Union corporate opposes more charters for working families.

The labor unions in New York State are not used to not having their way.

Dennis Hughes, the long-time head of the state's AFL-CIO, the labor umbrella organization, is having none of it. What has particularly drawn his ire lately is the supposedly swift passage last week by the state Senate of a pro-charter school bill to raise the charter cap and adopt other reforms. Nearly every provision in this bill has been visible in other charter school bills for at least three months, including accountability and transparency provisions from the legislative leaders' bill introduced in January.

The Senate passed this bill now in the hope that the legislature doesn't repeat the fiasco of last January where it scrambled to adopt Race to the Top legislation at the last minute only to have it get derailed when pro-charter forces understood it would do enormous harm. The federal deadline for RttT Round 2 applications is June 1st.

Despite this reality, the AFL-CIO decided to target Senate Democrats for voting for the bill, beginning with Craig Johnson from Nassau and Jeff Klein from the Bronx, by organizing protests in their districts (here). What a pathetic sham. Just what this proletariat is "protesting" is a mystery. Could it be they don't want another $700 million in education funding from the Obama administration, which could backfill some of the state funding cuts for education? Do they actually know about any of this? I doubt it since the union tells them something else.

AFL-CIO/Teacher Union Insulting Intelligence
Hilariously, protesters are circulating fliers that claim that senators "sided with Big Corporations against teachers and students to pass the Charter School Bill with no real reform." Ooooooh!

Can Mr. Hughes, who is peddling this drivel, identify a single "Big Corporation?" If Exxon-Mobil or GE has a charter school, I must have overlooked it. That this Senate-passed bill included several reforms, doesn't keep the unions from faking otherwise since truth-telling about charters is not their strong-suit.

Union Corporate on Display
Interestingly, Dennis Hughes has decided to be the front man in this latest "protest" against Race to the Top and more charter schools, no doubt because the teacher unions wish not to be seen so ostentatiously opposing it at the moment. That should fool no one. It's also unfortunate to see Mr. Hughes, normally a mature labor leader, stoop to such vapid pronouncements on behalf of his teacher union comrades who've been rightly getting zinged in the press for their opposition to education reform. I trust Mr. Hughes is at least charging an inflated price for his services. This is Union Corporate on full display, which we've seen on this issue before.

The supreme irony in all of this is that the yearning of so many thousands of "working families" who want a better public education for their children that charter schools offer is being opposed by the very interests which claim to speak for them. Such families cannot afford private schools, relocate to tony Long Island or Westchester school districts, nor live in an upper-income class neighborhood.

If the unions have their way, they won't have any more charter school options either.

Fortunately, senators Johnson, Klein and numerous others will not be bullied. Hopefully, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Assemblyman Hakim Jeffries, and their colleagues will show the same political valor in the next three weeks and do the right thing by education reform.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
Twitter.com/petermurphy26
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