The Smear Campaign Against Mayor Bill de Blasio
Perhaps you have seen the headlines and the television interviews about how New York City's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, is closing charter schools, evicting poor minority children, destroying their dreams for the future, and their chance to escape failing public schools.
Almost all the complaints come from Eva Moskowitz, who runs New York City's largest charter chain. Her grievances have been amply vented on Fox News, MSNBC's Morning Joe and Chris Mathews, in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.
Time for a fact check.
When de Blasio ran for mayor, he said he would slow the growth of charters and would charge them rent, based on their ability to pay. In the closing months of the Bloomberg administration, the city's Department of Education approved 45 new co-locations. A co-location is a new school inserted into an existing public school, meaning that different schools must share the cafeteria, library, playground, and give up its art room, music room, and every other space that is not an active classroom. Public school parents hate co-locations, because it means overcrowding, jostling for space, and reduction of facilities.
The new mayor, having inherited 45 co-locations, decided to approve 36 of them. This disappointed many public school parents. The mayor turned down only nine co-locations.
The de Blasio administration rejected the nine based on these criteria:
- It would not approve putting an elementary school into a high school.
- It would not open any school with less than 250 students because
