Some 10,000 parents, kids and teachers are about to make city history: On Tuesday, they’ll march across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan to demand an end to the war on charters.
It’ll be the first time the folks our schools are meant to serve stand up for themselves like that. In so doing, they’ll highlight a key issue in this year’s mayoral race: whether New York City will side with kids and push for good schools — or side with unions and keep rotten ones going.
Yes, the city has seen rallies before. But usually these have been secretly organized by the teachers unions or their allies.
Not Tuesday. That’s when real moms, dads and kids will be out fighting for charters.
Why are these charters under attack? Mostly because they show poor and minority children can learn if given a good school. In the South Bronx, for instance, half or more of third-graders were math-proficient in 10 of the 20 charters; of 61 union-run schools there, not one could make the same claim.
No wonder a new Siena/New York Times poll shows New Yorkers want more charters by a margin of 56 percent to 34 percent — and an even wider edge among African-Americans and the poor. The human faces behind this poll are the 50,000 kids on charter wait-lists.
Likewise, it’s obvious why unions and their allies rail about “co-location”; anything to divert attention from the horrific job the teachers unions are doing, which has given us a system where only 3 in 10 city kids in traditional public schools leave high school ready for college or a job.
The unions believe Bill de Blasio will kill the good schools for them. He’s already vowed to charge charters rent or deny them space. He’d also keep even the worst union schools open.
Joe Lhota, by contrast, says he’d double charters.
The key question here is this: Will New York open more good schools and close bad ones? If that’s what you want, head to the Brooklyn Bridge Tuesday and give those moms and dads some support.