Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is squaring off against lefty firebrand Bernie Sanders in a closely-watched political fight over whether to increase charter schools in neighboring Massachusetts.
A question on Tuesday’s ballot will ask Bay State voters whether they support lifting the cap on charter schools. A “yes” vote would allow the opening of 12 new schools a year.
A Bay State native who nurtured the growth of charters schools during his 12 years in office, Bloomberg has donated at least $490,000 to the Vote Yes cause.
Massachusetts has 78 charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed and exempt from many union rules governing traditional public schools.
As in New York, academic studies have shown that Massachusetts charters are strong performers that have helped narrow the racial achievement gap.
There are more than 32,000 Massachusetts students on charter school waiting lists, Bloomberg said what’s good for New York is good for Massachusetts.
“Study after study found that in the 173 charter schools Mike Bloomberg opened as Mayor of New York, Black and Hispanic students in poverty consistently showed far better improvements in reading and math than their peers in traditional public schools did. That’s why Mike Bloomberg is supporting charters in the Bay State where he was born,” said Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, and many civic leaders and parent advocates support lifting the cap.
But the measure is opposed by former presidential candidate and Vermont socialist Sanders, his lefty protege, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the teachers’ unions and advocates of traditional schools.
“This is Wall Street’s attempt to line their own pockets while draining resources away from public education at the expense of low-income, special education students and English Language Learners,” Sanders said in a statement.
Bloomberg and Brooklyn native Sanders aren’t the only ones with New York connections taking opposing sides in what has become the most expensive ballot fight in the Bay State’s history.
Pro-and-anti-forces have spent more than $25 million combined.
The Manhattan-based and pro-charter Families for Excellent Schools is the major group bank-rolling the Vote Yes campaign, spending more than $15 million on the ground and on the airwaves. It gets much of its funding from New York business tycoons and hedge fund honchos.
Teachers’ unions have kicked in more than $10 million for the Vote No campaign. The American Federation of Teachers, headed by former NYC teachers’ union boss Randi Weingarten, has contributed $1.8 million.
Barbara Madeloni, the head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association who is spearheading the opposition, is a socialist firebrand in her own right and in no fan of President Obama, who has promoted charter schools.
In Facebook postings, she has called the president an “imperialist asshole” who has led a “corporate assault on public education.”
Polls show voters are split on the ballot question, but trending toward a No vote.
Some residents in the state’s well-heeled suburbs have been moved by Vote No arguments that an increase in charter schools will reduce funding to traditional public schools.
Charter school proponents dispute the claim, saying that education funding follows the student and that school districts are given additional whenever a student moves to a charter school.