Mayor Bill de Blasio now is getting it from both sides.
First, Public Advocate Letitia James last week criticized the mayor for approving the co-locations of more than a dozen charters, claiming her office would sue to shut down all co-located charter schools and then ask a judge to suspend their admissions lottery for the 2014-15 academic year.
Now today, three lawsuits are expected to be filed—in New York City and Albany—against New York City by charter schools who were denied co-locations, the New York Post writes.
The Success Academy, run by Eva Moskowitz, will be filing a federal civil-rights lawsuit to overturn the mayor's decision to prevent a Success middle schools from co-locating in a public school building in Central Harlem.
And the same group is also headed to Albany to file papers with state Education Commissioner John King to try to reverse City Hall's decision to keep two new Success Academy elementary schools from opening in Manhattan and Queens.
Former Gov. George Pataki — who pushed through the initial charter-school law in 1998 — criticized the mayor, saying he is committing an "outrageous abuse of political power" by snatching away educational choice and opportunity from kids.
"De Blasio is cutting charter schools off at the knees," Pataki told The Post. "It's unfathomable that he would do something that endangers the education of students and parents.
Meanwhile, NAACP President Hazel Dukes put out a statement blasting the Success Academy suit against De Blasio.
"This lawsuit is an outrageous and insulting attempt by Wall Street hedge fund managers to hijack the language of civil rights in their shameless political attack on Bill de Blasio," Dukes wrote.
