Wake up, liberals! Charter schools are saving kids from illiteracy

Watch Wake up, liberals! Charter schools are saving kids from illiteracy - New York Post on Dailymotion

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00:00Public charter schools are changing lives and entire communities.

00:04Progressive politicians are crazy for not supporting public charter schools.

00:13I'm a proud Bronx native, proud Bronx charter school parent and educator.

00:18I was the first in my family to graduate from college.

00:20This was not guaranteed. It was thanks to my mother.

00:23My mother grew up in and out of foster care, pushed through the special education system,

00:28never learning how to read. And yet I didn't know she was illiterate as a child

00:32because she would fake read books to me at night telling stories from the pictures.

00:37She wanted me to fall in love with reading, to fall in love with learning.

00:41She believed that education was the path out of poverty and she was right.

00:45Yet my story is pretty unique for my neighborhood. Many of my friends and family didn't make it into

00:51college because they lacked an adult who believed in them and fought for them. And so that's why

00:56when I graduated college and I joined Teach for America, I came back home. I started working

01:01at a school right up the block from where I grew up. And what I saw there was pretty shocking.

01:06Every single child in that school building could read every single child and read well.

01:14This was not my experience growing up in school and it definitely wasn't the experience in the

01:19surrounding school communities. And so I stayed. I became an assistant principal and then a principal.

01:24And now I'm a school manager of 13 schools in the Bronx and Harlem. And when I had my own child,

01:29I sent him to one of our schools because charter schools are doing for entire communities what my

01:35mother did for me. So defunding or blocking charter schools from opening would condemn generations of

01:43kids to failing schools. And yet progressive politicians who claim to speak for people like me

01:48discriminate against charters. They say charters steal from public schools. That makes no sense.

01:54Charter schools are public schools. And yet students in charter schools receive thousands less

02:00in funding than those who attend the district schools. Charter schools have to beg for space

02:05in public buildings that our tax dollars have already paid for. New York City has put a cap

02:10on charter schools from opening. Putting a cap on access to excellent education doesn't seem very

02:16progressive to me. Not when these are the schools teaching kids how to read and write which are the

02:20pathways to college. If you say you care about poor kids, then you need to support the schools that are

02:26helping them succeed. The charter schools. If not charter, then what's your plan? Another generation of

02:34kids trapped in failing schools? That was my mother's story and the story of so many in my community.

02:41They didn't have options. But we do. And we are choosing charter schools. And so if you're a politician

02:49who claims to speak for us, then you need to support our choices. You need to defend our choices.

02:56We are awake. We are organized. And we are watching.