Charter School Smack Down
May 4th, 2010
As if more was needed, the current debate over charter schools in Albany — and the passage of a bill lifting the charter school cap — provides yet another example of special interest politics.
The bill, which passed by a margin of 45 to 15, would raise the charter school cap from 200 to 460 and require the schools to enroll more special education and non-English speaking students than they now do — though not as many as are in conventional public schools.
Senators who voted in favor of the bill said it would improve the states chances of winning $700 million in federal Race to the Top funds and provide spaces for thousands of kids stuck on charter school waitlists.
The legislation does not address some of the issues in a previous Senate bill including limits on http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/education/20100218/6/3188 placing charter schools in regular public school buildings and allowing state audits of the schools. It also would not prevent for profit companies from managing charter schools.
As was the case when this first came up this winter, a key rationale for the bill has been that the state must lift the cap in order to get Race to the Top money. “We need to improve our score for Race to the Top,” said State Sen. John Sampson, who backed this bill only months after proposing the bill that would have put far more constraints on charters.
There may be good reasons for raising the cap — but Sampson’s probably isnt one of them, regardless of what some newspapers and Mayor Michael Bloomberg would have us believe.
It certainly will not hurt. But, as we have reported, one of the two states that got the first round of Race to the Top Funding — Tennessee — has a cap, according to a national charter school group. And federal officials cited many reasons New York did so abysmally in the first round, including the state’s having requested some of the federal funds for money for pricey furniture.
Yesterday’s vote — and any upcoming action, or inaction in the assembly — features power politics on both sides. The teacher’s union opposed the measure, reportedly bombarding senators with phone calls and enlisting allies in other unions. The Post, a strident supporter of charter schools, reported, “The message was clear: Bucking the teachers meant bucking the entire labor movement.”
But the other side wasn’t without its clout. Senators privately conceded, Fred Dicker wrote in the Post, that they passed the bill, in “an attempt to derail a threatened big-ticket political campaign against them by Mayor Bloomberg and other prominent charter-school supporters that could cost them their razor-thin majority in the Senate.”
The teacher’s union packs a lot of electoral power. On the other side, rumors have circulated that the pro charter forces could spend $10 million in this state election cycle, with at least a chunk of it likely to go toward an effort to oust charter critic State Sen. Bill Perkins.
Bloomberg denies he has given money to the pro charter Education Reform Now (or at least he doesn’t remember). The group’s board of directors though consists of three Wall Street types, including John Petry of Gotham Capital and John Sabat, both of whom have provided hefty financial support to Eva’s Moskowitz’s Harlem Success network of charter schools.
The only person not a financial type on the group’s board (according to its web site) is Joe Williams, the former Daily news reporter who founded Democrats for Education Reform, which, in turn gets money from investor such as John Petry and Karen Petry, Whitney Tilson, and Brian Zied of Maverick Capital, another board member of Education Reform Now.
And the high stakes, bitter and probably expensive fight shows no signs of letting up. In fact it may intensify as charter advocates hope to press the Assembly to pass a bill by the June Race to the Top application deadline. Assemblymember Karim Camara has proposed a measure identical to the Senate bill.
Already the teachers’ unions is taking to the airwaves with ads intended to keep that from happening. The spot accuses for profit charter managers of “playing politics in Albany. Theyre more interested in making money and ducking accountability than fighting for our kids. And now, the for-profit charter school crowd is spending over a million on false attacks against teachers and public schools. ”
Charter advocates began airing their TV spots last month.
Class Size Matters, an advocacy group, has launched a petition drive opposing the bill in the Assembly, setting a number of conditions for raising the cap, including greater transparency for charters,
In the Assembly, the teachers’ union’s muscle may trump the charter advocates-Bloomberg-Wall Street power, given the long, close ties between Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the union.
As Ed in the Apple observes, the Senate charter measure seems likely to be just another in a line of one-house bills. “If business as usual prevails, and the one-house bills languish this could be the last announcement of new charter schools,” the blog writes. “The State Charter School Association may bask in the passage of their Senate bill, they may have been better served to negotiate a mutually acceptable bill.”
By Gail Robinson on May 4, 2010, 2:42 pmIn category: Albany, City Hall, Education, Electoral Politics, Eye on Albany | No Comments »

