Governor Hochul’s proposal to increase charter schools in New York City has received credit for expanding school choice. This proposal allows up to 85 new privately run, publicly funded schools in the five boroughs. Still, it has angered some state lawmakers in Hochul’s party who rely on political donations from the anti-charter teacher unions. Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn claimed that this proposal would create more disparities and more segregation, but this is not true.
About 15% of New York City public-school-age children attend publicly funded. Still, privately-run charter schools, and the overwhelming majority of those charter students, 80%, are economically disadvantaged, according to the New York City Charter School Center.
One of those Bronx students, Stephon Nembhard, 17, a senior at Comp Sci High charter school, shared how significant his charter school experience has been for him. He believes that if he hadn’t attended this school, he probably wouldn’t have gotten into the colleges he’s gotten into, wouldn’t have gotten the internships he’s gotten, and wouldn’t have met the people and made the connections he’s made.
The fight to keep out charter schools has nothing to do with how beneficial they are for New York’s residents: it’s about maintaining the status quo divide of success and failure by class lines. If charter schools mostly benefited the children of the aristocrats who live in the Upper East Side instead of the peasantry in the South Bronx, Democrats would be fighting tooth and nail to ensure the exalted children keep their charter system.
Democratic politicians feign outrage over how charter schools will somehow “steal” resources from public schools, while politicians like Assemblywoman Bichotte Hermelyn will simultaneously acknowledge that charter schools are public schools. The difference is that one benefits the unions that donate to their campaigns, and the other benefits the children who attend the schools.
Democrats have long abandoned supporting regular people when it threatens the ambitions of the upper class because upward mobility always appears to be a threat to those who already have too much. They’ll talk about how funding the public school system is a social benefit. Still, when there is an obvious failure, they don’t see the social benefit in giving the less fortunate a privately-run alternative. When charter schools fail, they disappear, but when government-run schools fail, they’re given more money.
Democrats will gaslight you about how amazing the public-school system is, but as soon as their financial portfolio allows them, they’ll act like the limousine liberals they really are by immediately sending their children to the best private schools that an aristocrat can afford. School choice for me but not for thee.
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