For Immediate Release

Bloomberg campaign announces plan to create 100 new charter schools

Sep 30, 2009 5:44 PM

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign announced on Sept. 30 a plan to create 100 new charter schools, doubling the number currently in the city. The plan would also expand the Harlem Children’s Zone and create two new "Children’s Zones" in Central Brooklyn and the South Bronx. By 2013, the campaign estimates, nearly 10% of all public school seats would be in charter schools. In order to increase awareness of charter schools, the campaign said the mayor planned to reach out to non-English-speaking parents, and to the city’s Committees on Special Education.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew issued the following statement in response:

If I were a public school parent I would find these proposals from Candidate Bloomberg troubling.

A lot of us have been fighting for years to get more pre-K slots, to find new ways and new funding to create space and seats for schools, improve special education and provide better services for English Language Learners. The administration hasn’t always shared those priorities. Now Candidate Bloomberg wants to do all of this — not for all our kids — but for charter school students alone.

The UFT has been talking with the Harlem Children’s Zone — which serves both public and charter schools — about building on their model of providing a wide range of city social services to kids in their schools. We had hoped that under mayoral control city agencies would be more amenable to this model throughout the city. However, under this proposal any such expansion would be focused not on the public schools that the great majority of our kids attend, but only on charter schools.

All of New York City’s children deserve these critical services.