Gov. Kathy Hochul may be about to make a well-meaning major mistake, by agreeing to a deal that lets 22 more charter public schools open in the city — but only if they’re not allowed to use space in regular school buildings.

This small gain for the charter movement would come at the price of helping to strangle its future growth.

Yes, the scheme has the state funding the expense of siting the new schools elsewhere, but it implicitly endorses the lie that charter public schools somehow harm the regular schools operating in the same building.

And it’s only charters: No one pretends any of the 800-plus Department of Education schools now co-located suffer from it.

Why would charters be different?

Nor do the United Federation of Teachers and its puppets ever actually point to any actual injury: It’s all just fear mongering in advance of a proposed colocation, with suggestions that the charter will somehow steal the gym or cafeteria or whatever.

In fact, the best research (by Temple University’s Sarah Cordes) shows that NYC charters help the regular schools around them improve.

And the DOE (after years of falling enrollment) has plenty of empty space that can host charters: more than 100 buildings across the city with 500 or more empty seats, and dozens with at least 700 open slots.

Citywide, the total is 140,000 empty seats.

A decade ago, charter co-locations were routine; a decade-plus of UFT fearmongering (and lobbying for laws that needlessly complicate the process) has made each decision a fraught, political battle.

Please, governor, don’t feed the lies one iota.