#charging public schools to use athletic fields

Add a new chapter to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s endless harassment of the Success Academy network: The city Department of Education’s demanding these public schools pay $500,000 so their kids can use taxpayer-funded athletic fields.

That’s right: Huge fees for seven athletic facilities these kids have used for years.

A DOE flack cites the high cost of virus-related cleaning and maintenance. But other public-school kids don’t face such fees. Just the mainly poor, mostly Black and Hispanic, scholars of Success — about 300 of whom are now locked out of their fields, imperiling their chances to score college scholarships.

Each of the seven fields (four in Manhattan, two in Brooklyn, one in The Bronx) is part of a campus Success scholars share with regular public-school children. One is a Harlem field Success renovated at its own cost — and doesn’t charge to use.

This may be the most despicable acts yet in de Blasio’s long war on Success — including a series of stunts declared illegal by the courts.

Stop making children suffer for your political agenda, Mr. Mayor. It’s disgusting.