Let charter schools flourish so NYC’s children can
The hundreds of parents and children who rallied Tuesday at City Hall to urge state lawmakers to lift the cap on city charter schools are just one sign of the justice of this cause.
As Monique Bowens of Brooklyn told The Post at the rally, “We need to lift the cap because public schools aren’t teaching the kids right.” And: “We get a better education in charters.”
Her son “gets way more attention at charter schools. It’s like a family situation.”
And Harlem’s Natsha Burrell: “This is like upper mobility. Public schools are not doing well. They haven’t been for a long time. The success of charter schools, in general, should speak for itself.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul simply wants to let 21 “zombie” charters be recycled for the city, and let Gotham use some of the 85 charters still available under the statewide cap.
The so-called progressives who control the state Legislature are resisting — at the behest of the teachers’ unions, who’d be the only losers from letting charters flourish.
It’s a simple fact that charters are often the only good public schools in a neighborhood — but too many neighborhoods don’t yet have them, even though at least a dozen promising charters are eager to open as soon as the cap stops stopping them.
As parent activist Wai Wah Chin wrote last month: “It’s hard to go to a parents’ gathering without hearing their complaints about district schools, their anguish over the poor options and stories of how they or their friends left or are planning to leave the system — whether to charter schools, parochial schools, private schools or outside the city entirely.”
Charters overall do a far better job at teaching than the regular public system, with far more of their students testing proficient in math and English — even though charters largely enroll kids from lower-income families, and get less than half the per-pupil funding.
And polls show city parents strongly support letting more charters open.
But the unions spend millions to get lawmakers to ignore the public demand.
Hochul’s proposal isn’t remotely radical: The cap’s been raised one way or another three times under Democratic governors: Eliot Spitzer in 2007, David Paterson in 2010 and Andrew Cuomo in 2015 law. Any policy case for having any cap at all died long ago.
And no, charters don’t hurt (or steal money from) the public schools: They are public schools, just alternative ones less burdened by bureaucracy and union rules.
Indeed, an area’s regular public school tends to improve when a charter opens nearby: Competition (and a good example) helps.
The only lawmakers standing in the way are the ones who put the special interests’ needs ahead of the childrens’.
