It’s like the bad penny that keeps appearing, only it costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The city teachers union has begun pushing a new property-tax proposal tied to a union employment program.

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Moskowitz, dogged as ever, is intent on molding shining models for next-generation public education.

More than 6.000 families have already applied to Success Academy, which operates 32 city schools. The demand for a charter school reached an all-time high last year, with more than 16.400 families vying for fewer than 3.000 spots.

Upon his re-election in 2006, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein offered the free use of underutilized school facilities to a bumper crop of charter schools opening that year—including my first. Fueled by this policy, charter-school enrollment in the city grew from 11.000 to almost 70.000 by the end of Mr. Bloomberg’s second term in 2013, and my one school grew to 22.

The news is filled with stories about how charter schools — especially Eva Moskowitz’s big, bad Success Academy network — don’t serve students with special needs. As a parent of one such child, let me tell you: This is bunk.

“To me, the debate league is kind of an extra kind of education — it’s preparing you to go out into the world,” said Brianna Scott, a seventh grader at Harlem Success Academy West. “Plus,” she added with a smile, “it’s just fun.”

Public-school students in districts with lots of charter schools made larger gains on state exams over the past eight years than kids in other areas, according to an analysis released Friday by a charter advocacy group.