A former chancellor of New York’s education department tells the Sun during an interview that the city “needs a whole hell of a lot more” charter schools but is hamstrung by the teachers unions.

“The most powerful force in the Democratic Party is the teachers unions,” Joel Klein says.

The city is unable to issue new charters because of a cap on such schools set by the state legislature in Albany.

“When you have a cap on charters, that’s a cap on opportunity,” he says. The limits on charter growth are “about politics, not about kids.” 

Mr. Klein, who is now senior advisor at Oscar Health and CEO of Retromer Therapeutics, has long been  a champion of charter schools. During his tenure as chancellor between 2002 and 2011, he oversaw the opening of more than 100 charter schools — and nearly tenfold growth in enrollment. 

Today, there are about 140,000 students in the city’s public charter schools, making up nearly 15 percent of students enrolled in public schools. 

“The idea that in New York, there’s almost 15 percent of kids in charters and another 50,000 or so on waiting lists for charters is truly a tribute to the fact that we made a big change,” Mr. Klein says. “What makes it so powerful is that every parent who’s got a kid in [a charter] or every kid who’s in one of those schools chose. They all had a district school assigned to them” that they decided not to attend.

The teachers unions opposed such Bloomberg-era initiatives as closing poorly performing public schools and opening up charter schools because, accordingly to Mr. Klein, it meant “less dues, less money, [and] less power” for the unions. He praises the former mayor for his willingness to “get bruised” in that battle. 

Mr. Bloomberg, however, is “not an ordinary politician,” Mr. Klein says. With the city having reached the charter cap set by the legislature, there is no political will in Albany to raise the cap because, he says, “the teachers union controls the legislature.”

He explains: “If you’re a powerful union, you not only control labor, you can control management.” In addition to representing teachers, the unions fund campaigns for candidates who will manage school systems, disrupting the traditional balance of power in labor organizing.

Beyond New York City, Mr. Klein points to a broader trend in the Democratic Party: The American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association comprise a disproportionate number of delegates at the Democratic National Convention, and thus shape the party’s agenda.

“Bill Clinton and Obama supported charter schools, but you don’t see it now,” Mr. Klein, who served in the Clinton administration, says. While Mr. Klein didn’t explicitly mention President Biden, the current administration’s Department of Education has sought to restrict federal grants to charter schools.

With the Democratic Party going in one direction, Mr. Klein’s former boss has been trying to support charter schools through philanthropy rather than legislation. 

In recent weeks, Mr. Bloomberg has donated more than $250 million to New York City’s charter schools. On Monday, he announced $200 million in gifts to two top-performing charter networks, Success Academy and Harlem Children’s Zone, on top of a $50 million investment in summer learning at charters across the city.