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turf wars
February 10, 2010
East Harlem parents pre-emptively organize against charter school
Some East Harlem parents aren’t waiting to find out whether a charter school will move into their school building before organizing against the possibility.
Parents at the Manhattan East School for Arts and Academies recently got wind that the Department of Education was considering placing Harlem Success Academy 5, one of three new charters Eva Moskowitz plans to open next year, in their building. The plan would call for Manhattan East to move to another building across the street to create space for Moskowitz’s school.
The founding principal of Manhattan East, Jacqueline Ancess, said that the DOE did not tell the school that it could be moved; rather, the current principal and parents association head found out that a move was under consideration at an unrelated DOE meeting “by accident,” she said.
Ancess and the school’s parent association responded by sending out a letter yesterday asking parents and supporters to call the city’s information hotline today to ask the city not to relocate the school.
“Manhattan East is a very successful school,” the message urges parents to tell the city. “Moving Manhattan East from its home is unconscionable.”
DOE officials said school supporters’ outrage is premature. “We’re still in the process of looking for space for HSA 5 in District 4,” said DOE spokeswoman Ann Forte. “At this time, no decisions have been made.”
A DOE official said that while the building where Manhattan East is located had been under discussion as a potential location for the new HSA school but that it was not currently a likely choice.
The situation reflects an environment of heightened mistrust of the DOE among parents at many district schools in neighborhoods where charters are also expanding. Across the city, the DOE’s plans to place charter schools in buildings inside district school buildings frequently have been met with fierce resistance from parents at the district schools, who argue that their schools should not be required to give up space and resources for charter schools.
Ancess said that even if thoughts of moving the new HSA school into Manhattan East’s building are abandoned, the fact that the DOE would consider moving a successful district school to give space to a new charter demonstrated that the city is giving unfair preference to charters.
“It’s okay with them to consider moving Manhattan East, for a school that doesn’t exist yet,” she said. “That’s what is shocking to me.”
Here’s the letter that the former head of Manhattan East, Jacqueline Ancess, sent out to parents:
Dear Family and Friends, The middle school I started nearly 30 years ago is in trouble and I need you to help. Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 2 p.m., please call 311 and protest the plans of the NYC Department of Education to permit a charter school–Eva Moskowitz’s fifth “Harlem Success Academy”–from displacing Manhattan East from its home in the building on E. 99th Street. I suggest that you might tell the 311 operator the following: “This is a complaint to the NYC Department of Education. I am strongly opposed to the Department of Education evicting Manhattan East from JHS 99 to make room for Eva Moscowitz’s charter school. Manhattan East is a very successful school. Moving Manhattan East from its home is unconscionable.”
Here is what is going on: In a secret deal between Moskowitz and the DOE, without any notification to the Manhattan East community, the stage has been set to eject the school from the home it has been in for over fifteen years. Manhattan East would be the first successful school that the DOE has tried to oust from its home in an effort to accommodate charter schools at the expense of public schools. Moskowitz, who makes close to $400,000 for managing three schools (more than even chancellor Klein), has made no effort to contact the Manhattan East principal or the PTA president.
This is an unprecedented outrage and the DOE needs to hear your protest. Call tomorrow and let the DOE know that as a New Yorker and a friend of Manhattan East, you will not stand for their arrogant misuse of power.
This is only one instance of an attack on the public school system by the very people who should be protecting and supporting it.
Please pass this on to other friends of Manhattan East. Thank you. Jackie
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February 10th, 2010 9:29 pm
So let me understand this great idea–to start a charter for Eva Moskowitz, you move an existing public school across the street. That makes perfect sense. After all, why put the new school in the building across the street when you can simply disrupt everyone in the public school?
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February 11th, 2010 12:17 pm
The amended School Governance Law was passed for the express purpose of avoiding unilateral actions by the DOE … since the law has not impacted on the DOE perhaps the legislature should amend the law, maybe, reducing the mayoral appointees to a minority on the PEP …
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February 11th, 2010 12:29 pm
Peter,
That’s the best idea i’ve heard. The DoE has continued to marginalized the public is such a way that their elected officials are unable to address their concerns or represent them. The implementation of your suggestion would put a stop to the Mayor and the DoE’s abuse of their power, abuse of entire communities and tens of thousands of children. Your suggestion would allow parents and their communities to be stakeholders in how their Own children are treated. Our children are not numbers on a piece of paper. They are people who deserve respect and to be treated with dignity. -
February 11th, 2010 2:55 pm
Of course, she needs to move an existing school, even more if the infrastructure is perfect and she doesn’t have to go through all the fundraising, planning, building and organization; everything is ready. DOE permits her to do what she wants why to go through all that trouble? Who cares that are our children that have to deal with the frustration of changing environment every year. My son is in sixth grade and just got used to the new ambient and now’ they’re supposed to move? This is unfair to the children more than to anyone other. They have a school that they love; they have so upgraded facilities in the school that not every middle school has, that is a perfection of blending environment for science and art, why to ruin it, or better why these kids don’t deserve it? Can anybody answer this question? I don’t get it!
