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April 6, 2009
City Council moves to regulate city’s placement of charter schools
The former chair of the City Council education committee, Eva Moskowitz, talked to the current chair, Robert Jackson, before today's hearing on charter schools. Moskowitz runs a charter school network, while Jackson said he is skeptical of charter schools. (GothamSchools, Flickr)
City Council members today moved to regulate the process of placing charter schools in public school buildings, introducing a resolution that they said would avoid conflicts between families at neighborhood schools and new charter schools placed inside of them.
Right now, Department of Education officials offer some charter schools space in public school buildings on their own, but the space-sharing arrangements are sometimes contentious. (Charter schools receive public funding, but operate outside of the DOE watch and are not guaranteed space in public school buildings.)
The Council resolution would force the department to follow some kind of a regular procedure — probably involving a requirement to work with members of a neighborhood — before it could place a charter school in a public building.
“Make community stakeholders part of that process,” City Council Member Maria del Carmen Arroyo, of the Bronx, said. “You fail miserably at including the people that have to deal with the fallout of the decisions that you make.”
Council Member Jessica Lappin of Manhattan, who chairs the council’s work on public land use issues, said that charter schools should be placed in the same way that new traditional public schools are placed. “I have worked very hard to bring community members, principals, and the Department of Education together so that we can resolve the issues that inevitably arise,” Lappin said. Why, she asked, shouldn’t charter schools be placed in the same way?
Testifying before the council, Department of Education officials said they agree that they need to improve the way that they bring in new schools, but they declined to support the resolution that would force them to follow a new procedure when doing it.
The hearing follows a flurry of high-profile and emotional fights over the department’s efforts to give charter schools space in traditional public school buildings. Most recently, the DOE’s decision to replace three traditional public elementary schools with charter schools inspired shouting matches between parents — and launched a lawsuit by the United Federation of Teachers and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which accused school officials of breaking the law by re-drawing zoning laws without consulting parents. The DOE backed away from the plan last week, vowing to keep the schools open for now.
City Council members used the hearing as an opportunity to discuss not just space issues but broader concerns with charter schools, which have proliferated under the Bloomberg administration’s watch, growing from 17 when Mayor Bloomberg took office to 99 expected to open in the city this fall.
Council Member John Liu said that he worries that the rise of charter schools has created a “two-tiered” system: one for savvy parents who can maneuver their way into the schools, and another for the rest of parents. Members pointed to statistics showing that charter schools have fewer children with special needs, such as disabilities and a lack of familiarity with English, than traditional public schools.
Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf said that 10% of charter school students receive special education services, compared to 13% of traditional public school children, and 5% of charter school students are still learning English, compared to about 10% of students citywide. But Cerf insisted that charter schools are as public as any other school, and cited a study that found that New York City charter schools served the same kind of populations as nearby neighborhood schools.
Cerf said the city is working to expand the number of charter schools because the schools do a better job at serving poor and minority families than the traditional public schools in the same neighborhoods. He said that not helping charter schools grow, and instead forcing families to send their children to struggling traditional public schools, would be morally wrong. “To tell those parents that today they should wait for another generation of efforts to fix those, when there is an alternative that is working for them right now, is something we’re not willing to do,” Cerf said.
Council Member Bill de Blasio said that his objection is not to the impulse to improve public schools, but to the way that the DOE tries to do that. “From my perspective, as a public school parent, the Tweed experience has been top-down and narrow,” de Blasio said. “I don’t think that’s how you change the world. It’s from the community up.”
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April 6th, 2009 8:30 pm
I’ll tell you what’s morally wrong — denying the provision of small classes and extracurriculars to our regular public schools, while encouraging these same advantages in charter schools. The hypocrisy of this administration never ceases to amaze me.
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April 6th, 2009 8:35 pm
It’s absolutely unacceptable to allow communities to get involved with what sort of schools are permitted in their neighborhoods. If Mayor Bloomberg is not permitted to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, to whomever he wants, it could be a very dangerous precedent. If he can’t do that, what indeed was the point of overturning the term limits city residents had twice affirmed?
Checks and balances are simply un-American, and frankly, I have to question your patriotism for even mentioning them at all. I agree with Cerf that it’s morally wrong to help struggling schools and I think it’s absolutely imperative that he continue to treat them like bastard stepchildren. After all, everyone knows that good neighborhood schools add absolutely nothing to a community.
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April 6th, 2009 10:45 pm
Jessica Lappin is being disingenuous by saying that the DOE has worked together with parents and community members in the siting of new traditional public schools.
In fact, they make the same sort of unilateral and often destructive decisions in the creation and placement of the new smalls schools as they do with charters.
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April 7th, 2009 12:17 am
Why do charters have fewer ELL and special needs students? Widely accepted are student “creaming” (through application process/unsupervised “lottery”), attrition (chosen by family or admin-encouraged). Now we’re hearing parent rumblings (louder and louder) that some charters do not serve these students well, mostly because of under-staffing and inexperienced teachers.
