Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor denounced Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announced plan to charge rent to charter schools using public space, if they can afford it. De Blasio responded sharply to Cantor’s criticism.
“Our committees in the House will remain vigilant in their efforts to ensure no one from the government stands in the school house door between any child and a good education,” said Cantor, in remarks at the Brookings Institution.
Asked what exactly the House would do in response to de Blasio, Cantor didn’t offer specifics, but said de Blasio’s policies put the nation’s largest school district “in conflict with federal programs that have been designed to help facilitate growth in public school choice.”
Cantor forgot about the alleged Republican belief in state and local control. Charters and vouchers matter more to Republicans than local control. He also forgot that voters in New York City made their choice by electing de Blasio, who beat his Republican opponent by 40 points. And one of the big issues between them was charter schools. De Blasio said he would impose a moratorium and charge rent, while Joe Lhota promised to increase the number of charters. The voters’ choice was overwhelming. Eric Cantor should let the voters of New York City govern themselves.
De Blasio made clear that he was not intimidated by Cantor’s threats and has no interest in taking advice from Eric Cantor.
“The Republican agenda in Washington doesn’t even scratch the surface of the inequities facing more than a million children in our public schools,” de Blasio said in a statement after Cantor’s remarks.
To learn more about why charters should pay rent, watch this brief segment on the Melissa Harris-Perry show where Leonie Haimson does a great job of explaining the issue.
Mercedes Schneider reviewed the tax records of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy and concluded that she could easily pay rent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cantor’s response is very telling about the corporate influence in politics. Why would a high ranking congressman make a statement about a local educational issue? Some lobbist must be behind this statement and are obviously threatened by the mayor’s stance on charter schools.
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Unfortunately MHP doesn’t understand the connection between the charterization reformers and Wall Street hedge funders bent upon doing to public education what they did to the national economy in 2008… especially after her stunning question of one of her guests this weekend about this very issue…
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continue please!
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Eric Cantor you just showed the nation how bought out and shallow the Republican party has become-what a joke! Someone in the federal government completely bullying a local elected official. The Republican Party needs a complete overhaul.
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de Blasio for President! (It’ll happen by 2024. You’ll see.)
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Congressman Cantor,
Do you think that Gulen charter schools cannot afford to pay rent?
Do you support the hiring practices of Gulen charter schools?
Have you or any of your staff taken a junket to Turkey, sponsored by the Gulen movement?
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I conclude from Congressmen Cantor’s statements, first, that he understands charter schools are not so viable as are normal public schools, and that they cannot survive without massive public subsidies, often way beyond what any public school would take.
And second, I conclude that Cantor hates public schools so much that he’ll do anything to kill them short of admitting he hates the idea of public education and the masses learning to read, write, cipher and think.
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What ever happened to conservative Republicans. You know, the ones who thought that the federal government should mind its own business and leave state and local authorities alone. Some days I really miss those guys.
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““Our committees in the House will remain vigilant in their efforts to ensure no one from the government stands in the school house door between any child and a good education,”
Then get the hell out of the way and let the teachers do what is necessary for the good of the children.
Got the edudeformer speak down pat doesn’t he.
Why it’s the civil rights issue of the day, isn’t it now??? (said in that sarcastic teacher’s tone)
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Why are the charters in NYC getting a free ride? The charter schools in Buffalo, NY purchase their own school buildings, they don’t share space with an existing public school. And the public schools pay money to their hosts when they rent space, such as at local colleges. Why are NYC charters expecting preferential treatment?
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Not all charter schools in New York City are co-located; many have their own facilities and pay rent. In terms of justifying rent-free co-locations, I would argue that there are two main differences between New York City and Buffalo: one, NYC has vastly higher rent, land, and construction costs. If the estimated $92 million the DOE could earn by charging charters rent were plowed directly into replacing or renovating aging DOE buildings (of which there are many), it wouldn’t go very far. At current NYCSCA rates, $92 million would build about 700-1000 seats: two medium-sized elementary or middle schools, or a single medium-sized high school.
The second is that there is quite a bit of spare capacity across the entire DOE system–overall DOE + charter school enrollment is down by around 100,000 students since 2001. The school closings you may have heard of are restructurings, not facilities actually being permanently closed as in Chicago or Detroit. The DOE has placed charters into overcrowded districts, though, and some co-locations have been disastrous for the district schools. The process definitely needs to be revisited, especially to gauge the impact on kids with disabilities
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The high property values and limited locations in NYC are reasons to limit charters or expect them to pay rent. Co inhabiting a school is just crazy – whether they pay rent or not. It is not an optimum way to run a school(s) – I know from experience (and they were temporary situations).
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if a person is known by the enemies he keeps, the Di Blasio is on the path of righteousness. As for Eric Cantor, all one can say is “A shandeh un a charpeh” – Translation : “A shame and a disgrace”. Nothing new. Oh, yes, one day, Cantor and his ilk will be held accountable for his behavior; it may not be today or tomorrow, but that day will come.
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amen to that
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Leonie Haimson said the following in the MSNBC clip above:
“What we found is that there’s no issue more contentious and more distressing to public school parents in New York City than the issue of co-located charter schools.”
I am assuming she meant public school parents whose children attend a traditional public school that shares space with a charter (and even then I’m a little skeptical). Otherwise, I’m going to have to call for a fact check: curriculum, facilities, class size (of course!), teacher/administrator quality, and test prep/testing issues are far more important to the fellow traditional public school parents I know than charter schools co-located in DOE facilities.
