Has a politician ever seemed as determined as Mayor de Blasio to prove himself incompetent or acting in bad faith — or both?
We ask this as the deadline approaches for him to fix a problem entirely of his own making: his decision to take back space the city promised to the high-performing Success Academy Charter Schools.
That ill-advised move invited a smackdown from Gov. Cuomo. In the end, even the mayor realized he was coming across as a man who punishes innocent schoolchildren to get back at foes. And it helps explain his promise — in the midst of a testy exchange with the co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — to “accommodate” the kids whose school buildings he took and “find another way to get them to a quality space.”
That was March 10. More than six weeks later, every other kid in this city knows where he or she will be going to school in the fall. But not those from the three charters he targeted. And instead of the old reassurances that “all” kids are his concern, this week de Blasio is popping off to The Washington Post that the fuss is over “fairly small decisions.”
Question: How would you like to be a mom or dad who still doesn’t know where your child will be going to school come fall — and then read comments by your mayor dismissing this as a “fairly small” issue?
In that same interview, the mayor went on to suggest this is really about reactionary forces fighting to preserve inequality and privilege in the city. Really? Was Gov. Cuomo fighting for inequality when he came out for the charters? Was the Democratic Assembly?
Or could it be they all realized something the mayor in his zeal does not: You don’t help any child get ahead by making life more difficult for high-performing public schools.
Whether it’s incompetence or ideology that’s keeping the mayor from fixing the mess he created, we can’t say. We just hope he appreciates his answer is itself a test.
And it will tell us two things: how sincere he was when he promised the kids he harmed “great space” — and how capable his team is of getting it done.