Exclusive | NY charter school leader compares teachers union, lawmakers to segregationists barricading kids: Super politically threatening

The leader of New York’s largest charter school network compared teachers’ union activists and lawmakers to segregationists “barricading” children from quality schools.Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the 57-school Success Academy, blasted labor leaders and lawmakers and said they are taking a page out of former Alabama Gov.George Wallace’s playbook and standing in schoolhouse doors because they’re “super politically threatened” by charter schools putting the brakes on their gravy train.“There is a deep connection in New York between the union and local elected officials for everything from trying to shut the schools down to barricading, not allowing children into the school building,” Moskowitz said during testimony before the House Subcommittee on Education on May 14.She then referenced the landmark Supreme Court 1954 Brown vs.

Board of Education decision that declared “separate but equal” racially segregated schools unconstitutional.“I am experiencing sort of the opposite, where union operatives have not allowed children to get into the building.It’s a pretty venomous debate, which is really, really unfortunate,” Moskowitz told committee members.Moskowitz later told The Post she was referring to United Federation of Teachers protests in 2009 outside the Harlem Success Academy 2, which co-located in a school building with PS 123 in Harlem.

She mentioned the ugly episode in her book, “The Education of Eva Moskowitz.”Her testimony evoked Wallace, who infamously stood at the front of the admissions office at the University of Alabama in 1963 in an unsuccessful bid to block two black students from enrolling in classes in the previously segregated school.Moskowitz said dealing with the Democratic-controlled government in deeply blue New York “has its challenges.”Rep.Kevin Kiley (R-Ca.), chairman of the panel and a charter school booster, asked Moskowitz if she had the support of Albany lawmakers given the high performance of her students i...