In Chicago, charters add another track to our city-wide tracking ed “system”. Top — selective enrollment. Mid - charters. Low — neighborhood schools. Charters are more like the third rail for too many high needs students.
There ought to be a law … oh, there is. Entities receiving public funding may not discriminate. But then there’s reality … and lack of enforcement because charter funders are paying some of the city’s education costs, while the city employs fewer teachers/admin — another cost-saver! -
April 7th, 2009 12:46 pm
Ha ha. Randi Weingartnen is full of horse hockey. She knows Reagan’ writ of plausible deniability very well. She says it’s “regrettable” that her union distributed these puppet-master question cards to Council members when she knew that it was going on all along. Kudos to Simcha Felder for inviting us all in on this shameful game. Like Mayor Bloomberg said a long time ago — the school system should be run for the benefit of children, not for adults. At least we know where the UFT’s interests truly lie.
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April 7th, 2009 3:00 pm
What’s sad is that people who are angry at the mayor or DOE are being encouraged to take their frustration out on charter schools. Concerned parents and citizens are being sold a very effective line about Charter schools receiving “special treatment” to the detriment of public schools. This is simply not the case. Charters receive funding on a two-year lag which means they wait 2 YEARS to get the same funding increases (or decreases) as public schools. Charters are not guaranteed building space by the DOE which means that many have to pay rent and be extremely aggressive about soliciting grants and donations to make ends meet.
For all that charter schools ARE public schools and they are comprised of the same kinds of kids, teachers and administrators as regular public schools. I don’t know to what extent the public even realizes that they are being used to fight battles that have NOTHING to do with effective education and everything to do with political land-grabbing.
I think it’s completely reasonable to expect a seat at the table if a school is opening in your district. But that’s not what this meeting was really about. It was about taking a shot at the perceived “favorite child” to get back at the Mayor. By limiting charter schools’ access to public money and space, you won’t be limiting charter schools, you’ll be limiting the KINDS of charter schools that will be available. In this climate, only the biggest with the richest, most politically plugged-in backers will survive.
Charter schools are not going to go away but if this kind of partisan bs continues they will cease to become innovative, exceptional alternatives for all NY students. This mayor won’t be around forever. Is it worth limiting kids’ educational opportunities in the long term to land a political blow in the short-term?
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April 7th, 2009 5:21 pm
Unfortunately, anonymous, the union masters pulling the puppet strings on this one are not thinking short-term. They (Randi, UFT, NYSUT leadership) are trying to maintain the monopoly they have had for so long on “teacher voice,” that is now apparently being threatened by schools where teachers actually have a choice as to whether they will collectively bargain or not.
It’s not short term at all to be concerned about the dues they lose every time a charter school opens and the teachers don’t choose to organize with the UFT.
It’s too bad that the UFT operates this way - Al Shanker is turning in his grave over this agenda, not the way charter schools are run. If the UFT was really for positive education reform and NYSUT was really “a union of professionals,” don’t you think more of the hordes of charter school teachers would want to sign up and organize? It’s such big news at KIPP AMP, and then we are hearing that the teachers at KIPP don’t really want to be represented by the UFT after all.
I wouldn’t, if I were a charter school teacher, after what NYSUT did to charter schools in the state budget debacle.
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April 7th, 2009 5:23 pm
Randi to kids: “Drop dead.”
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April 7th, 2009 7:38 pm
Bloomberg and Klein to kids: “Drop dead, we’ll pass you anyway.”
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April 8th, 2009 10:44 pm
Did I miss something? Lappin is still waiting for a school for the PS 151 zone. It’s been nine years. Is that her example of working with DOE? If the DOE placed new charters the way they place schools in her district, that is they simply don’t, then true, there would not be an issue.
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June 11th, 2009 11:22 pm
It is false that charter schools do not have to pay rent in NYC public school space (as anonymously posted) that is given to them and STOLEN from public schools… they get it for FREE, just like they get food, transportion and other resources beyond the over $12,000 per pupil public money they get. The charter school agenda being propagated by this administration is an assult on public schools, drains their resources, and is the road to privatization. Do your research and be informed! Bloomberg and Klein want to close half of public schools and double the number of charter schools in their next term (if they get it) and we as citizens can not allow this to happen. Public schools are the pillar of our democracy and any attempt to create a ‘class’ system within education would be a monumental detriment to our society, to our children. This is not about the union… do not fall victim to the politicizing of our educational system! Protect and preserve public education and use our resources and efforts to create real and sustainable reforms within the system we have. The logic that charter schools perform better is a flatly false and is a manipulation of numbers and the claim that public schools are failing in areas charters are targeting is also plainly false. These two talking points are propaganda techniques aimed to propagate an agenda designed to further marginalize those who are already most marginalized in our society. Read up. Be informed and fight to preserve public education and stand in oppostion to the Bloomberg educational agenda!
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