An ugly fight is brewing over a new charter school upstate, here in New York. My latest column in The Post gives the details:

Pastor Richard Hague, the man behind the charter school proposed in Niagara County, is breathing fire — because injustice is staring him right in the face. As Hague brings his application to start a new school before the state’s Board of Regents today, the guardians of the status quo have stacked the deck against him.

“Our problem isn’t a poorly performing school district,” Hague tells The Post — though the Niagara Falls City school district is performing poorly, with more than 60 percent of its eighth-graders unable to pass state English tests (including more than 70 percent of black and Hispanic students) and nearly half unable to pass math. “Our problem is that the district won’t give us a chance to present our case fairly to the board.”

Board members of the proposed charter school have been intimidated into resigning, parents have been intimidated into not signing petitions in favor of the school and the Assembly has tried to intimidate the head of the state’s Board of Regents (whose term as a Regent is up in 2005 — it’s the Assembly that would reappoint him).

An ugly story all around as the teachers union and the local school superintendant tries to stop poor and minority kids from getting a shot at a decent education.

Covering this stuff can make a person sick. Anyway, the Regents vote on the school’s application this afternoon.

We’ll see.

UPDATE (12/16/04, 5:30 p.m.): The Niagara charter is denied… for now. This fight isn’t over, no matter how spineless the state’s top education officials are. More coming on this topic from The Post and yours truly.