The battle over charter schools raged in Alban𝐆y on Wednesday, with advocates rallying by the thousands on the statehouse steps for additional schools and more funding.
“School choice mattersꦜ!” shouted some 13,000 charter-school parents, faculty and students, many wearing red sweatshirts reading, “Don’t Steal Possible.”
“Raise the cap!” cওhanted the crowd, including thousands of children who woke before dawn to board buses with their teachers and parents.
“I’m down with ‘Don’t Steal Possible,’ ” R&B star Ashant𓆏i told the del༺ighted kids during a 30-minute set.
“Being smart is so cool; going to school is so cool; bein🌞g dumb is so whack,” she said🅺, to loud cheers.
Charter advocates gathered to push lawmakers for higher per-pupil fun🐠ding and a lifting of the cap on the number of charters statewide. “The schools around us, they suck,” one parent from a Bronx charter school shouted, in summation, to the crowd.
Meanwhile, teachers-union nay🍎sayers sniped from the sidelines.
In a meeting hall three blocks away, about 1,100 union members and supporters gathered for their annual Lobby Day, ampingꦡ up ongoing protests against charters and against Gov. Cuomo’s proposed tightening of teacher evaluation and tenure rules.
“There’s a little show goin𓂃g on up here, corre🐼ct?” United Federation of Teachers head Michael Mulgrew told his crowd, referring to the much larger pro-charter rally.
“Would we think it’s a good idea to put all the children of New York City on a bus for six hours in the middle of winter and drive them u꧒p north?” he goaded the group, which shouted back, “Noooooo!”
“We are the adults,” h♊e said. “We do the work of the children. We don’t ♉use children as props.”
The dueling rallies were timed to catch lawmakers’ attention as state budget negotiations begin in earnest ahead of an April 1 deadline. Education funding remains a political football that is often tossed directly🐻 between Albany and New York City.
Gov. Cuomo has proposed increasing the statewide cap on charter s𓃲chools from 460 to 560, a move opposed by Mayor de Blasio and the UFT. Charter supporters are also hoping for higher per-pupil funding from the state. Union officials have vehemently attacked both the cap change and funding hikes as sapping valuable resources from the city’s regular public schools.
Among the dignitaries addressing the pro-charter rally were Lt. 🐎Gov. Kathy Hochul, who stood in for Cuomo as the governor traveled to promote his minimum-wage proposal. “Failure in our classrooms is not an option,” she told the crowd.
Sen. Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) looked out at a sea of “Don’t Steal Possible♏” posters and shirts and promised, “Nobody is going to steal possible from you.”
Charter staffౠers defended the day away from school as a civics field tღrip.
“We’re ta൲king school on the road,” Principal Candido Brown of Success Academy in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, told his kids. “We canceled📖 school, but don’t think you’re off the hook.”