The plot to weaken New York City chartersBy Robert Pondiscio
February 7, 2022
If New York politics were sane and rational — if our elected officials were serious about the pursuit of educational excellence and what’s best for children — the city’s charter-school sector would be a point of civic pride.
Our leaders might point to the thousands of black and Hispanic children charter schools launch into competitive colleges annually from the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
“If you want to see what equity looks like,” they might brag with no small amount of big-city swagger, “come to the Big Apple.”
If we cannot have sane and rational politics, can we at least have a little less hypocrisy?
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Liu last month introduced a bill that would remove the authority of the trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY) to grant or renew charter schools, handing over that critical oversight power to the state’s Board of Regents.
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Turning oversight of these schools to the state’s Board of Regents may seem like a minor bit of bureaucratic shuffling, but as a recent Post editorial noted, Liu “know[s ] perfectly well that the Regents are a creature of the teachers unions, which despise charters because these alternative public schools expose the failings of the regular public systems that serve the unions so well.”
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/02/07/the-plot-to-weaken-new-york-city-charters-stand-up-to-albany-overhaul/
