What Charter School Backers And Education Reformers May Plan For Their Next Assault On The Public Schools

With Governor Cuomo winning 54% of the vote last night while many Democrats around the nation  were either losing their races or barely squeaking out wins, Cuomo is going to claim he's got a mandate to govern as a centrist - conservative on economic issues, liberal on social issues:

On education issues, he's already warned New Yorkers he plans to "break" the public school "monopoly" and revise the APPR teacher evaluation system to make it even more punitive for teachers.

You know that agenda is coming as soon as January.

Charter operators have long said they're aiming at the charter cap next legislative session.

Expect Cuomo to push either an increase to the cap or a complete elimination of it.

And then there's this - charter backers dropped a lot of money in Senate campaigns these past months, and they're going to want payback:

One part of that payback?

Continuing to undercut mayoral control of NYC schools to benefit charter schools and eat away de Blasio's power:

De Blasio is going to have to contend with a GOP majority that used him as a foil in its upstate races, running ads that warned voters against restoring the NYC-dominated Democrats and their radical liberal friends to power.

Two big fights loom this year in Albany that concern de Blasio considerably: Mayoral control of the NYC school system and the NYC rent laws, both of which are set to expire in June.

Charter school interests that was to see de Blasio’s power over the school system weakened and real estate interests that want to see the status quo maintained in the rent laws spent big money to help the Senate Republicans and Cuomo in this election cycle.

The Senate GOP’s victory last night, coupled with de Blasio’s rocky relationship with the governor do not bode well for the mayor in the 2015 legislative session.

When there was a charter-friendly mayor in office in NYC, charter backers loved mayoral control.

Now that there's a less charter-friendly mayor in power, they continue to want to undercut mayoral control - but only in ways that benefit charters or the education reform movement.

With charters subject to comptroller audit after last year's budget, I can see charter operators looking to undercut that accountability mechanism.

That might be a sideline to the re-do on mayoral control here - do away with the auditing power of the state and city comptrollers and put accountability responsibility on dependable charter friendly entities - like the SUNY charter board or the Regents.

It's going to be a rough two years if you're a student, parent of a student or teacher in a traditional public school.

The governor has vowed to break your school, he's got a State Senate ready to help him and there are a lot of money favors legislators are going to have to return to the charter industry after this last election cycle.

That means boom times for charters and education reformers.