Charter School Sector Set To Thrive In NYC

The NY Times reports the budget deal giving charter schools the right of unlimited expansion in NYC threatens de Blasio's education goals - and of course, that was always the point:

Under the deal, the city would be required to find space in public buildings for charter schools, which operate independently of the school district but receive public funds. If the city could not, it would have to cover the cost of renting private space, up to $40 million. Charter schools could challenge the city’s selection of space through an arbitration process.

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Charter school advocates said the allure of free space in New York would most likely attract new charter school operators to the area and prompt existing schools to consider expanding their enrollment. The city can add as many as 66 charter schools under a cap imposed by Albany, though the limit could be raised.

Education experts said they were not sure where the city might house the new programs. Mr. de Blasio has expressed skepticism about closing low-performing schools, a strategy favored by his predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, to make room for new programs, including charter schools.

The unlimited expansion powers granted to charter schools already in NYC will create a serious space problem and with 66 charters still to come under the cap, that space issue is going to get a lot worse in future years.

If these unlimited expansion powers are not revisited in law, you are going to see land fights here worthy of a John Ford movie.

And of course, that was always Cuomo's goal here.

As I posted yesterday, since he has become governor, he has done his best to undermine and underfinance the public school system in every area of this state, starving schools of funds with a tax cap even as he puts more and more expensive mandates like Common Core and APPR onto them, in an attempt to make as many schools "fail" as possible.

Then, he hands the "failing" schools over to his charter school operator buddies and their Wall Street backers, ever shrinking the traditional public school system and enlarging the privatized school system of for-profit and non-profit charters.

The unlimited expansion powers granted to charters in the budget bill aligns with these goals and will make the NYC school system look vastly different in another ten years.

Will Eva Moskowitz have 50 or 60 schools by the time the cap is reached?

She might.

And the space for all of those schools will come from NYC traditional public schools or the rent for private space will come from the NYC public school budget.

Moskowitz will have the equivalent of her own fiefdom, with so much cash rolling into her coffers from the extra per pupil funding, the hedge fundie backing and the city paying rent for her that she will have a ton of extra dollars to use to lobby Albany and get the charter cap lifted once again and continue expanding.

Truly a destructive budget bill that is, in the end, meant to destroy the traditional NYC public school system in favor of the charter school/privatized system.