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February 11th, 2010 8:39 pm
[...] Department continues to act in the shroud of secrecy, without any public announcement the Department has been planning to move Manhatten East School for the Arts and Academies, a long [...]
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February 11th, 2010 9:06 pm
I graduated from Manhattan East years ago. Our floor in that building had soul and life, to kick the school out would completely disrupt everything the teachers and staff worked so hard to cultivate. Shame on Evil Moskowitz!
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February 11th, 2010 9:25 pm
Peter is right, mayoral appointees should be reduced. It’s absurd they have more power than all boroughs combined, and it’s incredible that there are no checks or balances on this mayor. Dictatorship is unethical, un-American, and unacceptable. There is no defense whatsoever for such a system.
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February 12th, 2010 12:36 am
[...] East Harlem parents pre-emptively organize against charter school … [...]
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February 12th, 2010 10:44 am
[...] East Harlem parents pre-emptively organize against charter school … [...]
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February 12th, 2010 11:27 am
Unfortunately for your views, NYCE, in a representative democracy if an elected official, like a mayor, wins the majority of votes in an election, then he gets to keep his job. Even if he overturns term limits first. Because you see, there have to be voters voting for him. Unless you think we have Saddam Hussein-type election fraud going on here. That would be a dictatorship.
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February 12th, 2010 3:11 pm
KS,
Thank you for the 8th grade civics lesson.
Unfortunately, unlike charter school operators, public school schools, their teachers and students are the targets of oligarchs like the mayor, who use their immense fortunes to overturn laws that inconvenience them, to stifle opposition and purchase elections, to siphon public money to schools controlled by private entities, and to encourage private grabs of public resources.
Where do those realities fit into your fantasy-world polity?
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February 12th, 2010 4:06 pm
MF,
“… use their immense fortunes to overturn laws that inconvenience them…”
“… stifle opposition and purchase elections…”Who are we talking about again? :)
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February 12th, 2010 5:24 pm
MF, I tried to make this comment earlier but I suppose it didn’t post.
Your oligarchy is going to have to expand because most of your local 51 city council members were complicit in overturning the term limits law last year.
Yes, Christine Quinn, Robert Jackson, one and all (except for Weprin, Liu and maybe a couple of others who stepped down; Gerson was voted out). This oligarchy is starting to smell like democracy, messy and smelly as it is. But not a dictatorship.
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February 12th, 2010 6:02 pm
No, KS, you’re wrong. I was specifically addressing the PEP, where no checks or balances equates to dictatorship. The fact that Bloomberg actually fires people before they’d vote against him makes this board an utter sham.
If you think the PEP is anything akin to representative democracy, you know nothing about representative democracy.
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February 12th, 2010 6:55 pm
Thank you! Calling 311 is a fabulous idea and should be done by every school community facing a DoE destabalizing action such as the one described above. The same shenanigans are taking place in West Harlem. The DoE is considering displacing PS 241 so they can give the building that PS 241 has resided in for 11 years to Moskowitz in order for her school to grow at the expense of the 241 community. The DoE hasn’t let anyone from PS 241 know this, but word travels fast in a community when people don’t trust the DoE or their motives. The DoE has leaked, possibly by accident, that they are “considering” moving PS 241 to the Wadleigh High School building around the corner, which also houses FDA II High School. They are considering the placement of 5 year olds in the same building as 18 year olds. This has already happenned to PS 241 when the DoE placed Opportunity Charter High School (OCS) for special needs students in the 241 building about 5 years ago. After years of growing pains and a drop in PS 241’s enrollment, which was a direct result of PS 241 parent’s fear of the danger 18 year old special needs students can pose, PS 241 and OCS have found a way to coexist. Now the DoE is aiming to destabalize PS 241 AGAIN!
Only 5% of HSA’s kindergarten enrollment comes from the PS 241 building’s zone, yet the DoE sees fit to displace the zoned community to make room for students who do not come from the community. This is nepotism at it’s absolute worst. Klein’s realestate givaway to his buddy Moskowitz. This is outrageous!
Please consider calling 311 for PS 241 as well.
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February 12th, 2010 8:39 pm
KS,
Is it such a stretch to consider the possibility that the few must make some ritual, symbolic gestures to maintain the illusion of popular participation? Just because Bloomberg, Quinn (who destroyed whatever political future she might have had by going along with the mayor on term limits), Jackson, et. al. had shared interests does not invalidate my analysis. Why shouldn’t the Big Man throw a few bones to his inferiors way down the food chain?
