Charter supporters wonder if Hole has ‘cojons’ to fight back by lifting statewide restrictions

ALBANY. Charter school supporters will be watching closely to see if Gov. Kathy Hochul delivers on her campaign promise by pushing to lift the cap on their number in the state budget, which she will unveil on Wednesday despite progressive opposition.

“Sooner or later she will have to stand her ground,” Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Suffolk), a supporter of the charter, told The Post on Tuesday.

“People are waiting to see, excuse my French, but does she have cojones push back the left?

Getting Hole, the Senate, and the State Assembly to agree to increase or remove the 460 charter school limit this year seems unlikely, but certain changes could allow more schools to open in New York by redistributing charters tied to about a dozen closed schools.” zombie schools” in five districts.

Hochul could also offer to reallocate the 85 slots reserved outside New York to the city.

“One of my lifelong dreams and goals was to open a charter school, but that’s not possible at the moment,” Claudia Espinoso of New York-based Latinas On the Verge Of Excellence said at a rally on Tuesday. at the State Capitol, urging Albany Democrats to support an increase in size limits.

“So I’m here today on behalf of the young women we serve, on behalf of the community we support, to ask you to please give them the opportunity to choose the education they want. I ask you to remove the lid,” she added.

Newly elected Hochul said in a televised debate last October that she favors more charters, but the issue was not mentioned in her Jan. 10 State of the Union speech and accompanying 276-page newsletter.

“We hope she listens to the voices of parents, students and teachers,” James Merriman, CEO of the New York Charter School Center, said Tuesday of the possibility that the state’s proposed budget will reflect her commitment.

He said he “does not comment” on how much the Hochul administration has discussed the restriction with charter supporters in recent weeks.

Supporters of the charter say they are giving families more choice when it comes to where their children go to school with better results than many traditional public schools.

A recent Morning Consult poll found that 64% of parents supported raising the cap, with 64% of parents positive about charter schools and 22% negative.

But any effort to increase the number of charters will face stiff resistance from the political left, as well as opposition from teacher unions and human rights groups, which will likely cost Hochul the political capital accumulated from her successful last year’s efforts to increase public school funding by billions of dollars.

“This idea that everyone just welcomes charters and that they can have their own way is not true,” Jasmine Gripper, executive director of the left-wing human rights group Alliance for Quality Education. “Parents invest in their public schools and want them to prosper. And having a competing system that finds resources in a traditional system is not very helpful.”

Competition between traditional schools and charter schools remains a hot topic, but charter supporters say this shouldn’t be the case if the ongoing debate around the cap has focused more on the facts about how they provide families with additional learning opportunities for their children.

“We stand ready to work with legislators and state legislators, as well as the Governor, to improve and support parenting choices. There has been too much misinformation about public charter schools and we are all here to fix it,” Jacqueline Martell of the advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform in New York said Tuesday at the Capitol.