Does Carranza Mean It?

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s olive branch to charter schools is a welcome sign — but will he follow up with tangible change?

Carranza not only visited charters in The Bronx and Brooklyn recently, he acknowledged that “charter schools are public schools” — a red flag to those who view them as privileged private enterprises.

But the question is whether he will (or even can) end his predecessor’s policy of treating charters as the enemy. After all, Team de Blasio has talked détente with the charter movement from time to time but never walked the walk.

If Carranza truly wants to mend fences with the city’s high-performing charter schools and their leaders, he can start by granting long-languishing space requests.

Under Mayor de Blasio and ex-Chancellor Carmen Fariña, the Department of Education refused to let charters expand into school buildings that sit half-empty — and even moved administrative offices into space to make it “unavailable.”

He could also end an injustice that NY1 exposed this week: discrimination by the Committee on Special Education 1 against kids who attend at least one charter network.

CSE1 must approve services such as speech therapy for students in three school districts — but NY1 found that it’s been slow-walking requests for Success Academy students, and even unfairly denying services.

By law, the city’s obliged to evaluate every child referred for an Individualized Education Program within 60 days — yet CSE1 takes an average of 170 days to do it for Success kids.

And it (eventually) OKs the help for only four in 10 Success scholars, vs. an 80 percent approval rating for children at regular public schools.

In short, if Richard Carranza wants to start treating all public-school children as equals, he’s got plenty of work ahead of him.