New York City officials on Thursday are expected to announce the revival and expansion of the Gifted and Talented program, The Post has learned.
Sources familiar with the plan said it could include 100 additional kindergarten seats and 1,000 new third grade seats for students in the top 10 percent of their grades.
The anticipated announcement comes after former mayor Bill de Blasio tried to nix the program at the end of his tenure, over criticisms that its admissions process favors well-off families.
Critics also argue the program and its classrooms fail to represent the racial makeup of the larger public school population.
“In terms of the details and what we know so far, I think the minimum was to just keep the G&T, that would be the low bar,” Yiatin Chu, a proponent of the programs from PLACE NYC, an advocacy group for accelerated education, told The Post.
“The high bar was to reinstate some sort of objective admissions criteria and to expand it. At this stage, I think parents are realistic about what can be done for September,” she said.
Students will be selected for the kindergarten program through teacher evaluations, with priority given to siblings, sources said.
“We’re not going to eliminate the G&T at the kindergarten level,” Banks said at a town hall last month. “But I will tell you, I’m not a big fan of testing four-year-olds. I really am not.”
Chu had concerns that a shift toward entry at the third-grade level would do little to keep families from fleeing the system, who may opt instead for charter or independent schools.
“I’m not sure they’ll go there” — to the local public schools — “and wait until third grade,” she said.
The city’s advisory Panel for Education Policy was briefed on Wednesday night on the policy change, which was then announced at a Community Education Council meeting in District 4 in Upper Manhattan, according to sources.
The process will kick off in May, with offers expected in July, they said.