The city’s teachers’ union may as well change its name to “United for Teachers against Parents and Kids,” since the UFT is using every trick in the book to block charter school co-locations and openings.
The UFT recently filed suit to block city-approved co-locations of two Success Academy charters — one in Far Rockaway and another in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn — at public school buildings.
The union is citing a 2022 class-size law (that it backed) to KO the two co-locations.
“It’s outrageous, ridiculous. The UFT is working against the parents and the students,” said Chanee Mitchell, whose daughter, Monay Bradley, is a fifth-grader at the Success Academy Far Rockaway Middle School. Mitchell rightly called the UFT’s lawsuit “an obstacle.”
Michael Mulgrew and his minions are shameless in their repeated attempts to choke the life out of charter school expansion. Unlike traditional public schools, charters are non-union, which explains much of the UFT’s animus.
We suspect that the UFT was behind the “poison pill” measure inserted into the newly enacted state budget that could stop the NYC Mission Society from opening a state-approved charter school in Harlem.
While the budget deal permits 14 new charter schools to open in the city, there’s a caveat preventing a new charter school from being placed in any community school district where 55% of the students are already enrolled in the publicly funded alternative schools.
Fifty-five percent of students in Harlem’s District 5 — where the Mission Society’s Minisink charter school already has its building — are enrolled in charters.
Then there’s the state legislature-imposed class-size mandate that was part of a scheme to undermine mayoral control in 2022.
That law gave the UFT a say in drawing up the reduction plan — plus a veto over any exemptions from the mandate — in order to stop co-locations.
Denying high-quality charter schools, such as Success Academy and Minisink, additional public space or the ability to better educate mostly black and Hispanic children is a despicable detriment to children and their parents.
In getting the Panel for Education policy to approve the two Success Academy co-locations, Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks showed respect for the wishes of charter school families.
We hope that City Hall and the DOE will vigorously defend the interests of those families in state court.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
