Charter operator Eva Moskowitz closed her schools on Oct. 8 and ordered students, parents and staff to attend a City Hall demonstration that UFT President Michael Mulgrew called “a thinly disguised campaign rally.”

In a move clearly directed at Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, who has said when elected he will charge rent to charter schools in public buildings, parents held signs with the words “rent” and “moratorium” crossed out. De Blasio has proposed a moratorium on creating new charter schools and said that charters that can afford it should pay rent for space in public school buildings.

“Closing schools and forcing students, parents and staff to attend a partisan political event is totally inappropriate,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “Eva Moskowitz is supposed to educate students, not force them out of school for a thinly disguised campaign rally.”

While Success Academy schools seemed well-represented at the rally, representatives of independent charter schools said in an open letter that the rally sent the wrong message. And not every parent at the march was pleased with the timing or the politics of Moskowitz’s strategy.

“It’s a little inconvenient for the work schedule,” said Reggie Roberson, who does construction and carpentry and has a child at the Success charter in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “I didn’t know about these festivities. It kind of dampens parent time. I need to pay my bills.”

Another parent, whose child attends a Success Academy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, said he had no problem taking time from work, but the politics made him uncomfortable. “We don’t need the politics at the end of the day,” he said.

He might have been thinking of Joe Lhota, who waited patiently for charter school kids to pose with him in his own staging area outside City Hall Park, as if he were a department-store Santa Claus.

The 11 a.m. press conference nearby featured parents who spoke on cue when directed by a rally manager who stood off to the side. Without mentioning any candidate by name, the speakers urged the next mayor and chancellor to protect their choices.

Although organizers said children would report back to school immediately after the march across the bridge, many children at noon were still scampering around City Hall Park in their bright green T-shirts that proclaimed “Charter schools are public schools.”