Once again, Mayor de Blasio confirms his vision for pre-K was never about improving the lives of needy children. It was about using kids to pursue class warfare.
First, it was his clash with Gov. Cuomo over how his pre-K plan would be funded. When Cuomo came up with the cash without raising taxes, de Blasio insisted that was no good: He had a mandate to hike taxes on the wealthy.
Now the mayor has taken his class war to the classroom.
On Friday, Mayor Bill and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that they plan to redirect $210 million away from charter public schools to traditional public schools. The funds will come from the 2015-19 capital plan, which hasn’t been released. Basically, what this means is that money that would’ve gone for the expansion of successful charter schools will go to build more pre-kindergarten seats at the traditional public schools.
This is astonishing on several scores. To begin with, the best research we have suggests the returns on most pre-K programs diminish after a few years, while the charter gains are impressive. If you were going to help children get a decent education, where would you put your dollars?
Yet New York City has had no substantive debate on the value of pre-K. It’s all been about where the money will come from.
Meanwhile, there’s his war on charters. Charters are a rebuke to the education blob, because they prove every day that the children (especially minority children) whom the teachers unions and the traditional public schools write off as uneducable can learn in the right school.
With this latest move on funding, Bill de Blasio is confirming what many suspected all along: His real aim is to strangle the charter competition, put Gov. Cuomo in his place and punish the rich. And in this ugly fight, pre-K is his weapon of choice.