Gov. George Pataki signed into law the New York Charter Schools Act of 1998 one week before Christmas 24 years ago. In the generation since, hundreds of thousands of children across New York City and the state have received a higher quality education.

Academic outcomes consistently confirm this. Charter-school students have outperformed their district-school counterparts on elementary and middle-school assessments, per annual state Education Department data.

Despite this success, charters remain capped and threatened, which poses a challenge — and opportunity — to Gov. Kathy Hochul. Their viability and growth are now in her hands. She might take some lessons from how the law almost never came to be.

Pataki first proposed charter-schools legislation in January 1997, nearly two years before it became law. Both houses of the Legislature, however, had no appetite for the issue for the same reason: New York State United Teachers — including Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers chief who then headed the New York City chapter — was hotly opposed and effectively leased both political parties, Democrats, who controlled the Assembly, and Republicans, who controlled the Senate.

The governor nonetheless began legislative negotiations, which on occasion became direct between his and teacher-union staff. This cut out the middleman — that is, the Legislature. It was an early lesson for me of how joined at the hip are lawmakers and teacher unions.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made a counteroffer: a cap of six charter schools with mandatory unionization, which one union official described to me as the “Rhode Island model.” Rhode Island’s population was 1/18th the size of New York’s and had perhaps the nation’s worst charter law.

One of the few times I sat in the governor’s actual office in the Albany statehouse, some of us recommended he reject the speaker’s puny, unserious offer and got pushback from a higher-up who desired a press-release victory. Pataki listened intently to both sides and remained laconic, which was typical when junior staff were present.

I’m no expert in negotiations, but it came down to two choices at the 11th hour: Take a fraction of a loaf and hope to build on it somehow; or walk away understanding a bad deal is worse than no deal.

To his great credit, Pataki chose the latter approach — no deal. Accepting a tempting but fatally unworkable charter law would have been a momentary, hollow victory while all but ensuring the issue would never be revisited.

He later told me he would fight again the next year, which he did. The stalemate continued during the 1998 legislative session, but the governor persisted.

Pataki was re-elected later that year, as were both legislative majorities. But something did change: Senate Republicans were upset at their teacher-union allies for refusing to support their candidate who unsuccessfully challenged a Democratic senator in Brooklyn. They then passed Pataki’s charter-school proposal in a post-election, lame-duck session in November. It was political payback and jump-started negotiations.

It was cold hard cash that led to a breakthrough. State legislators hadn’t had a pay raise in a decade and were hungry, but the clock was ticking: They had to pass one before year’s end or wait another two years before the next opportunity. Since legislators’ paychecks meant more than teacher-union influence, Pataki exploited this leverage and delivered a robust charter law for New York’s children.

Since before the ink dried on that law, it has been under political siege from teacher unions and their robotic allies in the Legislature. Fortunately, Pataki and the subsequent three Democratic governors protected the law and won key expansions including the number of charter schools allowed and space-sharing with New York City district schools.

Charter schools remain threatened with over-regulation, loss of space-sharing and higher costs by lawmakers under pressure from teacher unions. State Sen. Brad Hoylman is pushing a bill that would put added burdens on charters while the United Federation of Teachers plans to use a veto the Legislature gave it in the class-size reduction law to block charter co-locations.

And the legislative refusal to lift the statutory cap on charters in the city, despite overwhelming parental support, is an ongoing disgrace.

Hochul, just elected in her own right, faces a leadership test. Will she follow the path of her four predecessors to ensure viable, growing charter-school options for New York’s children? Or will she acquiesce to the union’s effort to squash this successful education reform?

She could further succeed by empowering non-wealthy parents to choose any school for their children, public or private, as can wealthy parents. But enabling greater equality in education would entail prioritizing children over teacher unions.

We will soon know Hochul’s negotiating mettle.

Peter Murphy, senior adviser to the Invest in Education Coalition, was vice president at the SUNY Charter Schools Institute and New York Charter Schools Association.