Sheldon Silver and Charter Schools

According to an article in today's NY Sun Sheldon, assembly speaker, met with Cardinal Egan today and told the Cardinal, who came to ask for money, that his budget actually gave more money to parochial and private school than Spitzer's budget. The money would be used to defray the costs of special services mandated by the state. This budget came as a major surprise because Silver is not known to be an advocate of private schools.

The best part of the article was Silver's plan for charter schools. First, he wants to require every charter school with more than 250 students to unionize. He also wants to limit the formation of new charter schools to 50, down from the 150 Bloomberg wants to create. He is also denying Klein any say in the formation of these schools and charter schools should only be created when they do not interfere with existing schools.

Silver was able to claim he supports private schools by pointing to his $39 million.
Too bad more politicians don't feel this way.