Every morning, students from each of New York City’s five boroughs pull on red plaid uniforms and head to an unusual school in East Harlem.

TAG Young Scholars is one of the highest-performing schools in the city. It is also the only ultra-selective gifted and talented school in New York that is more than a third black and Hispanic, thanks in part to an admissions policy that explicitly encourages diversity .

“It doesn’t make sense that gifted and talented is so overwhelmingly white and Asian when we know there are black and brown kids who can do this, too,” said Eric Crump, the father of a black fourth-grade student, Carter, at TAG.

“I want other kids to have the opportunities that Carter had.”

The future of gifted programs in the largest public school system in the country is one of the most urgent and provocative education issues in New York. A high-level panel appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio said in August that creating separate classrooms for gifted children is inherently unfair, and it recommended eliminating the current system.