A chastened Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña admitted Friday she should never have made disgraceful comments that charter-school kids booted from city facilities are now “on their own.”
“I shouldn’t have said it,” Fariña backtracked on Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” on Friday.
“The reality is I had just come off of a meeting. I had done a lot of things, and they stick the mike in your face. Did I mean it? No.”
In making her public apology, Fariña also promised that the city would find other space for the newly homeless charter students.
Parents were still fuming about her slam at charters, suggesting students displaced from those schools would have to fend for themselves.
“It was insensitive, surprising and very disappointing. I always thought of her as a consummate educator,” said Charles Taylor, whose son, Fernando, is a fourth-grader at the Harlem Link charter school.
Told that Fariña had walked back her remark, he said, “It’s a little late for that.”
Fariña’s about-face came a day after Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch called on Mayor de Blasio to find alternative space for the displaced charter students, saying, “The children deserve that.”
Earlier in the week, the chancellor brushed off middle-school kids from the highly rated Harlem Success Academy Central Middle School — whose plans to move into a public school building were blocked by the administration — as being “on their own.”
In her TV mea culpa, the chancellor said she would never hurt kids.
“I’ve been in the public-school system for 50 years. And anyone who knows me knows I always put children first. And all these kids are ours,” she said in a 180-degree turnabout.
Following a review of school co-locations approved by the Bloomberg administration, de Blasio revoked public spaces granted to three Success Academy charter schools operated by nemesis Eva Moskowitz — including the top-ranked Harlem middle school.
Fariña insisted the moves were not intended to punish Moskowitz, noting that the two worked together when Fariña was principal of PS 6 on the Upper East Side and the charter-school operator was the local councilwoman.
“She had eight proposals [for charter expansions]. She got five out of the eight,” the chancellor said.
A Moskowitz spokeswoman said she was “heartened to hear that the chancellor has heard the pleas of families who desperately want this high-performing school to continue.”
Fariña also joked about the furor over her “beautiful day” comment during last month’s blizzard.
“From now I’m going to be careful about what I say, and the less I say the better,” she said.