Gov. Andrew Cuomo defended his support of charter schools a day after the City Council speaker took a swipe at the governor on Twitter and mischaracterized charters as being “hedge fund-backed.”
On Saturday night, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito tried to suggest that charters, which receive public funding, were only supported by the wealthy – implying that’s why they had Cuomo’s support.
Without mentioning her, the governor pointed out that public schools had deep-pocketed supporters behind them too.
“We have a big bureaucracy with a system that is entrenched, and it funds public education. And they have their lobbyists, and they have their little public relations teams, and they have their front groups and their advocates, and this is disruptive to that entire system … so you get a lot of pressure,” Cuomo said Sunday on AM 970′s new “Cats Roundtable” program.
The radio program is hosted by former GOP mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis, an ardent supporter of charters.
“We need some new answers and we need some new ideas, because putting more money into the bureaucracy is not necessarily the answer,” Cuomo said. “In fact, we know it’s not the answer, because we’ve done that for 20 years, and it’s not working, so maybe we should try something else.”
Cuomo called charters “little laboratories that are trying new ideas and provoking a dialog that says we have to change.”
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