STATEMENT FROM THE NYC CHARTER SCHOOL CENTER ON OUTRAGEOUS HYPOCRISIES IN THIS YEAR’S ASSEMBLY BUDGET MEASURE
(New York, NY) – Please credit the following statement to James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center.
"Reading through the Assembly budget proposals relating to charters is like reading through a wish list created by the UFT and NYSUT to kill the charter sector once and for all,” said James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center. “This is simply the latest in a long line of attempts by the teachers unions and their political allies to put the genie back in the bottle, and regain the monopoly they once enjoyed—and then hope that their constituents stop asking vexing questions about whether all public schools are delivering results. We are confident that this attempt will be as unsuccessful as the others and that people, including legislators of good faith in the Assembly who understand the good work that charters are doing in their districts, will see this nonsense for what it is.”
"After all, whatever you think of charter schools and the work they are doing, any reasonable person has to admit that it takes a special kind of hypocrisy to suggest legislation mandating school to school equality but ignores the fact that the schools serving the fewest number of high need students are all traditional district schools. It also ignores the truth that hundreds of district schools would themselves need to shut their doors if they were held to these standards and were subject to this draconian level of financial punitiveness. Given this, you can’t help but wonder if this proposal isn’t just meant to just kill charters, but also divert attention from the vast inequalities in the district with which the UFT has lived with comfortable acquiescence for decades – since those inequalities don’t hurt their bottom line or affect their power. Despite the endless wall of rhetoric they put up, UFT leaders continue to define educational equality one way and one way only: the requirement that every classroom in every school has a unionized human in front of it.”
"I look forward to the day when we get past politics and can sit with our friends in the Assembly – the majority of whom, by the way, maintain good relationships with the charters in their districts – talk seriously, and work together to see how we can make all our public schools the kind of places we not only could send our children but would want to. Clearly this is not going to be that year."
