Mayor De Blasio's Educational Blahs

Will Mayor Blah-Blah
ever learn?

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio has declared war on people with money. He also thinks that cops should not be allowed to do their jobs, which includes preventing crime not just arresting people who commit crimes. Now he's declared war on a new enemy. Not the unborn, since that's a war he has already been waging, but on our youth, the ones whose education now determines their destiny later and their determination forever, whether for family or for country.

Like all good progressives, Mayor De Blasio blasts school choice, a fundamental tenet of individual liberty and academic growth. During his campaign for mayor, he pledged time and again that he would slow the growth of charter schools. But “slow” does not mean “stop”, and certainly does not mean “go backward.” Did he learn nothing from President Obama’s 2012 campaign? Forward, not backward.

Yet with progressives, backward is the one direction they go in, despite their most hallow protestations.

Upon entering office, De Blasio right away declared a moratorium on charters schools in New York City, even though poor and minority youth benefit from school choice, specifically when the parents can enroll their kids in schools where teachers are held to a higher standard, where they can be terminated for cause without union wrangling, and most importantly where families can choose to go somewhere else.

Next, he issued a massive transferal of funds away from future public charter schools, an attack on hundreds of thousands of children, an assault on the 99% per Eva Moskowitz, the head of Success Academy charter schools. Her rhetoric confirms the source of progressivist rage – against anyone who seeks to better himself, and without assistance from the very government which keeps young people in bondage.

Then he rescinded the application for Success Academy schools, blocking them and the students from classrooms for next fall. In another story, De Blasio claimed that charter schools operate with private donors' money. Is there something wrong with that? Furthermore, De Blasio is inadvertently exposing the statist elitism of the left, in which they desire the government to reach its control into ever facet of a citizen's life, and moreover ensure that all choice are limited or dictated by the state.

A good education is the new Civil Rights issue of our time, and De Blasio and his progressive peers are not just on the wrong side of history, but on the wrong side of reality, morality, and decency.

This kind of "Two New York" reactionary policy-making is not new, either. De Blasio and staff feel justified blowing through traffic lights and stop signs, even though ordinary New Yorkers are expected to obey the laws, and pay when they fail to.

Moskowitz has openly, heatedly, and repeatedly denounced this shameless ploy by De Blasio:

 "We need someone who will put kids ahead of politics. We are a public school. Public schools do not pay rent.”
But the future of New York City, and by extension the education of America's students, is in jeopardy as long as politicians can dictate when and where, or whether a charter school can open up and serve students still seeking a better education than provided by the neighborhood government school.

Heeding the concerns of the children (as well as corralling some respect for his authority), New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has pushed back against Mayor De Blasio's educational blather, blasting him for his blasé liberalism which places a corrupted, bankrupted ideology ahead of the students and parents of New York City.

From the New York Times, which often prints only the news that fits its liberal agenda:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, standing shoulder to shoulder in Albany with thousands of parents and students who rallied in support of charter schools, vowed on Tuesday to defend the movement and offered a sharply different vision for their place in the educational system than Mayor Bill de Blasio’s.

“We are here today to tell you that we stand with you,” Mr. Cuomo said. “You are not alone. We will save charter schools.”

The Democratic in-fighting gets deeper, charter schools and school choice get a boost from the most unlikely of sources, a liberal Democratic Governor in a very liberal state, and socialist-liberal mayor Bill De Blasio gets the political blues because his socialist-liberalism is checked once again.
Never pick a fight over what’s best for the kids, for even Democrats have enough heart to do what’s best for their own kids. When will Blah-Blah De Blasio ever learn?