Team Joe’s New Anti-Charter Low

In a new low in Team Biden’s war on charter schools, the feds are trying to deny several New York City charters long-sincepromised grant money, forcing them to go to court to get it released.

Four charter schools and networks are suing for nearly $1 million in remaining Obama-era grant money. The grant technically expired in late 2019, but waivers to finish sending such cash are routine — except the Biden Department of Education last summer refused to grant an extension.

That denial was nakedly political: Before the feds announced it, the president’s American Rescue Plan allocated to New York schools in COVID relief. The money Biden’s DOE is sitting on is compared to that — and had long since been factored into these schools’ budgetary plans.

The schools affected enroll between 97% and 99% students of color and 65% to 100% economically disadvantaged students. Once more, lefty ideology and teacher-union power conspire to harm the most vulnerable.

Indeed, the denial fits perfectly with this administration’s relentless hostility to charters. In March the White House released a set of rules clearly aimed at handcuffing charters. They would, among other onerous requirements, force charters seeking federal funds into partnerships with traditional public schools and demand they produce “community impact” analyses to justify their existence.

Yet charters’ “community impact” is clear: They offer great educational options for those regular public schools have utterly failed — failures that overwhelmingly come in poorer, less white neighborhoods.

Just a coincidence, no doubt. How could educrats and teachers unions be deliberately negligent when it comes to communities that lack the resources to push back?

So good luck to the charters as they take this fight to the feds. Wars are won battle by battle, and this is a deeply necessary one.