The New York State Senate yesterday introduced a budget resolution filled with legislative bills seeking to destroy public education to benefit privately managed education corporations known as charter schools. In it budget resolution, the Senate is requiring school districts to provide rent-free space to new charter schools or pay for private facilities out of the school districts budget. It also includes increased funding for privately run charter schools, it strips the New York City Mayor and the Panel for Education Policy of their authority to approve or deny charter co-locations in public school buildings and gives charter schools decision-making authority over classroom space in buildings they are currently co-located in. Outside of New York City, school boards will be required to pay for facilities costs for charter schools or co-locate them in their public school buildings.Governor Cuomo, Senator Dean Skelos and Senator Jeff Klein’s blatant attempt to destroy public education in exchange for contributions from the well moneyed charter lobby and hedge funders for their political careers is unconscionable. The political chicanery and corruption in the “ed reform-political-complex” is unmatched in any democratic society throughout the world.
Shino Tanikawa, Manhattan Public School Parent and President of Community Education Council District 2* said: “It is deeply disturbing to see such clear evidence of corruption in which charter operators with money dictate to Senators how they should be given everything they want while only serving a small proportion of students. If this resolution passes, what little is left of our democratic process will be extinct and our schools – public and charters – will be run by charter operators and their minions in the state legislature. And make no mistakes they do not have the interest of our children in their hearts.”
Jacqueline Colson, Queens Public School Parent and Member of Community Education Council District 25* said: “Our children are not pawns in this “Game of Charters”. The queen Eva Moskowitz has made her move and King Cuomo has fallen into checkmate by destroying public schools. We need to take a stand and change the game.”
Noah E. Gotbaum, Manhattan Public School Parent, Vice President, Community Education Council District 3* said: “Public school parents beware! This Senate Resolution steals control of our public schools from elected Mayors and school boards, and hands it to hedge fund managers and charter school lobbyists. It would force cash-strapped school systems to hand over space and extra funding for the 3% in charters at the expense of the 97% in public schools. And it would give charter corporations like Eva Moskowitz’s complete control over what happens in our public school buildings. This Bill has nothing to do with what’s best for New York States 2.5 million kids, and everything to do with what’s best for a few hundred high-rolling campaign contributors. It is shameful.”
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters said: “Thousands of public school students are put on waiting lists for Kindergarten each year, thousands more sit in trailers, and hundreds of thousands are sitting in overcrowded schools, yet this proposal would force NYC to give charter schools free space or pay for the construction of their schools –over the rights of public school students. Moreover, 5 out of the 7 provisions in the Senate proposal pertaining to charters would ONLY burden NYC with these obligations – and not the districts represented by the Republican Senators. If Avella cannot get the Senate to give up this incredibly inequitable and damaging proposal, designed to force privatization of the NYC public school system because of the money and power of the hedge funders and billionaires that back the charter lobby, he should resign from the IDC”.
Benita Rivera, Founder of The Mother’s Agenda New York (The MANY) said: “Once again the politicians, pro-charter power brokers and paid lobbyists have shown their blatant disgust— not only for any semblance of democracy, but as regrettably, for the best interests of the overwhelming majority of children in our traditional public schools. I would say “Shame on Governor Cuomo and the Senate Majority!,” except that this shabby cohort of political careerists in Albany know no shame.
Rivera continued: The very idea of co-locating different schools, with different educational philosophies and vastly different resources under one roof is an absurdity ill-conceived by Michael Bloomberg. Was it not through brute force and big money spent wrangling either naive or ethically-devoid state politicians, that he was able to impose his will upon the public to divvy-up our children’s developmental learning and social-play places without parent, teacher and especially, voter consent? After all this time and so much energy, it is disheartening that we appear to be right back at square one in the struggle; which all seems part of the master’s plan to deconstruct and destroy public education as we know it.”
