Thousands of charter school supporters — parents, students and educators — were headed to Albany Tuesday morning to demand that state pols protect their schools from Mayor de Blasio’s planned cuts.
The crowd piled into more than a dozen buses lining Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard from 111th to 115th streets in Harlem, where teachers passed out snacks and water bottles while students carried signs reading “Keep our charter schools open.”
“We are going to Albany because we don’t have support from our city government to continue providing excellent educational opportunities for our city’s most needy children,“ said Principal Will Loskoch, 33, of Success Academy Harlem 4 as buses were preparing to leave about 8:15 a.m.
“We are hopeful that Governor Cuomo will listen to us and help us out. He has voiced his support for charter schools, just like the president, just like the education secretary. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the government doesn’t seem to be on the right track as the rest of the country,” he said.
De Blasio recently reversed a decision by Mayor Bloomberg and yanked approval allowing three charter schools operated by Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy — including Loskoch’s — to share space in public school buildings.
“I don’t get it, you want to evict the most successful public school in Harlem,” Loskoch said about the de Blasio plan.
Parent Kimberly Wiggins, whose son Jayden, 5, is in kindergarten at Success Academy Harlem 4, mocked de Blasio’s claim to be a “progressive” mayor.
“How can he be for a progressive agenda” if he wants to shutter charters, she asked. “Nothing is more progressive than charter schools,” Wiggins said.
“My son is 5, he reads at a second-grade level, that’s because of his school. He loves his school. He says to me, ‘Why do they want to take away my school, Mommy?’ So it’s kind of hard to explain to him. When a school is performing as well as this, why would you want to shut it down?”
Moskowitz fired off a letter Monday slamming de Blasio for suggesting that the pro-charter rally was a “march against pre-K.”
“That claim is utterly false, and there is no basis for it. We support pre-K, and we are going to march in favor of good educational opportunities for all children,” Moskowitz told the mayor.
Parents en route to Albany agreed.
“We are fighting to stay in public schools, to have room for the charter schools. I hope [de Blasio] will have a change of heart,” said Keisha Rush, 42, whose daughter Elaysia Rush, 5, goes to kindergarten at Success Academy Harlem 1 and son Elijah Pellew is in the eighth grade at Success Academy Harlem middle school.
“It’s very hard , we want for her to stay in her school, it’s going to be difficult to find another charter school or another school,” Rush said.
Elijah said even though he’s graduating, he wanted to go to Albany to support others in his community.
“I want the people in my community to be able to go to a good school. It makes no sense, if these [public] schools are failing, to close the charter schools.”
Cuomo has told business leaders that the state would step in to pay the rent of city charter schools denied free space under a crackdown by de Blasio, according to two sources.
Cuomo made the comments Feb. 24 at a private meeting at the Harvard Club in Midtown attended by about 100 Wall Street titans and financiers, according to the event’s organizers.