Moskowitz urged families to attend an all-hands-on-deck “Rally and March for Excellence” on Sept. 18. Classroom instruction will be canceled so students, staff and families can march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Moskowitz also asked parents to “contact their elected officials five times.” The email, which described powerful “anti-charter forces,” did not mention Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani by name. But Mamdani is the only major mayoral candidate running in November who has been critical of charters. -- Elizabeth Kim
Want to fight fascism? Organize a protest to this rally.
Thursday, Sept. 4 -
Happy Back to School (I don't mean that as I was never truly happy to end my 2 months of freedom for the regimentation of school - though I was happy to see (some of) my colleagues and (most of) the children.
When I see current and former educators attack Mamdani, I imagine they have forgotten the charter wars of a decade ago when Cuomo backed Eva and forced our school system to pay the rent for charter schools and other attacks on public schools and our union which responded with a campaign against Cuomo that backed him off.
In March 2014 I wrote:
The Wave - The Lies Eva Moskowitz Tells: More Destructive Than Global Warming
Eva has around 50 non-union schools. You may hate Mulgrew and Unity but they are better than no union at all. Despite the DOE chaos, many charter school teachers would prefer working in union backed schools.
Then there is the breaking and shocking news that Adams can be bought. I've been telling people who claim his ego won't let him drop out that he is just waiting for billionaires to come up with enough money to buy him off. I don't think Curtis Sliwa, who I actually like personally and even to some extent politically, will kill is credibility by dropping out.
Recent polls show Cuomo would win in a head to head with Mamdani, which I believe would happen -- some liberals in my own circle of contacts tell me they would back Cuomo -- the anti-Mamdani hysterical propaganda does penetrate. Last week I had to explain to family liberals that he is not taking over all the groceries in NYC - like in seizing the means of production - but setting up 5 groceries in food desert areas of each borough where there are no supermarkets.
As for childcare, he is offering a plan to extend the pre-k to pre-pre-k and beyond. I expect it can work fairly quickly by going for a gradual plan to include 2 year olds and using free space in public schools. Kicking charters out would help. How will he pay for it all? 2% tax on those making a million dollars a year. All those in that category, raise your hands. Seeing no one, I wonder at the hostility by those who don't make that much money over the poor plight of millionaires.
Someone asked me about Hochul not supporting any of his proposals and I pointed out that she is running for governor against a more liberal primary opponent and she will have to show some support on the affordability question in both the primary and general against that awful Trumpie Elise Stefanik who will get enormous national support. Hochul will not win - unless Mamdani mobilizes his people for her. If he wins that is. Because I think the powers are so arrayed against him - he is actually a bigger threat to the Dem Party, which is heading in the direction of become the modern Whigs. I will make the bold prediction that the nail in the Dem coffin will be their ambivalent position on Israel and the mass murder it is committing which is becoming analogous to the slavery issue. Mamdani's position which horrified people as recently as a few months ago, is becoming mainstream in Dem party circles while the leadership obfuscates.
Remember you history buffs that Abe Lincoln abandoned the Whigs* to help start the then radical new Republican Party (c. 1854) that took a hard stance against slavery. But even as a member of DSA I still don't see them as a replacement party for the Dems. That is soon to evolve.
Anyway, yesterday's Brian Lehrer show went into all this in detail with Elizabeth Kim. I urge you to listen to that segment.
I will end with this: Your choice is Cuomo the monster or Mamdani -- swallow and do the right thing.
Here is the Elizabeth Kim article which covers a lot of that historical ground.
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Facing the prospect of a new mayor opposed to expanding charter schools, the prominent leader of New York City’s leading charter network has sent out an SOS to supporters.
“There are currently serious threats to the educational excellence your child deserves,” wrote Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy, in an email obtained by Gothamist. “We need 100% of parents to get on the bus with us.”
