#De Blasio’s latest dirty trick against kids who want to learn

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s latest vicious move in his war on charter-school children is moving to push 200-plus middle-schoolers into the street by not renewing space for Success Academy at IS 238 in Hollis, Queens.

After four years of battling the city Department of Education for a permanent middle-school home for their children, SA Hollis parents got a one-year (2020-21) co-location in the IS 238 building. But now the DOE says the kids must exit, as it needs the space for special-ed students — and is again breaking its promise to find a permanent home for the Success middle school.

If the DOE doesn’t provide space fast, the SA Hollis middle-schools kids (mainly minority and lower-income) will have no place to learn this fall, because the agency faces a March 12 deadline to propose an alternative location or amend the current paperwork to add four more classrooms for these kids so the city Panel for Educational Policy can OK it in June.

State law requires the city to provide public space or pay for private space, but the mayor now claims he has no responsibility to these children.  

This bad faith about-face on Success Academy’s reasonable space request follows years of de Blasio double-dealing, as he’s done his best to stymie charters’ growth via various bureaucratic stumbling blocks. All his preaching about opportunity and “equity” goes out the window when it comes to families that put quality education ahead of appeasing the United Federation of Teachers.

Never mind that the regular public system failed repeatedly in the face of the last year’s challenges: De Blasio is still determined to crush the alternative public schools that actually work.