The powerful head of the state Board of Regents is flunking Bill de Blasio’s plan to charge rent to charter schools.
Chancellor Merryl Tisch said she’s concerned that forcing publicly-funded charter school to pay rent for sharing space in public school buildings, as the Democratic mayoral nominee has proposed, could stymie growth and innovation.
“Anything that you do that makes it prohibitive for charter schools to grow and thrive in New York City is not a great way to proceed,” Tisch said. “I’m sure charter school operators are paying attention to campaign rhetoric.”
She added: “I want New York to be a place where charter schools grow and thrive. Charter schools are public schools. Charter schools have been a valuable alternative to failing schools. They’ve been a valuable part of rebuilding public schools.”
Mayor Bloomberg has provided free space to most of the 183 charters serving 70,000 students, allowing the schools to operate in city buildings alongside traditional public schools.
Charters face the same issue as other large-scale operations in the city — a scarcity of available space and expensive costs for new construction.
But co-locating charters in city facilities has triggered a backlash from the teachers union and parents from regular public schools, who claim the charters are taking away needed classrooms. Most charter schools are non-union.
De Blasio has said he would charge rent to charters on a sliding scale.
Well-off charter school networks with generous private backing would pay more, while others would pay less or even continue to get free space.
“It would depend on the resources of the charter school or charter network,” de Blasio told WNYC. “Some are clearly very, very well resourced and have incredible wealthy backers. Others don’t. So my simple point was that programs that can afford to pay rent should be paying rent.”
“We certainly need the resources in terms of our public budget. Those that are less resourced should not have to pay rent. But the notion that it’s one size fits all, regardless of the resources of the charter school, makes no sense to me.”
Tisch said she finds it “disturbing” that some of the major charter school networks — Kipp and UnCommon Schools for example — are now looking to expand in other parts of the country rather than in the Big Apple.
“Anything that forces charter schools to limit their growth is — in my mind — not something we want to see,” she said.
Tisch served as campaign chair for Bill Thompson’s mayoral campaign — de Blasio’s Democratic rival who came in second place in last month’s primary.
Merryl’s husband, Loews CEO James Tisch, is finance chairman of Republican Joe Lhota’s mayoral campaign.
Lhota said he would like to double the number of charter schools and provide them free space.
Before becoming education commissioner, state Education Commissioner John King headed the UnCommon Schools Charter network.
Under state law, the city Education Department, under direction of the mayor, has the discretion to charge charters rent.