Excellence in education means providing each student the opportunity to achieve.

For our shared community’s young people, that means access to enrichment programs and access to the suite of opportunities that should be open to all students, whether computer-science and coding classes, music lessons to learn to play an instrument or access to gifted-and-talented programs.

We need to focus on developing the talents of all our students, including the talents of high-achieving students for whom Gifted & Talented programs are a good fit.

Rather than seeing these programs as an impediment to diversity in our schools, I see these programs as a catalyst for helping children from black and brown communities get into specialized high schools. As recently as 1989, Brooklyn Tech had a student body that reflected more of the diversity of our city, being 51 percent black and brown.

Due to underinvestment, disinvestment and unequal investment, G&T programs and enrichment opportunities were stripped from black and brown communities. Over the corresponding years, the numbers for black- and brown-student representation in our specialized schools has declined.

In recent years, alongside council colleagues, I have sought to expand access to educational resources, expand the availability of advanced-level courses and programming, and, yes, expand the number of G&T programs in districts across the city.

In 2015, the city’s BLAC Caucus pushed for administering the G&T test to all students enrolled in universal pre-K programs. In 2016, due to our council advocacy, the Department of Education opened G&T programs in several majority-minority school districts for the first time in decades.

Thanks to our community working together, we welcomed back the G&T program to Bed-Stuy. In 2017, the council passed my bill requiring the DOE to distribute information on G&T programs, the exam and application process to the parents of all children enrolled in DOE’s pre-K programs.

We are on a path toward making G&T programs more inclusive. We should pursue options for making these programs yet more inclusive by considering factors beyond test scores to include community service, portfolios of work, recommendations and alternative writing samples.

Parents will move heaven and earth to get the best education for their children. Our job as city leaders is to make sure they do not have to.

Robert Cornegy Jr. (D) is a city councilman who represents Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. He is chair of the Housing and Buildings Committee and a member of the Committee on Education.