refuse to take questions from certain media outlets at his last press conference? And in light of that, in retrospect, do you regret not taking questions from certain media outlets in the same –

Mayor: I think it's apples and oranges. I was very explicit that when I thought a particular outlet was running a particular strategic play that I was going to call it – that being your outlet. And your outlet is no stranger to such propagandistic efforts. And when you're in the middle of doing something like that, I'm going to say it out loud. But as you know, there's plenty of times I call on you and other reporters from the Post and take the questions. I just can see an act that's partisan when I see it.

That being said, to see to outlets wholesale that they can't be in the room or they can't ask questions is ridiculous. I've never practiced that and it's absolutely unacceptable.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Hold on, he's asking – could you not interrupt the New York Post, please? I find that – I know the Times thinks it's important but I find that disrespectful. Go ahead, Michael.

Question: Do you think it's kind of a slippery slope that precedent that – to kind of pick and choose. I mean, you know, I don't mean this in a disrespectful way but who are the kind of elected officials that judge in that sense because it could change from –

Mayor: No, it has to be very personal. Look, if you add up every press conference that I've had since I started running for Mayor to now and every time a Post report is in the room and asked a question, you would find many hundreds of such occurrences I'd imagine. And there were a handful of times when I said there was a specific thing being done that I thought was a strategic act by a paper, with all due respect to you personally, by a paper and a corporation that everyone in the world knows has a vast ideological agenda that it pursues worldwide. This is not a newsflash what News Corp. is up to.

So, if I see that particular thing, I'm going to call it out but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other times when you ask a perfectly straight-up news question and I take those.  What Trump has talked about is a very different reality of potentially banning outlets all together or never taking their questions. That's unprecedented and from my point of view unacceptable.

Question: [Inaudible] was going to ask that day.

Mayor: Again, I'm not re-litigating this. I strongly believe I understood what was going on.

Question: Mr. Mayor, last week, your office put out an announcement on progress on Vision Zero. Right now, at City Hall, City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez is holding a press conference talking about hit-and-runs. Specifically, there was an accident over the weekend where a man was hit and left by a van that sped off. The data shows that hit-and-runs are one of the weak points in Vision Zero. City Council member Van Bramer calls it a "gaping hole." I'm wondering if you – how you see it, if there's more that the administration plans to do to address hit-and-runs in –

Mayor: I take – look, the hit-and-run situation is, first of all, for the families involved, is doubly devastating. Let's first look at this humanly. Imagine if you lose a family member or they're grievously injured and then the person who did it didn't even have the decency to come forward and take responsibility. And then the questions about what happened and then trying to get to the truth, it's horrendous. I – look, we all understand the human condition. You guys report on it all day. I work with human reality all day in government. That's just the lowest of the low to take a person's life and then try to not take responsibility by running away. That's just horrendous. Clearly, there have been real efforts to increase the penalties and the consequences.

But the issue is this, it's really a question – and this is why I think the gaping hole argument is simplistic – the question is how much faith you have in the NYPD. If you're paying attention carefully, the NYPD is getting better and better at catching people who hurt other people. It's as simple as that. Just look carefully. And again, you guys are here to be understandably critical – critical thinkers but look carefully.

When I was starting out in this work there was so much crime and we had so much less technology. There were times when people got away on a regular basis. That's much rarer now. Have you noticed when someone commits a crime that the chances are very, very strong that they're going to be found quickly? And then there are some cases that play out for a longer period of time but almost inevitably the NYPD does find that person.

Hit-and-runs are harder when there's no video, there's no witnesses, where no one got a license plate. Sometimes they occur in a way that is particularly challenging to our investigators but they pursue this. Our detectives pursue it very doggedly. And times – I remember in the beginning of some of these cases, I've talked to the Commissioner, I've talked to Bob Boyce when they don't have an immediate lead but they're so creative that, you know, three weeks later or four weeks later they find that missing link and then they go find the person who did it.

So, no, there's no gaping hole when it comes to the NYPD's urgency about finding these people. We're going to look for ways to solve the problem at the root which is to continually create more and more enforcement so people know there will be consequences, to keep educating people. It's doing all the things that cause people not to drive recklessly to begin with. But if anyone hits someone and drives away, we're coming for them. That's the answer.

Thanks everyone –

Question: [Inaudible] the NYPD actually doesn't have a [inaudible] sent to the public –

Mayor: We'll follow up –

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