New York City’s mayor-elect will be urged to rethink his opposition to a reform movement that is serving low-income kids.
New York is living in a historic moment. After winning more votes in a primary contest than any Democratic candidate for New York City mayor in 30 years, Zohran Mamdani has just served a humiliating defeat to the once-powerful former Governor Andrew Cuomo by capturing more votes in the general election than any mayor since 1969. The 34-year-old did so without the support of other major Democrats in his state, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand and state party chair Jay Jacobs. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demurred until the final weeks of the campaign, as he anticipated his own Brooklyn-based reelection campaign and sensed that something new was in the air.
Mamdani has made mainstream Democrats uncomfortable by calling for an increase in the minimum wage, higher taxes on millionaires and corporations, four years of rent freezes, free childcare for all and free bus service. Having won the election pretty much on his own terms, Mamdani appears determined to chart his own way on the policy front — except, it seems, when it comes to charter schools.
Charter schools are independently run public schools of choice that have been vehemently opposed by the teachers union and Democratic Party stalwarts who rely on the union for support. After their birth on the city scene in the late 1990s, they’ve seen dramatic growth: There are 286 of them in New York City, educating 150,000 students — 15% of the school population. Because of limits imposed by Democratic lawmakers on the number of charter schools permitted to open statewide, the demand for seats exceeds the supply. By the end of last year, the waiting list grew to 173,000.
When Gov. Kathy Hochul encouraged her Democratic colleagues to raise the cap in 2023, they came back with a hard no. Opponents claim that charter schools are bad for public education because when students leave public schools, they take a portion of the funding with them. Lower enrollments could eventually force some public schools to close.
When Zohran Mamdani was asked whether he agreed with his fellow Democrats’ refusal to raise the cap on charters, he indicated that he did. Going along with mainstream Democrats wasn’t much of a problem during the election campaign. Andrew Cuomo tried to challenge Mamdani on this issue, but it got lost amid more compelling differences. When campaigning gives way to governing, however, standing against charters could become a problem for a self-identified progressive mayor.
Eighty percent of the students who attend charter schools in the city are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. A disproportionate number are Black and brown. These children, whose families are a part of Mamdani’s affordability constituency, consistently outperform their peers in regular public schools. Sixty-six percent of the Black students at charter schools scored proficient in math on recent State tests compared to 38% of those in district schools. In reading, the difference was 58% vs. 39%. How can a progressive mayor — who claimed to be “very passionate about public goods” and said “we on the left have to be equally passionate about public excellence” — ignore such evidence and support a policy that curbs opportunities for students in need of better options?
There is the obvious fact that Randi Weingarten, former president of New York’s teachers union and current president of its national parent union, was among the first labor leaders to endorse Mamdani’s candidacy. But in this case, the incoming mayor’s reaction goes beyond the ordinary calculations of transactional politics. There are larger issues at stake.
Weingarten was also one of the first public figures in the nation to protest the arrival of federal ICE agents at public schools, who were terrifying students and their parents with threats of being detained. In her new book, “Why Fascists Fear Teachers,” she takes a forceful stand against Donald Trump’s ongoing assault on democratic institutions. Soon, these will be Mamdani’s battles. Beyond them, Weingarten and her fellow leaders in organized labor constitute the most significant source of support that Mamdani can rely on to advance his affordability agenda, while other Democrats succumb to pressure from deep-pocketed donors who want to keep taxes and spending down. That said, many members of these same unions have children in charter schools.
The charter school debate, like other points of contention among key political actors, needs time to ripen. As mayoral candidates travel down the campaign trail and get closer to City Hall, ambitious ideas inevitably become tempered by political realities. You can see this dynamic at work with regard to public safety: Where once Mamdani sounded the call to “defund the police,” he now embraces Eric Adams’ police commissioner Jessica Tisch — much as Bill de Blasio, another avid progressive, appointed Rudy Giuliani’s celebrity crime fighter, Bill Bratton, to head up the NYPD.
Over the course of his campaign, Mamdani went from being an unknown assemblyman from Queens to a new voice within the national Democratic Party, which has been losing registration in formerly working-class strongholds throughout the country, including New York. His message of affordability obviously has resonated. Weeks before the November election, New York’s avowed centrist Gov. Kathy Hochul began to preach the gospel of affordability after she broke with other top Democrats in the state to endorse the young upstart.
Both Hochul and Mamdani can be expected to support regular public schools, as they should. Neither, however, will be able to evade the school choice issue. Black and brown parents will continue to plead for alternatives to failing public schools to which their children are routinely assigned, as 15,000 of them did last September when they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to demand that State legislators increase their support and raise the cap on charter school enrollments.
The governor and the incoming mayor’s relationship will be an interesting one to watch as his inaugural year comes into focus. Mamdani has already demanded more national attention as an alternative to the status quo than any New York mayor since John Lindsay. No matter who Hochul’s Republican opponent might be as she faces reelection next year, the governor can be counted on to make charter school expansion a point of contention. A possible Democratic challenger, depending on who it is, could also join the chorus.
Rethinking opposition to charters would not only be good policy — it could well prove to be savvy politics as well. A proud, Muslim, Mamdani showed surprising strength against Cuomo among the working class Black New Yorkers, who happen to be among the city’s most pro-charter-school voices. If Mamdani wants to create a durable coalition, he needs to keep a hold on these voters.
This is a general concern for Democrats. Recent national assessments revealed that performance in 12th-grade math is the lowest in recorded history (since 1992); performance in reading is the lowest in 20 years. One-third of the nation’s high school seniors do not have basic reading skills. The evidence is more dramatic when you break it down by race and class. Democrats will find it increasingly difficult to ignore the perpetuation of educational inequality and claim to be the party of the marginalized and the disadvantaged.
Charters also happen to be a compromise position when it comes to school choice, given how the movement is sweeping the country. Since 2022, some 30 states have enacted new laws or expanded existing provisions that provide parents with tax support to send their children to private or religious schools. In 2027, a tax credit bill enacted by Republicans in Congress will offer states federal money to do the same for any family whose income is below 300% of their average area income, and governors will have discretion to either accept or refuse the funding. If blue-state governors and mayors insist on opposing programs that offer options for students to attend nonpublic schools at public expense, support for public charter schools may become the only choice for those who want to provide parents with alternatives.
Might New Yorkers be so bold as to imagine that district schools and charter schools could partner in a shared public endeavor for excellence rather than fight it out as competitors in an education marketplace that sorts out winners and losers? New York’s progressive mayor and pragmatic governor could stand together for high-quality educational outcomes for low-income families by supporting the expansion of charter schools. If this inevitably leads to the shuttering of underperforming district schools, the resources saved from the closures could be reinvested in remedial programs within those districts while charters assume a larger share of the burden for educating the most academically challenged students.
Such a shift would give economically disadvantaged parents the real choices they deserve and enhance the future fortunes of district schools, charter schools and maybe even the Democratic Party.