How about that? A mayoral candidate actually wants to help average New Yorkers.
Last week, Republican wannabe Joe Lhota not only defended charter schools, he called for the cap on them to be lifted. Clearly, he recognizes that parents are desperate for more seats at these schools.
Charters, Lhota says, have been “successful” and “parents want and deserve choices for their children.” No kidding: Last month, more than 69,000 children applied for spots in the city’s 183 charters; more than 50,000 had to be turned away for lack of space.
Why aren’t there enough charter seats? Because the teachers union, which views largely non-union charters as a dire threat, has gotten lawmakers to erect roadblocks to thwart charter operators. The most obvious: the state cap on the number of charters — 200 in the city, and 460 statewide.
Lhota wants to double that, which is surely a step in the right direction. And he’s eyeing other ways, too, to help meet the demand by broken-hearted parents.
“We need to make space available” for charters, he says, whether through “co-location” (offering space to charters in traditional public-schools), or by finding space in closing Catholic schools.
That’s in contrast to what his Democratic foes have been promising. Aiming to please the union, most of the Dems have backed steps to further crimp charter growth, including a moratorium on co-locations.
Charters work because they’re free of the bureaucracy and union rules of traditional schools and can be closed if they fail.
Parents understand all this. Now, at least one mayoral candidate cares about them. It’s progress, we guess.