Lest anyone have any doubts about the unions' REAL agenda vis-à-vis charter schools, Barbara Martinez's article should put them to rest (a great quote from Shavar Jeffries):

The union representing Newark's teachers is rallying its members to what is expected to be a raucous meeting Tuesday night over whether charter schools should share space with traditional public schools.

"Say No to peaceful co-existence in the same school building!" said an e-mail that went out to all 4,800 teachers of the Newark Teachers Union asking them to appear at the regular meeting of the Advisory School Board.

…"There isn't going to be any way that there will be co-existence with charter schools while I'm breathing," Joseph Del Grosso, president of the NTU, said during an interview Monday.

He said sharing space sets up the opportunity for "the haves and the have-nots" because some charter schools raise money from private donors, which allows them to upgrade their part of the building.

"We're saying to kids: 'You don't get into the lottery and you're banished to the school down the hallway?' That's horrible, it's just wrong," he said.

…The president of the advisory board, Shavar Jeffries, said he's "not surprised that the union leadership would be opposed," to the idea of sharing space with charter schools, which generally don't have teachers unions.

"They seem to have done pretty well with the status quo. It's kids who haven't done well," said Mr. Jeffries, who will preside over Tuesday's meeting.

The union's Mr. Del Grosso said his opposition to sharing space has nothing to do with whether charters have unions.

"That's ridiculous. I've been offered money" from his affiliated national organization, the American Federation of Teachers, "to bring them into the union and I refused. I don't want them."

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