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These guys like Cantor are always singing the privatization tune UNLESS private sector principles are going to apply to THEIR pet projects. Give us small government but trillions in taxpayer dollars paid to private corporations through no-bid contracts to pay for pointless foreign wars. Privatize schools, but award the contracts to my buddies and pay for them with tax dollars.
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“in conflict with federal programs that have been designed to help facilitate growth in public school choice”
So the top Republican admits that RTTT and CC are not designed to improve education, just privatize education.
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The tragedy of the Obama administration is that it has embraced the same philosophy of school choice as the Republican leadership. We do have a bipartisan education agenda: It is the Republican agenda of choice, competition, and accountability. Unfortunately, the choice part takes precedence, because failing schools that belong to major campaign contributors are never held accountable. They suck kids out of public schools with false promises, provide a second-rate education, and keep the money.
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Which once again proves how corrupt the Democratic party, the party of the ordinary working person, has become . . . .
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Its nice to see someone on a fedreal level call dblaze out for his preopsterous hatred of minorities in this city seeking a world class education via ground breaking public charter schools like Success Academy. It will be interesting to hear dblaze explain away his hypocritical tail of two cities theme while also opposing our poorest minority children from their chance at an education that will make them competetive in a globalized economy, something our zoned schools have failed to do for the last 50+ years. While I generally find people like Eric Cantor to be detestable, tis about time someone stands up to deblazes bullying…
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Don’t bother playing the poor minority urban kids card here without first addressing poverty outside the schools.
If not, why not go build an alter and recruit a few more like yourself to do the worshipping . . . .
The Feds have no business sticking their hideous faces in local politics. .. There is something real like state rights, and as for powerhouses that have a problem with De Blasio, let them at a state and city level deal with him.
Like any of us are seriously going to defer to the federal government for what’s right and wrong in education today?
Zoned schools have failed perhaps for 50 + years because we have failed as a culture and society to address poverty the way other nations (Canada, France, Australia to name a few) have.
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There are over 4,600,000 registered voters living in NYC, dblaze received votes from 752,604 of them for a grand whopping total of about 16% of the votes in this city. Hardly a ‘mandate’.
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Really? Not a mandate?
How many votes did deBlasio’s opponent receive—you know, the guy who said over and over again he wanted to double the number of charters?
My understanding is that the winner of an election is based on who received more votes among all of the votes ACTUALLY CAST—not all of the votes that COULD HAVE BEEN CAST.
Do you have an different interpretation of election laws or are you just trying to “spin” the obvious, while hoping everyone reading this will be too dumb or distracted to notice?
Or, perhaps you have a different interpretation of arithmetic? (Common Core “math” perhaps? 😉
Actually, if ALL eligible voters HAD voted in that past NYC mayoral election, deBlasio’s percentage of the vote would have undoubtedly INCREASED.
Eligible voters who don’t consistently vote, or don’t even register to vote, are overwhelmingly Democratic voters.
In fact, Republicans are more aware of this than anyone! Why do you think they’ve spent so much time and energy trying to limit who can vote, the conditions under which they can vote, and the process for registering to vote?
You’re either woefully uninformed about this reality or you’re just so filled with hatred for deBlasio, and public education generally, that you’re apparently not aware of how foolish and obtuse you sound.
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I know this is not terribly erudite or intellectual of me to state this, but screw Eric Cantor, in plain English.
Eric Cantor and his sparkly choice-ridden market place values in education are a picture perfect way of capturing almost everything wrong with most people – make that dybbuks – working on Capitol Hill.
Education is a social responsibility and a public trust. . . . So is preventing and eradicating poverty. Cantor and company ignore this very tenet.
Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and John Boener are a triumvirate of morally impotent men. . . . . . Time to take the trash lid off and throw out some garbage.
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your sentiments and politics are spot-on. we people of the ‘progressive’ persuasion must sadly, face up to living in a society i n which we have become the in country equivalent of the british back- benchers; the old-line coalitions have gone the way of the dodo bird and what remains are the sell-out centrists, the neo-cons and hard line right -wingers. Robert, we continue to fight ‘the good fight’,our efforts must concentrate on local and regional electoral politics, forging alliances with natural constituencies, progressive working class and low income folks and the remnants of the liberals and trade unions who retain a common progressive vision. .
there is no going back to the new deal vision of government; we have to work with what we have at hand and look to the leadership of elected officials, who share a common, similar vision. for the moment we are limited to ranting, raving and cursing the boehner’s, ryan’s and cantor’s, who are ruling our world, but let’s not forget that we were sold out by the current president and his political flock;they is aiding and abetting those who would destroy not only public education but the very fabric of our social safety net.
the answers, such as they are, lay in working actively, aggressively and one-by-one to change the face of local government, school boards and self-serving school administrations. frankly, getting entangled and embroiled in political discussions on this or any other blog, is a waste of energy ( i plead guilty) and diverts us from the task at hand.
we must take a long term perspective on this struggle and remember that “every executioner has his day”.
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John A,
You are on the mark. Working out way up to a better government by starting locally and working our way out of a larger government so that it can be reformed is the only way to go.
We are still “We the People” if we choose to be and if we come to a consensus, band together despite diversities, organize, mobilize, and launch over and over and over again until we restore the United States to the people’s rightful balance . . . . .
Keep on posting; I’ll be looking for your posts and will keep reading . . . .
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What right does Eric Cantor have to comment on NYC school policies?
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