Who initiated the proposal to revoke term limits, contrary to his prior stated positions and two referendums? Who pushed it on the Council? Who strategically uses his “philanthropic” giving as a form of political bribery? In a sense, Bloomberg’s many millions have created a kind of semi-feudal private political machine.
Elections may or may not have anything to do with democracy. If you honestly think that what’s happened here in NYC is democracy, you have a very distorted concept of it.
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February 13th, 2010 6:24 am
MF,
I certainly have my problems with our representative democracy, but I’m not seeing oligarchy or tyranny. If my concept is distorted, I would appreciate a lesson from you, perhaps AP-level. What is your understanding of democracy? Pre-emptively, telling me what it is not is not helpful. And I’ll remind you that democracy does not mean, “Michael F and the teachers union always get our way.”
I’m intrigued by your notion that 51 city council members are no longer decision makers in their own right but pawns of the Big Man. I suppose if you want to preserve the idea of an oligarcy, 52 is too many to constitute “the few.”
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February 13th, 2010 7:00 am
Twice the NYC public voted on term limits. Twice the public declared term limits a fair idea. Too scared of having another vote solely on term limits again, Bloomberg bought his way around it with help from others who would benefit from it. Massive advertising, well placed donations, and backdoor promises later…voila! NYC democracy - Bloomberg style.
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February 13th, 2010 10:07 am
ALL
Within the next few weeks the Mayor will be creating a Charter Revision Commission, pursuant to the charter (which is actually the City Consitution) all appointments (not to exceed fifteen) are made by the Mayor, but, in the past the commissions were made up of primarily of scholars or folk w/ long experience in municpal government. The Chairman will probably be Mathew Goldstein, the CUNY head. The current form of government in NYC came out of the 1989 Commission, it abolished the Board of Estimate (as ordered by the federal courts) and created the system now in effect.
There have been a number of commissions since 89 that tweeked the charter. Voters have turned down other recommendations .
Looks like this charter will be preparing recommendation for the November 2011 ballot. It’s a transparent procedure with many public hearings.
Major issues will be 1) should the Public Advocate be abolished or granted real powers, 2) Same with the Boro Presidents, 3) The conflict between a strong Mayor w/ citywide concerns and the parochial interests (”Not in my backyard”) of local electeds, 4) Role of Community Boards, and, maybe, 5) Clarify whether the DOE is a City or State agency with clearly enunciated roles and authority
Don’t like the current system … get involved early and be heard.
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February 13th, 2010 11:06 am
It is a very interesting conversation that you people are having about what constitutes a Democracy or a Tyranny.
Just because there are 51 council members, that does not mean that they are at their own whim and devices. There are always factions and regardless of each of them being individuals, if there is are factions that sway for one side or another, there will always be a groups that will remain “neutral” and that neutrality can be used in creative ways and certainly be easily manipulated. KS, if these neutral council members are part of communities whose powerbrokers are beholden to some persuasive argument in the form of “philanthropic” loans, grants, they surely can be swayed to either oppose, join or remain neutral on certain votes. I do not believe that this is a concept of Democracy that our founding fathers had and even Ancient times, the Greeks had their own problems with oligarchs pushing their agenda in their Representative Democracy.
I do not want to be a pessimist but Middle Class America’s notion of the “Democracy” they are living in is quite Hollywoodesque in application and that is shown in people’s unrealistic understanding of how Democratic ideals are applied in real life.
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February 16th, 2010 4:31 pm
lets make a correction here. Shouldn’t “The situation reflects an environment of heightened mistrust of the DOE among parents at many district schools…” be “The situation reflects an environment of heightened mistrust of the DOE among Administrators and Teachers at many district schools”
In fact everywhere in the article that you mention parents you should say administrators and teachers, since those are the only sources you cite. When you can show that “many parents” in the school are concerned about this then you can make those statements.
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March 2nd, 2010 9:20 pm
Our parents and the students of Manhattan East raised the money to pay for our science lab, music room, and contributed to fixing our auditorium. How can you guys even think twice about taking all of this away from us. Our students are doing fine and the teachers are wonderful and here comes some lady wanting to move our big family. Would’nt it make more sense for that new school to move into a new building…. this isn’t fair to any of our new students, and instead of us having the big yard in the front we are going to be reduced to a little basketball court in the other school that we are supposed to leave to. No one hears from the students point of view. In this little tiny school can’t even fit all of our students. some students might even leave. we all worked hard for what we have, its taken years and now someone wants to take all of this away. This woman Eva Moskowitz needs to stop being selfish and leave our school alone she already has other schools.How can you call our school the Manhattan East School for Arts and Academics when you are taking away our arts and academics. -M.S.
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