Blas’ New Charter Lies
Now Mayor de Blasio’s lying in school.
With an eye on the 2017 mayoral race, Hizzoner last week dropped by the DREAM Charter School in East Harlem — where he answered a student’s question by insisting he supports charters and any notion to the contrary is a myth.
“My language” about charters, he said, “should have been clearer.”
This is pure Pinocchio country. Fact is, de Blasio’s hostility to charters is a matter of public record, in both word and action.
Starting with the fact that this was only the second charter he has visited since taking office. Nor has he lifted a finger to create more charters, despite their success in educating kids — and waiting lists for charter seats of nearly 50,000.
Just the opposite: He actively thwarts their growth, denying them space, even as 150,000 classroom seats in regular schools sit empty.
De Blasio also claimed he has “included charters very successfully” in his pre-K program. Huh? He just forced one top charter network — Success Academy — to shut down its pre-K.
Hizzoner pretends his hatred of charters is but a spat with just Success. He told Politico the network “may [use] a business model that re- quires that kind of conflict.”
Please. Its “business model” had no “conflict” with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Back in 2013, then-candidate de Blasio unloaded on Success’ founder: “There is no way in hell that Eva Moskowitz should get free rent, OK?”
Hello? Charters are public schools — there’s no reason they shouldn’t use public space on the same terms as every other city school.
Plus, Success scholars’ test scores consistently eclipse those of their peers. Six of its 54 eighthgraders — all minorities — who sat for the specialized-high-school exam last year passed. That makes SA’s 11 percent minority-acceptance rate more than twice that of regular schools.
And that gets to his real problem with charters: They out-compete the regular schools — especially when it comes to teaching black and Hispanic kids.
One reason they do better is that they’re mostly free of the union rules that burden regular public schools. So the union despises them, and de Blasio sides with the union.
By now, of course, every adult in the city knows all this. Maybe that’s why de Blasio’s now telling his lies to kids . . .