Hi Clo - What do you think about this?
BY GLORIA ROMERO / STAFF COLUMNIST
Published: March 17, 2014 Updated: 3:42 p.m.
It doesn’t quite rise to the level of David versus Goliath, but the battle pitting the recently elected Democratic mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, against some 200 mostly poor, minority kids from Harlem and their parents symbolizes a timeless battle of forces. You have the powerful, Mayor de Blasio, doing the bidding of a major campaign contributor, the New York teachers union, versus the powerless, children from Harlem and their supporters, who, via charter school enrollment, found a way to bypass educational stagnation.
I predict this fight will prove to be de Blasio’s Waterloo. Already, he is being unfavorably compared with George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who pledged 50 years ago to stand in the schoolhouse door to block racial integration. Today, Mayor de Blasio is being caricatured as blocking mostly black, brown and poor kids from entering some of the most successful schools in New York. Why? Because they are charter schools, which the teachers unions despise because charter teachers typically don’t belong to unions and don’t pay membership dues.
The battle began when New Yorkers in November elected de Blasio, an old-school liberal Democrat who was backed by New York’s branch of American Federation of Teachers. De Blasio campaigned on a platform of “taking on” New York’s charter schools and promising to shut them down. Egged on by the teachers union, he vowed he would kick out even the most promising, high-performing schools from space being shared with a
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