Mayor de Blasio now promises to help charter students whose schools he took away only a few weeks ago. But the Charter War he’s been waging isn’t ending — it’s escalating.
And it’s not just de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña. These kids are going up against an entire city establishment.
Take Letitia James. On Saturday, the public advocate vowed to move ahead with her own offensive: a lawsuit against other co-locations. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has also signed on to this suit. And James is also threatening to ask the court to delay the charters’ admissions lottery, which would wreak havoc on tens of thousands of New York City families.
Then there’s Hazel Dukes. When Success Academy unveiled plans to file lawsuits to save its schools, the New York NAACP leader blasted it for attempting “to hijack the language of civil rights.” What Dukes doesn’t tell you is that the NAACP takes money from the teachers union — which hates charters because they prove every day that black children can learn in the right kind of public schools.
However much de Blasio and Fariña may claim they want all children to succeed, all their actions show a clear animus. Of all the charters, for example, they targeted ones with the best results. And they are still plotting attacks on other fronts, such as charging them rent to denying them capital funding.
On Morning Joe on Monday, de Blasio was hit hard — from the left — by Mika Brzezinski. “Let me ask it this way, mayor,” she said. “With all due respect, your son goes to — is it Brooklyn Tech? — [which] has a $13 million endowment, it’s a highly selective school. You’re very excited, I’m sure, that he goes there.” Brzezinksi was relentless, essentially asking the mayor why he was going after schools that offer poor and minority kids the same opportunities Dante’s school gives him.
Great question. In this ugly fight, what these children need is not a de Blasio promise that he cares about them. What they need is legislation that will prevent de Blasio, or any future mayor, from making war on them.