Mona Davids, Bronx Public School Parent and President of the New York City Parents Unionsaid: “Everybody laughs when we speak about the dysfunction in Albany. We all shake our heads and shrug our shoulders when we hear of legislators arrested and convicted of corruption and accepting bribes from special interests. We know that Governor Cuomo, Senator Dean Skelos and Senator Klein have received almost one-million dollars in contributions from the charter lobby that seeks to destroy public education. Why aren’t they arrested and locked up for graft? Charter schools are not public schools, they are non-profit education corporations governed by private boards. Charter schools according to Eva Moskowitz are not accountable to the public or may be audited by the State Comptroller because they are not state units like public schools. Siphoning money from public schools that serve all students, unlike charter schools, is clearly quid pro-quo for campaign contributions. We call on the Attorney General to investigate the bribes sent to Governnor Cuomo, Senator Skelos and Senator Klein through the charter lobby’s many Political Action Committees and board members.
Davids continued: We have overcrowded schools, students in trailers, schools with no libraries, no arts, no music and no physical education. These schools serve the majority of New York State students. Governor Cuomo, Senator Skelos and Senator Klein should be putting public schools first, not education corporations unaccountable to the public.”
Sam Pirozzolo, Staten Island Public School Parent, President of Community Education Council 31* said: Almost since its inception, New York City public school parents have pointed out that Mayoral Control was out of control and the laws needed to be changed. And for all of those years we thought our complaints were falling on deaf ears. It now seems that Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature have finally heard our pleas, or have they? Yesterday the NYS Senate introduced a bill that would effectively eliminate Mayoral Control, destroy the teachers union and create the largestreformatory school system in the world. But were they actually listening to parents? Heck no! They are listening to the dollars of the powerful charter school lobby. New York City public school parents have been walloped by two events yesterday. First was the introduction of the legislation mentioned above and second was the victory given to Eva Moskowitz and her lucrative string of charter schools known as Succe$$ Academy Charter School$ when Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Breslin ruled state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli did not have the authority to audit any New York charter because the schools are not technically “units of the state.” How is it possible that charter schools cannot be held accountable? The NY City Council wants to see the books, they are concerned aboutcorruption.
Pirozzolo continued: So what does this mean for hardworking tax paying New York City public school parents? It means that we have been side stepped, overruled and ignored once again. The path has been cleared to give choice to only a select few while the remaining neighborhood schools become filled with the outcasts of charter school children who couldn’t “make the grade” and are being returned into an already struggling public school system which has now been assured a straight and direct path to failure. If anyone believes that the legislature would never allow for such a bill to be passed, I have two words for you, Tier 6.”
We call on parents throughout New York City and New York State to use their power and not vote for Governor Cuomo, Senator Skelos, Senator Klein and any other state legislator that seeks to deny our children of a high quality public education by putting privately run charter schools before our democratic public schools.We urge parents to:
- Call their New York State Senator and demand that the proposals benefiting charter schools at the expense of public education be removed.
- Call Assemblyman Sheldon Silver and their New York State Assembly Members to thank them for putting all New York State students first by supporting public schools.
- Call Governor Cuomo, demand he comply with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling and properly fund our public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Leave it to Pirozzolo to think that invoking “Tier 6” is the way to get parents fired up. Got to love Staten Island.
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I’m from Virginia…what is Tier 6?? Please inform us!
This is OUTRAGEOUS what is happening in NY & the nation needs to know! Stand strong, parents. Thank you Dianne for posting this. As she wrote earlier today the only way we win us at the ballot box.
Speaking of ballet box, if you have any friends & family in Wash DC who are registers Democrats please urge them to vote for Andy Shallal in DC mayorial primary in April 1st. Andy has spoken strongly & passionately against corporate edu reforms in DC that Rhee started & are continued by her successor Hendeson.
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Tier 6 is the revised pension plan for public employees in NYState. It ups the required contribution of hires after 2012 to 3% for those making $45,000 a year, and higher for higher categories.
Not until an employee hits $75,000 a year AND is not represented by a union, can he opt out and shift to a defined contribution plan, which the employee owns free and clear.
And that’s the problem. It’s still a defined benefit plan with the potential to bankrupt a state. With a defined contribution plan, the public employer must pay up front, and then is no longer on the hook once the employee retires. With a defined benefit plan, the state’s mismanagement or default would threaten the pensions of public employees, as we are seeing in Illinois.
Many teachers still want a defined benefit plan even as state and city finances become more shaky. Think Detroit.
