At the Bronx High School of Science, "June was bustin' out all over," to slightly alter the title of a 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein standard, composed seven years after the school's founding.
On June 1, at the majestic Museum of Natural History on Manhattan's Central Park West, hundreds of alumni and current students attended an 85th anniversary gala, raising more than $5 million to support the school's many enrichment programs, including college scholarships.
I wrote a check for $750, other very generous alumni appended one or more zeros to theirs.
In a conversation with Valerie Reidy, Bronx Science's principal between 2001 and 2013, I noted, after she emphasized that many of the current students are from low-income, immigrant families, that there were many affluent alumni whose children or grandchildren also graduated from our school.
They include physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History; Jean Donahue, the school's principal between 2013 and 2020; and Dylan Gorman, treasurer of the school's robust fundraising Alumni Foundation.
On June 2, the NYC Department of Education released the demographics of the 3,994 students, whose scores in October 2022 on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT), earned them a seat at Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, or five smaller elite high schools.
Regrettably, a City Journal article on June 6 focused solely on Stuyvesant's 2023 SHSAT demographics, including the unacceptably low 20 Hispanic and seven Black students, who tested into the Manhattan school, and account for just 3.5% of the 762 successful eighth-graders.
It should be noted that 44 Hispanic and 34 Black students earned places at Bronx Science, representing 10.7% of the 731 winners.
While a total of only 387 Hispanic and Black students won places at the eight elite schools this year, another 206 students from the two groups, who scored just below the cut-off score for admission, are participating in the summer-school Discovery Program.
If they successfully complete this program, these Hispanic and Black eighth-graders will be admitted to a SHSAT school in September.
Bronx Science alumnus Ronald Lauder deserves additional kudos for creating and generously financing, beginning in 2019, a successful SHSAT tutoring program for underprivileged minority students.
On June 4, 2023, many alumni returned to the alma mater in the northwest Bronx to renew old friendships, to meet with many of the school's current fantastic students and teachers, and to tour the new Stanley Manne Research Institute.
Financed by a $22 million donation from this extraordinarily philanthropic alum ('52), the 10,000-square-foot building has state-of-the-art laboratories where students will conduct cutting-edge research in a variety of scientific fields.
The remarkable facility, along with others at the school, ensures that Bronx Science will remain a world-renowned STEM institution, educating New York City's smartest high school students, irrespective of their gender, race, creed or economic status.
On June 27, the last day of the 2022-23 academic year, a spectacular Career Symposium was held at the school, with 171 alumni participating via Zoom and 79 in person. In four one-hour sessions, separated by half-hour breaks, we discussed our educational and professional journeys with the school's nearly 3,000 students.
Provided with a brief autobiography from each alum, students chose which presentations, in person or virtually, to attend.
In one session at the school, which I shared with a former physics professor at Harvard, two physicians, and roughly 25 students, I pointed out that Bronx Science was a gender STEM trailblazer, having voluntarily admitted female students in 1946, as compared to involuntarily for Stuyvesant in 1969 (founded in 1905), and 1970 for Brooklyn Tech (1922).
A historic lawsuit, by 13-year-old Alice de Rivera and her Brooklyn parents, compelled the NYC Board of Education, 54 years ago, to demolish the unconstitutional walls that prevented female students from enrolling at the nationally prominent schools. It also abolished an illegal quota at Bronx Science of two males for every female.
Two days later, on the 29th, Bronx Science's "June is bustin' out all over" month culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decisions that ended, in lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, racial preferences in college admissions.
The successful petitioners are Asian American students, who, despite stellar high school achievements in and outside the classroom, have been disproportionally rejected by the two universities — and many other prestigious ones.
Significantly, Asian American students were 1,862 of Bronx Science's 2,937 enrollment, or 63.4% in 2022.
A rousing finale for the school's 85th anniversary celebrations is the profound observation from former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, when ground was broken in July 2021 for The (Stanley) Manne Institute: "If Bronx Science is thriving and producing the extraordinary talent, then all of New York City is benefiting, all this country is benefiting."
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here.
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