Do we need a Geneva Convention simply to ensure that our kids can get to class or breakfast without running human gauntlets?

The children have every right to line up and be lined up in front of their school. NO ONE ought to have the right to harass them, or shoot them… with cameras.

In fact, from what I saw, HSA actually opened the doors EARLY to get the kids out of the line of fire. Usually the kids begin to enter for breakfast around 7:20, but the principal at HSA opened the doors around 7:00 even though the cafeteria staff wasn’t ready to serve, just to get the kids out of the protest.

Do you have evidence about HSA lying about space? Because I’ve been up there, and not only do they NOT have empty classrooms (as claimed in the video), but they turned what were last year broom closets into offices and space for special ed providers.

The class sizes aren’t even small up there. They have 30+ Kindergarteners in a classroom.

Keep in mind, HSA didn’t even want to stay at 123. They’re having as many space issues upstairs as we are downstairs. They had arranged to move to a new building before our lovely UFT sued to keep that school open.

Our ire is going to the WRONG PEOPLE. It is not because of HSA that we have bad lighting and dirty classrooms. Our ire should be at both the UFT and the DOE. If HSA weren’t in our building it would be in as terrible of shape as it is now. If not worse. (You do realize that they offered to air condition our common spaces like the gym and auditorium but our instigatory administration turned them down. Administration is making a martyr of us simply to prove a point.)

Here is the link to the commentary and video:
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2009/09/separate-and-unequal-first-day-of.html

On Cerf’s role in organizing charter school parents, there was group there at the PEP using the usual expressions like “Thank you Joel Klein for giving us choice when we have failing public schools in our beighborhood,” without holding Joel Klein, who is in charge of those failing schools, accountable. They must have left that out of the script. They also made sure to attack the UFT teachers who are protesting having to teach in closets while charter schools lie about their enrollment as a way to get more space (which the DOE always gives them).

Tonight’s CEC 15 meeting at the Patrick Daly School in Red Hook over the PAVE charter school attempt to extend their stay from the original 2 years to 5 years will reveal some of the outrages of the things these charters do to steal space from public schools and force their prime enrichment programs into basements and closets.

And by the way, for the charter school advocates, you can remove that item about the protests at PS 123 and PS 15 and others to come as being supported by the UFT. As an organization that occupies space in two public schools themselves, they have little ground to stand on. Teachers involved in these activities are doing it on their own initiative, with independent activist groups like GEM and the CPE supporting them.

No non-charter should be at liberty to give away space to any charter. I don’t see much of Tweed in your narrative, except to play ref.

This would all be a non-issue if a charter wasn’t splitting a building with a non-charter. Numerous posts on problems inherent with that bunk-bed arrangement; one with fresh paint and AC’s, one not, etc.

A deal was established between HSA and PS 123 in JUNE. Every ounce of space was discussed, including which hallways and stairwells HSA would be permitted to be used by HSA. The space was to be turned over to HSA on July 1.

There were teachers at PS 123 that did not agree with the process and unfortunately took it upon themselves to halt the process by blocking doorways which then required police involvement which was why Tweed had to get involved at all.

Let’s just say, this entire situation has not be covered very accurately in the media and has been misrepresented and at times propagandized by one side of the table. And it’s probably the not the side you would expect. I am also not associated with the side you would probably expect.

One party has been very willing to work and negotiate. Another has not. This summer has been hard on the staff at PS 123, but sadly it has not been due to treatment by HSA but misrepresentation and fallacies being spread by our own administration.

However, there were numerous stories in the press on GS and on EdNotes at the time, on which I (and others) base assertions of space grabbing.

Tales of teachers blocking furniture movers, and BP Stringer attending a rally, come to mind.

July 7 – Rally after PS 123 Teachers block HSA movers.
July 9 – DOE formally rules in favor of HSA taking PS 123 space.
I also recall HSA’s defense then was that a deal had been cut with Tweed — not PS 123 itself. A deal on ratified until July 9?

You say July 1, deal in hand. Who am I to disagree; I’ll defer to the teachers and administrators of PS 123 itself, and contemporaneous media coverage.

Personally, I have never seen such a signed deal here on GS. Please provide to GS so they can post it.

I’m full of hyperbole, but strive to keep my facts straight.

You mean if I let the Mayor’s critics “kick the sh!t out of me”* — translation: write that I’m stealing space when indeed I’ve been caught red-handed doing exactly that (as covered by GS and others re HSAII) — I can truly steal space for kids in my overcrowded district?

And all I have to do is obfuscate the common understanding in context of a word like “public?”

Where do I sign up!?!

* So much for my encouraging the kids to read this blog. ; – )

Note that non-charter public school parents held their ground at least once before:
In May 2008, in District 2 re grades 6-8 of the Ross Academy charter school, which DOE had intended to place at 55 East 25th Street, in a leased building then used by School for the Physical City. CEC2 took this stand based first on the prior crowding of schools in the vicinity, and second, based on the high number of NON-District 2 kids who would be served; in fairness, not specifically on the basis that it was a charter.
(Click my name for link to the CEC2 letter.)

* Faux grass-rootsiness. A specialty, btw, of at least one other Bloomberg staffer, formerly of the McCain 2008 campaign.

What? the vast majority of charter schools are housed in DOE buildings; I can remember only one charter school that was refused that privilege (the Hebrew charter school) after the community got something like 7,000 signatures on petitions opposing this; and every year the no. of charter school students in DOE grows geometrically.

They are taking up more and more room in our overcrowded facilities and the DOE has now said they will build charter schools as well as regular schools with the $3.8 billion in school construction funds in the capital plan, even though it will cost the city twice as much per charter seat (since the state does not reimburse for charter school construction. What universe does Joe Williams and the other charter school advocates live in? Do they expect that the DOE will just turn over the whole infrastructure of our schools to them entirely?

In addition, considering the millions of dollars that Learn NY got from Gates, Broad etc. I think they did a lousy job. They couldn’t turn out any traditional public school parents at any of the hearings or get them to go to Albany to support mayoral control; and at one Bloomberg event I attended, the handful of Learn NY “parents” they got to show up at rallies over the weekend refused to talk to reporters. It was clearly rent a crowd.