Growing Charter Demand

City parents’ demand for charter-school seats just hit a new high, with nearly 80,000 lottery applicants. Unfortunately, the effort to choke charters’ growth means they’re competing for just 26,900 available seats.

In all, the city Charter Center’s latest survey shows that demand for K-12 charter seats rose 9 percent over last year. But the shortage of supply means waiting lists — up nearly 5,000 — will also hit another record high, at 52,700 out-of-luck applicants.

Mayor de Blasio’s failure to bring meaningful improvement to the regular public schools has more parents looking for alternatives — and his latest initiative will likely send the numbers soaring.

On Wednesday, de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza announced they’re going ahead with the plan to impose racial quotas on West Side middle schools — their alternative to actually creating more good schools in District 3.

Meanwhile, the mayor’s cold war on charters continues to deny them the space they need to grow, even when the system has plenty of empty classrooms.

In the latest outrage, Carranza refuses to declare an emergency to end-run technical issues that stand in the way of giving the Success Academy its promised classrooms in a Bed-Stuy school building that has 900 empty seats.

This, when Carranza did see fit to issue a different emergency declaration this week — in order to pass his next budget without the required review by the Panel for Educational Policy.

The de Blasio stonewall leaves nine out of 10 charters with waitlists more than double their number of open seats. In Harlem and the South Bronx, it’s nearly four applicants for each available charter seat.

The mayor’s actions prove that all his talk of “equity” and “opportunity” in education is nothing but empty words.