New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio came under fire Thursday from charter school advocates for a schools system that traps more than 143,000 students in failing schools.
A rally organized by Families for Excellent Schools, which attracted some 21,000 parents and students, was designed to put pressure on de Blasio to approve more charters in public schools buildings,
CBS New York reported.
The group says 143,000 of the city's 1.1 million public school students are stuck in schools where nine out of 10 fail English and math.
"That's not a statistic, that's a crisis,” Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez, a Harlem Democrat, said.
De Blasio released a video Thursday morning to counter the rally.
"When it comes to education, the answer is not to find an escape route that some can follow and others can't,” de Blasio says, the local CBS News reported. "The answer is to fix the entire system.”
But Steven Wilson, founder and CEO of Ascend Learning, which operates seven charters with 3,000 students in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods, told
The Washington Free Beacon "any system that is isolated from competition is going to become sclerotic, bureaucratic, and unresponsive to those they serve."
"We should be welcomed [by politicians] for showing the system as a whole what is possible," he said.
"If de Blasio is serious about ending inequality and increasing incomes, you would think he would be committed to helping the least privileged among us not get trapped in failing schools,” Wilson added.
"I'm hopeful he will change his views and see charters as an important tool for reform.”
The rally is the latest in a series of protests by charter supporters. A year ago, advocates led a pro-charter
march across the Brooklyn Bridge, and last March held a
rally in Albany that preceded passage of a state law making it easier to open and operate charters in New York.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.