Principal of School for Gifted and Talented Opens Mouth Inserts Su Pie

As we told you in late September, parents of 5th graders are in the throes of the highly competitive, stress-inducing, public middle school application process, spending October and November going to all those tours and open houses for which they fought hard to get spots. On Tuesday, there was a doozy of an open house at Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a highly selective school for the gifted and talented, which only last week DNAinfo reported was the most difficult school to get into, accepting only 2% of the kids who applied for sixth grade last year. Nearly 200 parents and their 10 year olds showed up to hear about the Bensonhurst school, many from Park Slope’s PS321, PS39 and PS10, for what may only amount to 12 open spots, at most, next fall. 

Welp! They got way more than they bargained for when Principal Donna Taylor responded to a question about foreign language instruction at BSI by saying, "In New York City, if you don’t speak Spanish, you’re going to clean your own house." She also said that BSI is "the whitest citywide school," without suggesting that this was a problem, or that she had interest in increasing the school's diversity. Needless to say, people were PISSED.

People walked out, people wrote letters, and fairly quickly, there was a statement from Ms. Taylor, delivered through the DOE:

“Yesterday at an open house, I made statements, the nature of which was misunderstood, and some attendees were offended…Diversity is an issue that is near and dear to me, and I deeply regret my poor choice of words.”

Both DNAinfo and The New York Times referred to this as an apology, but major side-eye to that. Don't apologies usually start with "I'm sorry?" Not to mention, you're really going to imply that you were just "misunderstood?" I'm racking my brain here, trying to figure out how she could explain what she said in a way that would make me say, "Ohhhh, you're right, totally not offensive now." Not happening. But, then again, I'm not gifted and talented.