Charters -- A Yoon Opportunity?

Looks like the Patrick folks want to push education out as the Big Issue for discussion now that the budget's essentially done, and got Arne Duncan up from DC to help draw attention to it. They'll be doing a press conference this morning for the Guv's ed bills, which got top-of-page-one treatment in today's Globe.

This could be an opportunity for Sam Yoon; it looks to me like Patrick's charter-school proposal is very similar to Yoon's, while the Globe makes the point that Menino's late entry into chartermania looks like an attempt to run interference. Yoon might be able to jump on this issue, rhetorically putting himself on the side of Deval, the future, and of course the children -- without losing the anti-charter left, because Menino has now essentially endorsed the concept, so where are they gonna go? And I have a sense that bashing the teachers union might play well in Boston, particularly after their stubborn refusal to go along with Menino's wage-freeze proposal. We'll see if Yoon's new campaign manager (Mary Grissom, moving over from Yoon's city council staff) can make some hay out of this.

As for Patrick's plan, the big thing to watch is Terry Murray, and whether she signals that she wants to make a stand against charter school expansion, or merely talks about needing to study the funding algorithms. On the House side, I think DeLeo is willing to go whichever way the wind's blowing among his members -- I don't see him putting up a DiMasi-on-casinos border defense on this.

Your thoughts?