ALBANY — The push to raise the cap on charter schools got a big boost yesterday as Senate President Malcolm Smith announced a bill to double the number allowed statewide.
In an exclusive interview with The Post, Smith (D-Queens) said he introduced his bill to raise the cap to 400 schools after chatting with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Thursday in California about roadblocks to New York’s claim on a $4.4 billion pot of special federal school aid.
“The charter-school issue is the No. 1 issue we have to address to put New York in the best position to achieve access to those resources,” said Smith, who was in San Diego, where he heard Duncan speak about the Race to the Top fund at a National Conference of State Legislatures event.
“We talked about the importance of raising the cap and how that was one of the things that we had to deal with,” Smith said. “I didn’t talk about my bill. I just talked about what he was trying to do on the national level.”
Smith called on Gov. Paterson to endorse the cap hike, saying, “He indicated that his people are telling him that there’s no action needed for us to be competitive in the Race to the Top. I just don’t believe that.”
His bill came as two Board of Regents committees voted to recommend that lawmakers lift the cap and that they provide charter schools with more funding, including money for facilities.
The Regents also approved six more privately operated public schools, reducing the number of charter slots left to 30.
The moves came with a host of other school-reform measures and highlighted a new urgency after education officials had for months urged a more “cautious” approach on the cap issue.
“The fact that Race to the Top makes the cap raise and, in fact, the whole idea of support of charter schools a very important part of its plan — it attributes some 9 percent of all points to that area — clearly raises the stakes for that conversation,” state Education Commissioner David Steiner said.