NYC Public School Parents: Governor Cuomo, don't Devos-state our Schools!

NYC Public School Parents: Governor Cuomo, don't Devos-state our Schools! And how the charter lobby uses DOE charter collaboration in their push to raise the cap:

Governor Cuomo, don't Devos-state our Schools! 

And how the charter lobby uses DOE charter collaboration in their push to raise the cap

Tomorrow Wed. April 5 at 4:30 PM we will rally outside Governor Cuomo's office at 633 3rd Ave. (40th/41st), to protest his refusal to adequately fund our public schools and his insistence on expanding charters and raising their funding.  Please join us; come with your kids and bring signs!

The NY state budget is deadlocked with one of the main sticking points related to whether the cap on charters will be lifted statewide, as the GOP-dominated State Senate have proposed, lifted only in NYC as Gov. Cuomo wants, or not at all as the Democratic majority in the Assembly insists. 

There are already 264 charter schools in the state, and 212 of them are in NYC, according to the NY Charter Center.  131 more charter schools are allowable outside NYC – and 30 more here in NYC.  For some reason, the hedge fund/charter lobby is most intent on expanding charters inside the city, even though we already have the lion's share.

At the same time, the Governor is also pushing proposals to boost charter funding while cutting state reimbursement that will cost the city up to $220 million more, while losing $52 million in state reimbursement. At the same time, he refuses to provide our public schools with the nearly $2 billion owed them according to the Foundation formula.  Instead he wants to totally ditch the formula, developed as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision which ruled that more state education funding should go to high-needs districts, rather than be based on political deal-making by three men in a room, as it was in the past and would be in the future if Cuomo gets his way.

Why is there such an obsession on the part of the Republican leaders in the State Senate and the Governor to favor charter schools? Not because of pressure from constituents or any alleged charter school waiting lists which no one ever audits, but because of the vast sums of money the Governor and the NY State Republican party receives in campaign money from the NYC hedgefund/charter lobby.

As reported by Politico, the pro-charter group New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, managed by StudentsFirstNY. spent $5.2 million on Republican candidates running for the State Senate, more than a third of the total spent by super PACs as a whole.  Gov. Cuomo has also NYC Public School Parents: Governor Cuomo, don't Devos-state our Schools! And how the charter lobby uses DOE charter collaboration in their push to raise the cap: