Walk the halls of Townsend Harris High School on Queens College's campus and you will see pictures of distinguished graduates, including Broadway composers Richard Rodgers and Ira Gershwin and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Along with other elite city high schools like Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science, Townsend Harris attracts top students, promises them a superior education and sends many of them to Ivy League schools or the equivalent of.
But Townsend Harris' ability to provide a superior education is now in jeopardy. After suffering budget cuts of nearly 2 percent in the current budget, Townsend Harris faces additional cuts of almost 5 percent next year — far more than those projected for many other schools with lesser reputations. Other elite schools face similar cuts.
Budget cuts that impair the education of our best students are short-sighted. Investing in a top high school rewards not just its students, but all who benefit from their accomplishments. When people like Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine, or writer Herman Wouk attend a Townsend Harris, they help develop the skills they will need to save or enrich lives years later.
Even the prospect of admission to schools like Townsend Harris helps educate students. Thus, my daughters, while still in middle school, were motivated by the hope of admission to an elite high school, causing them to develop better study habits.
Townsend Harris admitted them, but even if they went elsewhere, they would have benefited from the habits, knowledge and skills they acquired while striving for admission. If Townsend Harris and schools like it decline, future New York students will have less of a reason to strive for excellence.
Townsend Harris, like many New York schools, is already short on funds. Many classes have 34 students. The school has only one college adviser and three guidance counselors to serve 1,000 students. It does an extraordinary job with the resources it has, but no school can work miracles.
Excellent schools and students should not be punished for that excellence. They should be given every opportunity to succeed. Anything less hurts us all.
Jeff Sovern
Law Professor, St. John's University School of Law
Jamaica
