Opinion

De Blasio vs. choice for the poor

There’s something to be said for having friends in high places. Ask Yvette Clark, a Democratic congresswoman from Brooklyn. When her nephew was having trouble getting into his school of choice — MS 51 in affluent Park Slope — she called then-City Councilman Bill de Blasio. Hesto presto, the child was in.

In short, de Blasio is willing to fight for school choice for a friend in power, even as he fights to prevent every other mom and dad from having the same choice.

Now, we don’t begrudge parents doing whatever they can to get their children into the best schools they can. And we’re fine with de Blasio’s having his own son in a specialized public school that has a 96 percent rating in college readiness.

What bugs us is how de Blasio is doing the dirty work of the teachers unions who want to keep other kids from getting the same opportunity.

Mostly this has to do with de Blasio’s war on charters. The great majority of students who attend city charters are poor and African-American, the kind of people who don’t have a councilman who can pull strings or the wherewithal to pay for private school or move to a better location. For these people, charters are the only lifeline.

So what’s de Blasio planning to do? He’s threatening to end co-location. That’s the practice of giving charters — which are public schools, remember — unused space in other school buildings, because charters get no capital funds to build. End co-location, and you will kill many charters.

The glaring double standard de Blasio shows here cuts to heart of the stink of our system today: choice for a select few, no choice for those who need it most. It truly is a Tale of Two Cities.

And de Blasio would raise the wall between the haves and have-nots even higher.