This is how powerful the teachers’ union is in New York. It makes politicians look stupid in defending the union against opening up more charter schools.

A number of legislators in Albany are against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to allow more publicly funded but privately run charter schools to open in New York City. Her proposal would keep the limit to 460 charters that can open statewide but eliminate a regional cap of 287 that has been reached in New York City, forcing many students on wait lists.

While these Albany pols are dead set against it, they also send their children to private schools, which have no union teachers.

It’s a classic case of do as I say, not as I do.

And how good the charter schools are without employing teachers in the union can be explained very easily.

New York City charter schools are giving taxpayers more bang for their buck, routinely outperforming traditional public schools — and doing it at less than half the cost per student, data show.

The charters’ mostly minority student population bested its public school counterpart by up to 8% on both state math and reading tests in the 2021-21 school year, show statistics compiled by New York City Charter Center.

And the impressive results come courtesy of a relative shoestring budget, with city charters spending just $17,626 per student compared to the $35,941 spent on each public student, according to the center and Citizens Budget Committee.

“The numbers speak for themselves about the performance of charter schools and the transformational opportunities they are providing students — the performance and the results are undeniable,” said Joseph Belluck, chairman of SUNY’s Board of Trustees Charter School Committee, which doles out most of the state’s charter licenses.

Belluck said he didn’t expect the stiff opposition to Hochul’s plan, given the broad support by the most important constituency in education: parents.

“What surprises me about the opposition to charter schools is it doesn’t take into account what parents think. It’s surprising that parents’ voices haven’t been heard,” Belluck said.

The city currently has 275 of the schools with a total of about 141,000 students.

Roughly 80% of those students are from low-income families, and 90% of them are black or Latino, according to the non-profit Charter Center.

It’s time to call out these pols for taking teachers’ union campaign contributions and selling NYC kids short, while they send their children to private schools.

This hypocrisy must end.