NYC-WTC_000230575

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Gambling: About the memorial, did you read the editorial piece in the Post last week which said the - had not very good things about...

Mayor: Tt was an op-ed piece, as T remember.

Gambling: It was an op-ed piece, it absolutely was, we talked about it here. Has the restriction of the footprints of the towers been a mistake because of limiting options?

Mayor: I don’t know that you can say it’s a mistake. It is a factor that went into the design. There was a commitment made by the Mayor then and the Governor to preserve those footprints and I, for all I know, would have made the same decision if I had been mayor at the time. I wasn’t. But once that was done, then that did have a big influence on the design, there’s no question about that, and I was vocal back then about what I thought should be in the design. But the process - look, we picked a process and we said it’s going to be a public process with all of these different interests represented and whatever they decide, that’s what we’re going to do. So whether I agreed with it, or you agreed with it, back then isn’t really important. Once it’s at the process, I believe you should go ahead, and we’re trying to do that. And I still, for example, am a believer in the Libeskind design for the whole thing. That was a public process, we should - what goes on in each building can be changed but the fundamental layout, we should follow just as the fundamentals of Michael Arad’s design that we should follow. And there will be people who will look back and say you should have done this, you should have done that. Number one, they should have testified back then. And number two, even if they did testify back then, we had a public process. That’s what democracy’s all about. You pick it, let’s go build it.

Gambling: Schools. Some good news, bad news. Good news with the fourth and eighth graders. Nationally, the testing numbers for New York City showing very very strong and very very...

Mayor: Encouraging. Long way to go.

Gambling: Right, a long way to go. Regents numbers. Regents numbers from graduates of the high schools here, down from four years ago.

Mayor: Yeah, although I think you’ve got to be careful reading this. Number one, they have - the state has decided to make getting a Regents diploma more difficult over the last few years.

Gambling: Which is a good thing, don’t you think?

Mayor: Oh I’ve always been in favor of raising standards but then don’t rush back and attach too much num - too much to the - if the numbers don’t look as good. We should always be raising our standards and we should always be struggling to meet those standards. But if you want to know why the number of re - kids with Regents diplomas has gone down a little bit, it is partly that. It is also that we look at Regents diplomas as a

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