Moskowitz urged families to attend an all-hands-on-deck “Rally and March for Excellence” on Sept. 18. Classroom instruction will be canceled so students, staff and families can march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Moskowitz also asked parents to “contact their elected officials five times.” The email, which described powerful “anti-charter forces,” did not mention Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani by name. But Mamdani is the only major mayoral candidate running in November who has been critical of charters.
While Mamdani’s education platform has mostly centered on universal child care, he said in a candidate questionnaire he opposes the co-location of charters in buildings with traditional public schools. Such a move would present obstacles to new charter schools, which avoid the city’s cutthroat real estate market by opening in underutilized city-owned school buildings.
Mamdani has also said he would review charter school funding as mayor.
The assemblymember from Queens has been endorsed by the city’s teachers union, which is a fierce adversary of the charter movement. The union has argued that charter schools rob resources from public school students. Teachers at the schools are not typically unionized.The brewing debate and rally evoke the intense clashes between Moskowitz and former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who also opposed the expansion of charters inside traditional public schools.
“It’s a good question to ask what’s the motivation because this issue has been relatively quiet,” de Blasio said.
He said he believed the city had “moved on” from heated debates about charters taking over public schools that characterized his early mayoralty — and that there were “good” charter schools worthy of City Hall’s support.
But Mamdani’s main rival Andrew Cuomo has shown interest in reviving that debate. The former governor recently released an education plan that would shut down underperforming public schools and potentially replace them with charters. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb were among the prominent charter supporters who donated to Cuomo’s primary campaign.
Mayor Eric Adams, meanwhile, received backing from a pro-charter PAC in 2021. In January, he signed a bill into law giving charter schools public funding for security guards.
The rally comes at a precarious moment for the charter sector. Charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately run, serve 15% of city students but have seen slower growth in enrollment since the pandemic, according to the New York City Charter School Center. Albany lawmakers have shown little interest in raising a statewide cap that would allow new schools to open.
Declining federal funding means charters must also fight for a piece of a smaller education pie.
The charter school debate fits into Mamdani’s democratic socialist platform. Charters have served as a proxy war between pro-business interests who support free-market competition and left-leaning Democrats who are skeptical of privately run schools funded by billionaires.
Some have said Mamdani is vulnerable when it comes to charters as his opposition to expanding charters conflicts with his stance on improving affordability and social equity. The need for better schools is most pronounced in low-income neighborhoods that are mostly home to students of color.
“The big picture is that there is a demand for charter schools in New York City, particularly among families of color,” said Joseph Viteritti, a Hunter College professor who has written a book on the school choice movement. “Because they tend to be the people who are most dissatisfied with their regular public schools.”
Mamdani’s campaign criticized charter schools and pledged he would prioritize “fully funding” public schools as mayor in a statement.
“Zohran knows that New York City’s public schools are the foundation of our communities, our economy, and our workforce,” said Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for the campaign. “Yet charter schools siphon resources away from public education, often without real accountability or oversight.”
A spokesperson for Success Academy confirmed the upcoming rally but declined to make Moskowitz available for an interview.
Moskowitz is leaning on an old message. The email sent out last week was virtually identical to one she crafted for a march in 2013, when de Blasio was the mayoral front-runner.
“Your child’s education is threatened. Our very existence is threatened. Opponents want to take away our funding and our facilities,” she wrote at the time. “These attacks are a real danger — we cannot stand idly by.”
Jessica Gould contributed reporting.
*The party was hostile towards the ideology of "manifest destiny", territorial expansion into Texas and the Southwest, and the Mexican–American War. It disliked presidential power, as exhibited by Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, and preferred congressional dominance in lawmaking. Members advocated modernization, meritocracy, the rule of law, protections against majority rule, and vigilance against executive tyranny. They favored an economic program known as the American System, which called for a protective tariff, federal subsidies for the construction of infrastructure, and support for a national bank. The party was active in both the Northern and Southern United States and did not take a firm stance on slavery, but Northern Whigs tended to be less supportive than their Democratic counterparts.
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