Mayor Bill de Blasio deserves the praise of all New Yorkers for using public money to fund public schools rather than rifling the taxpayers’ wallet to grease profit-making private charter operators. The mayor is demonstrating fiscal responsibility and adherence to the core values of principled leadership, as well as respect for the spirit of the law.
It is right to re-claim the $210 million that by prior arrangement had been hijacked into the treasuries of entrepreneurs who run their private institutions strictly as commercial ventures. They are not gangsters, but the public money that’s earmarked for them to exploit at their pleasure almost has the ring of an underworld kickback.
Not only have NYC public schools produced more Nobel Prize winners and other distinguished graduates than any other system, they have also created the middle class, breathed life into the Constitution’s otherwise theoretical declaration about the pursuit of liberty and happiness, enabled social mobility and trained us in the definition and expectation of democratic values in our everyday existences.
de Blasio is also correct to grasp the ugly implications and effects of co-locating charter businesses in school buildings.
Charters have had a life based on false premises (in more ways than one). Put them out to pasture.
Ron Isaac
Fresh Meadows
