Campbell Brown, a member of the board of the Success Academy Charter Schools, was honored at Success’ spring benefit Monday night. These are excerpts from her remarks.

Like a lot of others here tonight, I’m just a soldier in Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz’s army. And I want to talk about why I joined the fight.

New data show that nearly 59.000 students attended charters in the 2012-13 school year, compared to 2.400 in 2002-03. Over the same period, public school district enrollment dropped from more than 1 million to 980.000.

Unions and politicians are trying to kill the best hope for many disadvantaged kids.

Most New Yorkers are familiar with velvet ropes, the ones that can keep hopeful clubgoers waiting for hours to be admitted — and that, for the rich and the beautiful, are whisked aside.

But while we expect exclusivity in private life in New York City, it is startling to see the same phenomenon at work in our most public institution, the public-school system.

Annaly Lopez moved to Harlem two years ago when she and her young daughter Renee got a great deal on an apartment. But there was a catch: Her new building was zoned for P.S. 149, a notorious elementary school where 82 percent of third graders failed the state achievement tests and violence among students is common.

Charter schools disrupt the status quo in education and help low-income students succeed.

Fear? Anxiety? We get our kids excited about the challenge.