Charter schools offer affordable excellence to all NYC kids — a true progressive should want many more of them

One in six New York City public-school children now attend public charter schools — with tens of thousands more, mostly poor and minority, stuck on waitlists because state law blocks new charters from opening. Yet the mayoral frontrunner, Zohran Mamdani, not only supports that “cap,” he wants to evict existing charters from their buildings.

Hence Thursday’s charter march across the Brooklyn Bridge, as more than 15,000 charter parents  and supporters came out to declare: “Excellence Is a Civil Right.”

Meaning excellence in education, which all charters aim for and the sector largely delivers — certainly far better than the regular public-school system.

As Bishop Raymond Rivera, founder of the Family Life Academy charter network, told The Post: “Students have a civil right to obtain a quality education. Students and parents should have a choice. They should have excellence.”

The city Department of Education still runs some fine schools, but the system as a whole is rife with dysfunction: More than 40% of kids in grades 3-8 failed math and English in this year’s spring state tests.

 And the lowest-performing schools are concentrated in low-income, largely black and Hispanic neighborhoods — where charters offer the only realistic hope for excellence.

Consider: On those same state tests, kids attending Bronx charters had pass rates at least 25 points better than students in the borough’s DOE schools.

Over 90% passed at the Bronx’ six Zeta Charter Network schools, the four South Bronx Classical Charter schools and the five Success Academy schools, among other pillars of excellence.

Citywide, Success scholars passed at nearly twice the rate of DOE schools.

Remember: Charter admission is by lottery; these schools aren’t taking the cream of the crop to skew results, they’re simply doing a far better job.

The city now boasts 286 charter schools; anyone who truly cares about “affordability” should be striving to get more charters open, to offer more opportunity to children of any race, class or religion.

That means demanding the state Legislature stare down the teachers unions and lift the charter cap, and stopping union allies inside the DOE from denying charter schools space to handle their ever-growing enrollment.

Truth is, Mamdani doesn’t need the United Federation of Teachers, which only endorsed him once he seemed the sure bet to win in November.

If he truly wants to show he cares about delivering better lives for the city’s less-privileged, he could shock everyone by switching sides and joining the charter revolution.

And the least he can do is promise to get out of the way of a movement that’s building better futures for as many kids as possible.