Cuomo dumps on de Blasio and on NYC public school students

This winter, when Mayor de Blasio approved most, but not all, planned co-locations, including several charter schools, he thought he had found compromise with the hedge fund billionaires, Moskowitz, and Cuomo. He was mistaken.

After weeks of unrelenting attacks in the media, Cuomo stood at the side of charter advocates in Albany and declared war on the Mayor and the public school students of NYC. He, with the State Senate, orchestrated a budget that robs NYC public schools to pay privately run charters. Former Mayor Bloomberg set the stage for this confrontation by destroying scores of public schools and turning over their buildings to charters.

Charters (privately managed schools that live off public money) operate on an uneven playing field. They select their own students, limit special education students, limit English Language learners, throw students out at will, and receive preferential treatment for co-locations.

According to Diane Ravitch’s recent post “New York Schools: The Roar of the Charters:”

On the same day that de Blasio organized a rally in Albany on behalf of raising taxes on the rich to pay for UPK, she (Moskowitz) closed her schools and bused thousands of students and parents to Albany for a pro-charter school rally. Governor Andrew Cuomo stood by her side, pledging “to save” charter schools and to protect them from paying rent; his ardent devotion to the charter cause may have been abetted by the $800,000 in campaign contributions he received from charter advocates in the financial industry.

This chapter is not yet closed. This Thursday, April 10, 4pm, parents, teachers, students and others will rally in front of the New York Public Library at 5th Avenue and 41st Street. They will protest awful provisions in last week’s State budget, including Albany forcing New York City to offer valuable public school space for free to all new charters. New Action urges our union to support this effort and calls on all staff and friends of public education to attend.