Shut-out charter-school parents pleaded with Mayor de Blasio Friday to rethink his decision to yank their classrooms, saying they just want their kids to have the same opportunities as his son, Dante.
“If he closes our schools, where does that leave our kids? I would love for our son to be like Dante,” said Latoya Grant, whose 11-year-old daughter attends the Success Academy charter on West 111th Street.
Her daughter, Assatta, is a sixth-grader at Harlem Central Middle School while her 8-year-old son, Grant Sommerville, attends second grade at a nearby Success Academy elementary school.
Dante de Blasio goes to one of the city’s elite public high schools, Brooklyn Tech.
“I’m a little bit annoyed because it’s personal. They’re playing politics with my children,” Grant fumed.
“This is a top-performing school. They’re giving a liberal-arts education in comparison to public schools where they just teach you how to take tests. Here they work on socialization skills, critical thinking . . . things you get at a college level.”
Harlem Central will be homeless for the fall and is threatened with closing.
The administration revoked space approved last year by the Bloomberg administration that would have allowed the school to locate in the PS 149/Sojourner Truth building on West 118th Street.
Charter officials said the school won’t have a place to go because it has to vacate its current space at 21 W. 111th St. at the end of this school year.
De Blasio also blocked two new Success Academy elementary schools from co-locating in high schools in Manhattan and Queens.
One parent said her child was in tears after City Hall announced its decision Thursday.
“I’m very upset because my child is crying: ‘Please don’t close the school, don’t let me leave,’ ” said Suzan Hudson, 46, whose daughter Cindy is a sixth-grader at Harlem Central.
She called de Blasio’s action “ridiculous” and “crazy.”
Charter parents are taking to the airwaves to criticize the mayor in TV ads bankrolled by Families for Excellent Schools, a charter advocacy group.
Gov. Cuomo went out of his way Friday to effusively praise charters and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg for promoting them.
“There have been significant contributions from the charter-school movement. And I think that movement should continue,” Cuomo said on the “Capital Pressroom” radio show.
“To Mayor Bloomberg’s credit, the movement itself has been a net positive.”
But Cuomo didn’t criticize de Blasio, and the mayor defended his decision on co-locations as equitable and fair.
“We are trying to improve our schools across the board, and we are not going to take action that we believe is going help one school and hurt another,” the mayor said.
He emphasized that his administration actually approved 14 of the 17 co-locations involving charter schools.
“Eight of those particular co-locations were proposed by Ms. Moskowitz’s organizations. Five of those are going forward,” he said, referring to Eva Moskowitz, who oversees Success Academy.