NEW YORK – As expected, freshly installed New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is making life extremely difficult for the city’s charter schools.

NYPost.com reports that De Blasio is planning to essentially stop additional charter schools from opening in the Big Apple by slashing $210 million from a charter-school construction fund and barring additional space-sharing agreements that allow the alternative public schools to move into underutilized government-owned school buildings.

The moves are designed to freeze charters out of the city’s pricey real estate market.

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And if that wasn’t enough for charter supporters to worry about, the new mayor recently suggested he might rescind space-sharing agreements that city officials approved with some 30 charters late last year, reports NYPost.com.

A charter school advocacy group says such a move could cost an estimated 5,600 students their spots in one of those schools, NYDailyNews.com reports.

It’s reported that De Blasio wants to redirect much of the $210 million from the charter-school construction fund into expanding the city’s pre-kindergarten programs, the news site reports.

If enacted, de Blasio’s plan will be a huge blow to thousands of New York City families that see charter schools as their only way of escaping the dysfunctional and chronically failing government-run public schools.

Even the left-of-center Brookings Institution concluded last fall that “NYC charter schools are, on average, doing a substantially better job for students that the regular public schools with which they directly compete.”

On the other hand, de Blasio’s plan represents a huge gift to the United Federation of Teachers, the local teachers union that eagerly supported his candidacy. While many charter school teachers don’t belong to a union, the new pre-K teachers will undoubtedly be conscripted into becoming dues-paying UFT members and add to the union’s sizeable political war chest and voting bloc. A National Review editorial describes de Blasio’s anti-charter plans as “plain, naked payback” on behalf of the unions.

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While de Blasio doesn’t have full “life and death” power over charters, it’s close. New York City’s school system is under mayoral control, which means whoever occupies City Hall has a lot of influence over what happens.

However, the city’s Panel for Educational Policy also has a say in what happens to the charter schools.

As the National Review editorial notes, the panel “has the opportunity to stop this abuse … and should see to it that the mayor’s proposal does not stand.”