Eva Moskowitz is moving one of her Harlem Success charter schools into a building which houses three other schools, one of which serves students with disabilities. She is doing so with the blessing of the NYC Department of Education.
Eva Moskowitz vs. Cobble Hill
It looks like controversial charter school operator Eva Moskowitz is moving into one of the more posh New York City neighborhoods, with the aid of the New York City Board of Education.
Last week, the Panel for Education Policy gave Moskowitz the green light to take space inside a Cobble Hill high school for a new charter school under her Success Charter Network, much to the chagrin of educational activists, parents and teachers.
As per her usual modus operandi, Moskowitz will not have to pay any rent for the space, which will focus on students from kindergarten through fourth grade inside what's now the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, the School for International Studies and the STAR school. The latter focuses on special education for kids with disabilities.
While parents and teachers of the students already inhabiting the building say this will lead to the overcrowding of their schools, the city said the charter has 691 open seats. They say that is enough to help the charter school and not hurt the other schools already in the building.
Here is more on the Moskowitz move from The Brooklyn Rail Report Card.
Here Comes Success
Much of Brooklyn’s school District 15—which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, and Red Hook—is a comfortable, brownstone-studded idyll, with schools so popular that they drive up real estate values and boast long waiting lists. Many of the district’s parents are privileged and have, commendably, used their advantages to improve their local public schools, insulating them from the budget cuts that devastate the rest of the borough. But an escalating charter school battle serves as a jarring reminder that even District 15 parents are still only the 99%—and that it’s the 1% that runs the show.
The original purported purpose of charter schools was to be there so "failing" schools in poor neighborhoods could be "turned around" into a charter. Now this group of charters and others are forcing themselves on successful schools as well.
Almost everyone on the Success board of directors hails from hedge funds and private equity firms. Why would we want to put the same people whose greed critically injured our economy in charge of educating our children? “Report Card” would not hire people lacking impulse control, with a demonstrated penchant for demented risk-taking, to watch our child, even for a few hours. Yet two members of Success Academy’s board are partners in Gotham Capital, a hedge fund financed mostly by notorious junk bond trader Michael Milken. The rest of the gang is deeply implicated in the reckless financial antics that have mired Brooklyn neighborhoods in foreclosures and unemployment. The hedge fund class has a track record of failure and destruction, and its very existence is a sign of a society rotting from the top. Does anyone really want the folks who brought us the Great Recession to be in charge of anything that matters?
In District 15, parents are active in running the schools. They show up to PTA meetings. They help out in the classroom. When they see programs missing that they want for their kids—whether it’s sustainability or French—they agitate. Sometimes they even show up and create those programs through their own volunteer labor. When parents in these neighborhoods disagree with decisions made by teachers or principals, they have a voice. When they disagree with a city policy affecting their school, many of them will complain to the Community Education Council or even the Department of Education itself—using what’s left of our democratic process to appeal.
It seems she is redefining education without having to worry about the unpleasant aspects of students who don't perform up to level.
Eva Moskowitz need not care if her charters take space from public schools or take children—and therefore funding—from them. In District 15, Success Cobble Hill could deal a severe body blow to excellent schools already dealing with severe budget cuts—but Moskowitz is not in the business of worrying about that. She has no reason to be concerned that her schools sometimes kick out underperforming, ill-behaved, or special needs children. She does not need to figure out how to educate the kids who aren’t welcome in her schools, or whose schools are made intolerable by sharing space with too many others. She doesn’t have to worry about the effect of Success Academies on the system as a whole. She’s in the business of philanthropy, which is all about allowing the 1% to get credit for helping the less fortunate, even as it creates winners and losers, and forces recipients to bay for the crumbs. Her job is to make her schools look good, and she has no reason to care how she hurts other schools—and many children—in the process.
They apparently do not worry too much about the handicapped and disabled students or those who are underperforming. Here are the words from a principal at one of her charter schools.
At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”
In one case, says a teacher at P.S. 241, a set of twins started kindergarten at the co-located HSA 4 last fall. One of them proved difficult and was placed on a part-time schedule, “so the mom took both of them out and put them in our school. She has since put the calm sister twin back in Harlem Success, but they wouldn’t take the boy back. We have the harder, troubled one; they have the easier one.”
Harlem Success Charter leader: “I’m not a big believer in special ed"
Unfortunately the students already in the schools Moskowitz chooses to share are often pushed out of the way.
Public schools feeling squeeze of charters
And Bronx Success Academies 1 and 2 are already ruffling feathers with district school staffers.
Staffers at the district schools say their new neighbors have booted them from classrooms and stairwells, while sharing the libraries, cafeterias and playgrounds.
...."Staffers at PS 30 say Bronx Success 1 sealed off the third floor to its staff and students - even taking over a stairwell - so Success students don't mingle with their district school neighbors.
"We are not allowed there," said one PS 30 teacher, noting the classrooms taken over by Success were formerly used for tutoring children with special needs. Now we have to do therapy sessions in the hallway."
This is the new education reform that is happening with the blessing of this administration. I am retired now, but it saddens me to know this is happening in other places...not just NYC.