Weingarten Tries to Steer New York Voters Toward Cuomo

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is getting money from backers of a top charter school network that Mayor Bill de Blasio has singled out in his plans to slow the growth of charter schools.

A group of wealthy supporters of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter School network has given nearly $400,000 to Cuomo’s reelection campaign, according to updated campaign filings that were just made public. Moskowitz’s political action committee, Great Public Schools, has given Cuomo $65,000 since 2011.

One count of Cuomo’s 2014 filings shows that 27 bankers, real estate executives, business executives, philanthropists, and advocacy groups supporting charter schools and other education causes gave him at least $800,000.

Now, please. Cuomo’s statement that he wants to “break” the traditional public school “monopoly” is more than just a casual remark, as Weingarten tries to make it seem.

Even so, Weingarten would have the traditional public school teachers that she says she speaks for vote for him.

Her “he doesn’t really mean it” answer is similar to one she gave in June 2014 when she backed Dannel Malloy for governor of Connecticut. In 2012, Malloy said that “showing up for four years” was all a teacher had to do to get tenure.

As reported by the New Haven Independent, here is her weak defence of Malloy:

Weingarten said, “A lot of people say things they shouldn’t say.” She said she had talked to Malloy about his comment and that he sounded “very sorry.” She also noted that Malloy didn’t get rid of tenure. Instead, she said, he made it easier to fire tenured teachers with inadequate evaluations, but he didn’t take away their right to due process. [Emphasis added.]

Weingarten doesn’t mind that Malloy fired teachers because, well, at least he gives those teachers who are “easy to fire” a fair trial.

Lame.

Malloy and Cuomo are both against the way public schools have been run in the past.

No matter what they do, Weingarten will let them off the hook and back them up because they are Democrats.

Don’t think that Weingarten isn’t serious, though. No, no.

After all, she did give the pro-charter, anti-traditional-public-school Cuomo a stern “talking-to,” which I’m sure will help him more than all the millions of dollars he has in his campaign fund from charter schools. As Capital New York says:

Weingarten said that she wrote a private letter to Cuomo to tell him how disappointed she was in what he said.

She said, “I decided to write him a letter explaining why public education in New York is not a monopoly but a public good, a moral imperative, and a constitutional mandate.” “I really wanted to say that, but I didn’t want to do it in the last few days of a gubernatorial election when everyone was shouting, so I wrote a letter. Because the values of public education are so important, we need to talk about it seriously.”

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