Albany's war on charter schools is a war on kids

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

71% : This trend put public schools at risk.
61% : As a result, 1.4 million kids fled public schools during the pandemic.
60% :Public schools face an exodus of students.
60% : Even before COVID, parents were pulling their kids out of failing (and often unsafe) public schools in favor of private schools that cost more money but offered better and safer educations.
58% : As I noted at the time, public schools' potential salvation lay in charter schools.
57% : Can graft and racial politics save public schools?
57% : The parents pulling their kids out were, on average, the parents most interested in their kids' educations, the parents who'd been most likely to support school funding, to volunteer, to donate and to be voices for public education.
57% : If the best students' parents want charter schools, what does that say about the rest of the system?
53% : In this case, there's a countermove in favor of more charter schools from black and Latino legislators.
51% : On the bright side, charter schools saw a steep enrollment rise.
50% : The upshot is that if New York is going to see more charter schools, it will probably be because racial politicking by one gang of Democratic legislators overcomes union politicking by another gang of Democratic legislators.
49% : More charter schools would undercut that by showing them up.
48% : The only problem with this approach was that it faced opposition from two deadly diseases: COVID-19 and teachers unions -- the latter because charter schools, while generally better and more popular than regular public schools, also generally have nonunion staff.
46% : (They'd also exempt minority teachers from paying state income tax, a move of dubious legality but indubitable popularity among minority teachers.)
43% : To the extent that public schools could attract students to charters over private schools or homeschooling, they were keeping those students in the system and thus preserving funding and parental support.
43% : COVID accelerated the flight from public schools, as unionized teachers resisted in-class instruction, mostly because teaching from home was easier.

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