Mamdani’s War on Charter School Expansion and Co-Location

Mamdani’s War on Charter School Expansion and Co-Location

Zhoran Mamdani identifies the charter school sector not as an innovative alternative, but as the sharpest spearhead of a decades-long project to privatize public education, undermine the teaching profession, and create a racially and economically segregated, two-tiered system. His policy agenda declares an unequivocal end to charter school expansion in New York City and initiates a multi-pronged campaign to roll back their influence and reintegrate their resources and students into a strengthened, democratically controlled public system. This is not a minor regulatory adjustment; it is a direct confrontation with one of the most powerful political and financial lobbies in the state, grounded in the principle that education is a public good, not a commodity or a field for philanthropic experimentation and private profit.

The centerpiece of Mamdani’s plan is an immediate moratorium on the approval of any new charter schools or the renewal of existing charters without an extreme, nearly impossible-to-meet burden of proof. The renewal standard would shift from test scores to demonstrable harm: Does the school exacerbate segregation? Has it failed to serve proportional numbers of students with disabilities or English Language Learners? Has it engaged in exclusionary discipline practices or “counseled out” struggling students? The likely result would be the non-renewal of a significant number of charters. For those that remain, Mamdani would push for a “charter freeze” at the state level, eliminating the provision that forces the city to pay rent for charters or provide them with public space. His most aggressive tool is the fight to end co-locations, the practice of placing charter schools within public school buildings, which has bred resentment, created inequitable “schools within schools,” and drained resources from host districts.

Mamdani proposes a “Public Reclamation Process” for co-located charters. The city would terminate co-location agreements, offering charter operators a choice: dissolve and allow their students to be absorbed into the revitalized public school, or transition to a “conversion charter” model under the direct control of the community school district and its elected council, with all staff becoming unionized DOE employees. The physical space reclaimed from charters would be repurposed for the host school’s needs: dedicated science labs, art studios, smaller class sizes, or community wellness centers. Financially, Mamdani would redirect the per-pupil funding that follows a child to a charter back into the foundational budget of the public system, arguing that the siphoning of these funds has created a vicious cycle of austerity and “failure” in traditional public schools that is then used to justify further charter expansion.

This agenda is inherently a war on two fronts: against the charter operators and their billionaire backers, and against the neoliberal ideology of “choice” and competition. Mamdani’s narrative counters this by championing “voice” over “choice”—the power of communities to democratically govern their neighborhood schools, rather than shopping for a scarce commodity. He would couple this aggressive stance with a massive positive investment in the public system—the community schools model, wraparound services, and the “CTE for Liberation” program—to demonstrate that a well-resourced, democratically controlled public school is the best choice for every family. The political battle will be ferocious, likely involving state pre-emption challenges and a media blitz framing him as anti-parent. Mamdani’s strategy is to mobilize the constituencies most harmed by charterization—teachers, parents in under-resourced public schools, and communities facing displacement—to fight not just for a policy, but for the very principle of education as a common, democratically managed resource, free from the dictates of the market.