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“It means that we have been side stepped, overruled and ignored once again.”
Sorry, kids. Public schools aren’t fashionable right now. Now, hand over the art room and be quick about it.
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Now hand over the art room and be quick about it.
Funny and true.
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Did you see the US House is working hard on a charter school bill?
The federal government can’t manage to raise the minimum wage, prosecute crooked mortgage issuers for fraud, regulate for-profit colleges or issue unemployment benefits, and while they’ve been busy measuring teachers 36 states have lost funding for public schools under ed reform leadership, but the charter school lobby yells “jump!” and they ask “how high?”
Priorities, people!
How do we get rid of this bunch and elect some people who support our public schools?
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2014/03/house_education_leaders_workin.html
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I have been making calls. If you are in NY have you?
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I don’t think this is accurate:
“Outside of New York City, school boards will be required to pay for facilities costs for charter schools or co-locate them in their public school buildings.”
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“We have overcrowded schools, students in trailers, schools with no libraries, no arts, no music and no physical education……”
We need pictures and personal stories. If there are pictures of co-locations where charter schools have state-of-the-art technology and the public side of the school is going without… we need pictures. If there are separate entrances and the charter school has space that used to belong to the public school children, we need pictures. If there are public school children in trailers because charter schoolchildren have displaced them… we need pictures and personal stories. Words will never tell the story the way that it needs to be told. There need to be personal stories and lots of pictures.
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FLERP not accurate. I’ve tried to tell folks that people in the armpit of NY could have charters overtake their schools, and they just glare or look mystified or think I have two heads. Not a good sign.
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People in the tony suburbs can potentially have charters rise up and permeate their districts in varying levels. It can absolutely happen.
“Choice” is just another way of excusing the government from addressing poverty outside the realm of education, and another way to bust organized labor, to create turnaround and revolving doors, and to eliminate or severely whittle down public pensions. “Choice” is also the best way to eliminate a more level playing field and stratify society further.
One cannot blame Obama alone or mainly, because this movement of free markets in public education has literally been going on since the days of FDR’s enemies. It’s just that after banging away at the dam for decades, the dam is starting to finally break, and Obama has merely accelerated the process . . . GW Bush too.
Now we all face ourselves having to resconstruct this damn, but I wonder if it can be done as it’s collapsing, or if we have to wait until the floods have purged millions of perfectly good teachers . . . . It’s hard to tell.
These are very sinister times in the United States, but we stil have our vote and capacity to organize.
We still outnumber the neo-cons, the neo-libs, the Tea Party, and the pols int DC in general. The question is, will we have the will to come to consensus and organize and mobilize accordingly?
I see strong evidence of this already, but I do not know if it is fast enough or widespread enough, given the enormous institutionalized powers we are up against.
Still, the fight is not over, but has just been born . . . . .
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What I meant was that the Senate resolution does not propose to require school districts outside NYC to pay charter facilities costs or offer free space.
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There are chinks in our democracy that are being taken advantage of though.
In the most powerful posts of congress, computers have aided the severe gerrymandering that has given the republicans so much power that is not represented by their popularity – you can find lovely graphics of what the voting districts look like now.
For positions of power where this isn’t an issue, you have people with billions of dollars pouring unheard of amounts of money into unheard of races – for school boards and other local posts. We only get to vote so often, and these forces are very powerful. At the highest level, we only get voice every few years. At the local level, we have some very powerful interests that are using every tool at their disposal to put people in power that they control, or to control the people there with grants, campaign contributions, and I would not be surprised if there were outright bribes.
We may outnumber them, but they’re nimble, monied opponents that should not be underestimated. Citizens United accelerated their growth and increased their power.
It makes me wonder if truly our democracy can survive these types of machinations. It’s a little tin foil hat but the next logical step would be to start controlling voters if they start to rebel against the candidates being put forward.
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City public school boards should have the same option as LEAs outside of the city . . . .
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. . . .TWO NATIONS under Coleman, with standards and testing for most.
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This is a grab for $$$$$, pure and simple. Has nothing to do with educating ALL of our young. This has to do with being part of the rich boys and girls club.
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Unbelievable and predictable. Wow.
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