Mayor de Blasio is now under siege from charter school opponents as well as supporters.
Dozens of angry parents, community leaders and elected officials will sign onto a lawsuit Saturday to force the city to block more charter schools from opening inside public school buildings, The Post has learned.
Parents and community leaders who rallied against co-locations are infuriated that de Blasio only prevented three of 17 charter schools from opening in city facilities, part of a larger veto of nine of 45 space-sharing arrangements in schools that were approved last year by Mike Bloomberg.
Even some of City Hall’s key political allies will be joining the suit. The re-branded ACORN — New York Communities for Change — is expected to be among the plaintiffs, sources said.
NYCC members ran de Blasio’s field operations during his successful mayoral campaign last year.
“Public school parents are angry. They feel betrayed by Mayor de Blasio,” said parents’ union president Mona Davids.
Regular public-school parents and community leaders sympathetic to de Blasio complained they were kept as much in the dark about the criteria used for determining the co-location decisions as were charter school operators.
Community Board 21 Education Council head Heather Fiorica blasted the city for approving the co-location of two charter schools at IS 96 and IS 281 in south Brooklyn.
“We feel frustrated and disillusioned. We got pushed aside. We were blindsided by this,” Fiorica said.
“De Blasio just followed through on what the last mayor did. He didn’t listen to us.”
Another source familiar with the lawsuit said key de Blasio allies feel City Hall mishandled the co-location issue. “He’s acting like he’s still public advocate. People on the left who are with him are saying, `What the hell is he doing?’” said one source.
Public Advocate Letitia James and Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito are also co-plaintiffs in the co-location suit.
De Blasio has come under a firestorm of criticism from charter supporters for revoking the co-locations of three Success Academy charter schools operated by nemesis Eva Moskowitz.
As a mayoral candidate, de Blasio promised to review all the school space-sharing arrangements approved last year by the Bloomberg administration. And he defended the decisions made last week as equitable and fair following a rigorous re-evaluation.