Nation's educators watching new NYC mayor's moves on charter schools
Bill de Blasio vowed to end 'two-class system,' making charter school supporters nervous about drastic changes
- Topics:
- Education
- Charter Schools
- New York
NEW YORK — In early October, just weeks before he was elected mayor of the largest city in the nation, Bill de Blasio made a declaration that resonated with urban education officials and other city officials around the country.
“I won’t favor charters,” he told the crowd at the high profile City Lab Summit in Lower Manhattan, an inaugural event attended by 30 mayors, in addition to city planners, scholars and architects from across the globe that was billed by organizers as a conference aimed at crafting urban solutions to global problems. “Our central focus is traditional public schools.”
Less than a mile away, on the same day, thousands of charter school parents, students and educators held a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge to express their opposition to one of the candidate’s key campaign promises: his plan to charge rents to charter schools.
“Don’t charge us rent; we’re the 99 percent,” shouted the protesters as they marched to City Hall, mimicking the infamous Occupy Wall Street rallying cry against income inequality and challenging the candidate on his progressive credentials.
De Blasio had made the issue of charging rents to charter schools a central piece of his “A Tale of Two Cities” campaign theme — a rejection of what he said was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
