Midwood Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte yesterday fiercely defended Mayor Bill de Blasio’s public school education policies while ripping into charter school leaders calling their recent “A Tale of Two Boys” TV commercial and letter to the mayor as “using Black and Latino children and their families as political pawns” which “is a disgrace and is in itself racist.”
The ad and letter that the pro-charter Families For Excellent Schools (FES) put out criticizes de Blasio’s apparent slowdown policy against citing charter schools while highlighting how regular public schools continues to show sub-par test results in many poorer Black and Latino communities compared to their white and Asian counterparts in wealthier communities.
At the same time it points out that Black and Latino students from these same communities attending charter schools in many cases exceeds the test results from wealthier white and Asian communities.
“They say that changes are not happening quickly enough. But we all know that these types of systemic changes cannot happen overnight. The needs of students of color and their families have been ignored institutionally for decades and as a result these children have been stripped of their right to a decent quality educational experience,” said Bichotte.
“A bottom line approach in the past overlooked the context in which these children were living. The Mayor and the Chancellor have developed a strategy that gets to the root cause of some of these complex issues, including Universal Pre-K, the development of community schools, the investment in renewal schools, adjustments to the school discipline code, and the vision for readying all of New York City’s public district school children to compete in our global economy. All of these actions are a true testament to how much the Mayor cares about the whole child, and not just their grades,” she added.
Bichotte said Charter Schools reprise that parents are being denied choices is another cliché used to justify the privatization of schools.
“Privatization benefits millionaires and siphons off public resources — our taxpayer dollars. Choice seems to only be defined by those who would choose charter schools, but there are parents who are choosing their public district schools, and we need to preserve that option by providing adequate funding and additional resources not taking them away,” she said.
Bichotte’s comments came prior to yesterday’s Alliance For Quality Education (AQE) rally that featured several civil rights activists that also decried the ad as racist and demanded they take it down. The AQE is aligned with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).
“In their recent ad FES is labels our public schools as ‘failing’. Yet it is clear that Families for Excellent Schools and their hedge fund financiers have no interest in improving these schools or giving every student an equal opportunity,” said Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director of Alliance for Quality Education. “What they really want to do is attack Mayor de Blasio for politically motivated reasons and they are willing to use racist ads to do just that. We demand that FES take down its racist ad that reinforces negative stereotypes of Black males.
Among those attending the rally was East Flatbush Assemblyman Nick Perry, who said it was quite disappointing to see race so blatantly inserted into the public discourse by FES.
“With the education of each New York City child who attends public schools at stake, to waste so much money on a detestable ad is deplorable and dumbfounded. This ad should’ve never seen the light of day, and it certainly belongs on the cutting room floor,” said Perry.
FES CEO Jeremiah Kittredge responded that he agreed with critics that the facts of this ad are appalling – that 478,000 children, almost all students of color, are forced into failing schools.
For too long, our city has swept this truth under the rug. We’re glad our elected and community leaders are rejoining the conversation,” said Kittredge. “As New Yorkers, we have a choice to make: do we run from education inequality and pretend we have ‘one’ school system, or do we finally confront what divides us?”
