Gov. Andrew Cuomo is reportedly pressing Mayor Bill de Blasio to resolve his city's lingering charter school controversies before the state steps in, reported the Daily News.
Issues including co-locations, how charter schools should be funded and pending lawsuits, are beginning to concern the governor, the longer they go unresolved.
Cuomo and the state Senate have vowed to "protect" charters. But they are trying to give the mayor a first swipe at reconciliation.
The problems first started in early February when de Blasio yanked $210 million in capital funding from charters and called a moratorium on closures and co-locations.
By early March, de Blasio came under fire for rescinding a handful of charter school co-location agreements made by his predecessor-- three of which were operated by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, who founded eight Success chain of charter schools.
So parents at each of Moskowitz's canceled schools have filed three separate lawsuits over the co-location reversals.
As an apparent olive branch offering, the mayor then approved the co-locations of more than a dozen other charters, prompting Public Advocate Letitia James, who is against charter school expansion, to say she would ask a judge to suspend the charter school admissions lottery for the 2014-15 academic year and she would sue to shut down all co-located schools.
Caught in the crossfires, the mayor said his position on charters has been misrepresented and the city would help find an alternative for 194 students in a Harlem Success charter that had its co-location agreement rescinded.
It's a mess. And the governor wants the mayor to fix it.
A de Blasio spokesman declined comment.
