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| Eva Moskowitz leading the attack. |
New York's deep-pocketed charter school hustlers and privateers have launched a multi-million-dollar ad campaign against Mayor de Blasio. They are also using the ads to make wild, unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of charters over community-based public schools. No mention, of course, of massive suspension and expulsion rates or any other charter negatives.
They claim de Blasio is "kicking them out" of THEIR school buildings. Translation -- the mayor is asking the privateers to pay rent for the building space they themselves expropriated from public schools during the Bloomberg/Klein regime. BdB wants to divert the city's rent subsidy for charters towards the expansion of early childhood education and universal Pre-K for all city families (Oh, the horror!).
The privateers are playing the victims, threatening to sic their team of stickpin lawyers on the school system to tie things up in the courts. As expected, crying the loudest and making the gravest threats is New York's chief charter hustler Eva Moscowitz who runs the so-called Success Academy charter chain. Socialite and Bloomberg pal Moscowitz, who pays herself a hefty $500,000/year salary, says she's "stunned" by the mayor's rent-collecting policies. I guess I'm stunned that she's stunned. De Blasio is doing exactly what he said he would do when he ran for mayor. Remember he won in a landslide over Moscowitz' candidate.
Huffington post reports:
During his campaign, De Blasio called for a moratorium on co-location, although he recently lifted that moratorium in favor of a community-based approval process for allocating space to charter schools. De Blasio also questioned whether charters shouldn't be charged rent. His rhetorical target in arguing for these changes was Moskowitz: At a June forum, he said, "There is no way in hell that Eva Moskowitz should get free rent, okay?"I don't often have cause to say this anywhere, but --Okay, Mr. Mayor.
Bill Gates, work to improve your own pathetic product and get the hell out of education…
ReplyDeleteMuch of the problem in today’s American education is the unabashed arrogance and negative influence of the business types who think that they know everything, including how to run our public schools. It's appropriate to cite the fact that 95% of American businesses go out of business within the first five years of their existence. An abysmal track record like that should never qualify the business types as “experts” in anything, especially in how to educate our children. Yet, their influence in education is unmistakable: Common Core Standards, the ubiquitous standardized testing regimen, the whole concept of punishing schools and teachers in poverty-stricken areas of rural and urban America, "No Child Left Behind", "Race to the Top" with their "free market," "tough love" approach for funding, and the charter school (corporate) movement were all ideas from the business world which resulted in the stultification. dulling, and devastation of our schools. Attila, the Hun couldn't have visited more chaos and destruction on our children than these business types who claim to know everything. Karl