New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was
withdrawing permission for three Success Academies charter schools to be co-located, rent-free, in public school buildings, ending the
preferential treatment the chain had gotten from the Bloomberg administration. This Tuesday, de Blasio planned a lobby day in Albany to build support for universal pre-K programs. In a stunning coincidence, Success Academies founder and former city councilwoman Eva Moskowitz decided to
close her schools for the day to send students to Albany to lobby, not for pre-K, but for charter schools.
Moskowitz drew criticism from Daniel Dromm, the chair of the city council education committee, and from the Rev. Al Sharpton. Moskowitz insists that she supports pre-K and wasn't intending to distract from the effort to build support for it. It's just that the thing she closes her schools for and buses kids a couple hours to lobby on is preferential treatment for charter schools, and it just happens to coincide with the pre-K efforts of a mayor who isn't following his predecessor's lead in giving her everything she wants.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also dove in to defend the poor beleaguered charter schools. I mean, they might not get every single public space they want, rent-free, even as their executives pull in big salaries. The horror.
And more: