NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver yesterday reacted coolly to increasing the number of charter schools — and he mocked the state Senate’s lightning passage of a pro-charter school bill.
“We’ll take a look at [the Senate bill]. It was printed in the middle of Friday night. It passed. The ink was still wet on it,” Silver said. “When it dries, we’ll be able to read it.”
Other key Assembly Democrats said they will not lift the cap on charter schools without stricter conditions on operations of the publicly funded, privately managed schools — including restricting their ability to share building space with traditional public schools, preventing charters from “saturating” neighborhoods, and banning for-profit firms from running charters — parroting the objections of the teachers unions.
“I oppose it,” said Harlem Assemblyman Herman Farrell, chairman of the Ways and Means committee and a key Silver ally.
“Education has to be equal across the board.”
Legislative insiders said Silver is miffed that Senate Democrats passed a bill Monday to lift the statewide cap on charter schools to 460 from 200 — putting the political hot potato squarely in his lap.
The Senate measure, approved by a 45-15 vote, also requires charter schools to enroll a comparable number of special-education pupils and kids who aren’t fluent in English as traditional schools do.
Silver and the Democratic-run Assembly now have to decide between low-income, mostly minority parents demanding charter schools as an option for their kids, and the teachers unions, their longtime allies, which are trying to rein in charters.
President Obama has made lifting the charter-school cap a priority. New York plans to submit a revised plan by June 1 to vie for $700 million in federal “Race to the Top” education funds.
(Read More: NY Post)
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Oy-Vay, such a crokked way of thinking. This guy is a lifetime Liberal, with a typical Liberal’s warped way of thinking, and completely beholden to the teachers’ unions, who own the Democrat party.