A new breed of Democrat - Cuomo still a business shill

This week in the War on Workers: Tensions in the battle for New York City classrooms

Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson)
Saturday, April 19, 2014, 2:09 pm
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has tilted the playing field toward well-funded charter chains.
With New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature giving away the educational farm to politically connected charter school chains and preventing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio from making decisions about how classroom space in the city will be allocated (Cuomo's answer: What charters want, charters get, and screw public school students), a lot of the coverage has focused on the people and organizations with their own PR staff. Former city councilwoman and Success Academies founder Eva Moskowitz has had her say far and wide, for instance. But what about the kids being crowded out of their traditional public schools by Moskowitz's incessant demand for more public space in which to run the business that pays her a hefty salary? They don't have a PR staff.
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In one school building, which houses a traditional public school, a special education public school, and a Success Academies school:
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    ... when the classrooms of P.S. 149 and Mickey Mantle give way to Success Academy on the third floor and part of the second, one notices the aesthetic differences immediately. The public school hallways are cheerful but basic, with a ragtag assortment of colors and student art on the walls. A few fluorescent lights flicker; the bathrooms are standard cinderblock.

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    In Success Academy's bright hallways, signs are stenciled in the same font and bear inspirational quotes like "Actions speak louder than words." Classrooms are outfitted in splashy blues, reds and greens, with the same multi-colored, polka-dotted carpets. Success Academy students wear orange and blue uniforms: jumpers for the girls, shirts and ties for the boys.

    According to Barbara Darrigo, principal of P.S. 149, there's an unmistakable discomfort in the building.
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    "It's this underlying tension," she said. "There's almost an air of elitism. When they're not making eye contact with you [in the hallways] and they're not acknowledging your existence, you kinda start thinking, 'I guess I'm less than.' I know my kids must feel that." [...]
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    "I find it really hard to accept that my kids have to have lunch at 10:40 in the morning," she said, while Success Academy eats lunch later. "I can't open up another pre-K class." Even if Darrigo had enough phys-ed teachers to meet compliance, she said, she wouldn't have enough time in the gym.