Bill Perkins got his. But now he wants to slam the door on everyone else.
As The Post’s Carl Campanile de tails today, the Harlem senator — who grew up in a poor home in his district — got a quality education at a fancy private school, the Collegiate School, on the Upper West Side in the 1960s.
Fully subsidized, no less.
And, hey — good for him.
Perkins went on to Brown University. He now serves in the state Senate — from which perch he’s doing his best to deny similar success to poor kids from Harlem, and elsewhere, coming up today.
Perkins, you see, is pushing hard to thwart publicly funded charter schools, many poor kids’ one hope for a decent education — simply because, like Collegiate, charters are privately run.
Can you spell hypocrite?
That would be P-e-r-k-i-n-s.
Tomorrow, Perkins will haul the issue before his own kangaroo court — a legislative “hearing” meant to push a bill aimed at stopping their growth.
“It’s total hypocrisy. [Perkins] got to go to a prestigious high school with a scholarship. You would think he would be an advocate for school choice and opportunity,” fumed one Harlem charter-school parent, Karl Willingham.
Assemblyman Michael Benjamin (D-Bronx) called Perkins “disingenuous” for blocking charter-school options, noting: “He won’t allow parents the choice his own parents chose for him.”
What’s up with Perkins? Apparently, he’s carrying water for the teachers union. The union hates charters (which are generally non-union), because they make traditional public schools (which are to tally unionized) look bad.
In Perkins’ district, for instance, charter students passed state exams at a rate nearly 20 points higher than their peers.
Or maybe it’s just that Perkins’ fancy private-school education blinded him to the bleak future to which he hopes to consign his constituents’ kids.
Any way you spell it, though, he’s still a hypocrite.