Guess who sends her kids to private school when they reach highschool age? That’s right: longtime public school parent-activist Leonie Haimson.
Fine by us. Like any parent, she’s entitled to do what’s best for her children — and private schools by and large provide more, and often better, choices for city kids.
But what about parents whowant similar choices yet don’t have the resources? Increasingly, they turn to charter schools — public schools with more rigorous standards and non-union staffs.
Haimson, long the public face of parents and teachers-union members, opposes that idea. Indeed, she’s against a raft of Mayor Bloomberg’s policies to boost schools.
Haimson specifically cites her pet issue: smaller class sizes in private schools. (She runs the group Class Size Matters.) Yet, even though charters often have smaller classes, she continues to fight them.
Haimson is also against colocating charters in traditional publicschool space, despite the fact that charters don’t receive public funds to build or lease facilities.
As Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform put it: “She keeps choosing to defend the same awful schools she would never allow her kids to attend.”
Indeed, the policies she backs would only trap kids in those same failing schools — which, by the way, she has sued to keep open, no matter how bad they are.
The irony is that Haimson could get what she claims to want—better public schools for everyone—by backing greater choice.
That would lead to greater competition among the schools. Kids would be the winners.
And not just her kids.