dowdell a parent of a new york city charter school student. also, steve bar, founder of green dot schools and the future is now as well as university prep high school in the south bronx university and dan cantore, executive director of the working families party which might be the most progressive thing on the ballot. this is an all-star panel for a very important discussion. i want to start with you, pedro. your view of this battle, both how it relates to students because we care about policy and why it s attracting such political heat this week. well, it s attracting heat because charter schools have emerged as an alternative to the traditional public schools. some of those schools are quite good. i m sure we ll hear more about that later. we should keep in mind that 95% of kids are not in charter schools. it s ironic that the governor would weigh in so heavily on this when we know that most kids are not in charter schools. there s been no policy set for what role charter schools s