GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

I know how Geoff Canada feels, being literally out of space. We were literally out of space maybe ten years ago.

Funny how they built us trailers, halved our rooms, and dumped our kids in closets while Geoff Canada gets a hundred-million dollar building.

Ms. Haimson,

I’m not sure I understand.  Are you saying there is room in Harlem public school facilities for charter schools to expand and therefore it’s a waste of money to build this additional space?

Pave and NYC will put up a new building in Red Hook when someone raises the Titanic.
NO ONE believes this. Besides this, why does a billionaire need money from the city to put up a building? We are living in a time of total corruption. The fish stinks at the head, Bloomberg, the education disaster mayor! But then again, NYS is the corruption state, every elected official here gets paid off.

It seems Ms. Haimson’s position is that she doesn’t want charter schools in existing public school buildings and she doesn’t want them in other buildings either. In short, she just doesn’t want them anywhere.  When she wants to prevent charter schools from colocating, she says schools in Harlem are over-crowded. See http://www.classsizematters.org/EIS_comments_co-locations_3.21.10_final.pdf.  http://www.classsizematters.org/charterschoolsinHarlem.html  When someone proposes to build a new building jointly with a combination public and private funds, now she says that in fact Harlem schools are “underenrolled.”  Obviously, if another building is built in Harlem, that will draw students out of existing school facilities and make those schools less crowded (assuming, by the way, that they are, which they aren’t). Building a building does that whether or not the students go to a charter school or a public school.  And with this plan, the government only pays for part of the costs so you get just as much benefit in terms of decreasing supposed overcrowding with private funds picking up 40% of the costs. Since Ms. Haimson wants to decrease (supposed) overcrowding, she should welcome this. 

But that isn’t the real agenda anyway. The real agenda is to stop charter schools. The fact that parents in Harlem want to send their children to charters schools apparently doesn’t matter. She apparently doesn’t want Harlem parents to make that decision for themselves. 

Ms. Haimson is always in lockstep with the union on every issue.  Even on something like this where you could actually get private money to subsidize an increase in the overall space available to educate students in Harlem, if it’s pro charter school, Ms. Haimson is against it.  Everything has to be about more money and smaller class size and if anybody suggests that there might be another way —  that must be stopped at all costs.

I would think my point is very clear. In a city where more than half of public school students attend severely overcrowded schools, and where 15% of elementary schools have waiting lists for Kindergarten, the city should spend valuable capital funds to build charter schools in communities in which the schools are already undercapacity. According to the DOE’s own data. D5 in Harlem is one of the least overcrowded districts in the city.

If charter school operators want to build their own schools, that’s fine; but the city’s capital funds should go where the need — and the overcrowding — is greatest. Aside from this, the city gets 50% reimbursement from the state for each new district public school it builds; according to press accounts, this school will be built based on 60% financing from the city, with 40% private funding. Thus, it appears that Mayor Bloomberg is willing to spend considerably more per seat for charter school students than the students in the public school system he himself runs, for the benefit of his political allies. How fair is that?

Leonie, sounds like a cost-effective solution for the undercrowding in Harlem you cite is for the city to lower class size by putting more charter schools in the unused rooms in Harlem school buildings, spreading the number of kids around more than they are now. Is that what you are suggesting?

This is for NYC students. Why is it bad for public money to be used to educate NYC children?

Right now, according to DOE data, there are more than 10,000 schoolchildren sitting in trailers; and many of these trailers are overcapacity and rotting away. This does not count the number of D 75 or severely disabled students in trailers, or HS students by the way, which DOE claims they are unable to count — though there are more than a hundred trailers assigned to D75 and HS students as well. In addition, there are over 439,303 students being educated in severely overcrowded school buildings. 15 percent of the students in Harlem are in overcrowded buildings, I was surprised to see, according to the DOE’s own data; but that compares to 30-50% of students in many other districts across the city.

In addition, the DOE gets 50% reimbursement from the state for every dollar it spends building district schools; and according to press accounts, the city will pay 60% for the HCZ complex. I assume but don’t know for sure the NYCHA land is being donated for free. NYCHA is completely broke, as most people are aware, and last year the city had proposed that NYCHA should sell off some of this land to subsidize its operations.

Now do others think that this is best use of the city’s scarce capital dollars, at a time where nearly half of all students attend severely overcrowded schools and enrollment is growing fast? I think not. Is the city’s decision to use its dollars to build a school for HCZ based upon need alone, or its political connections? I will leave it to others to decide. In any case, I want to stress these are my own views, and have nothing to do with the UFT. I do not know what the UFT position is on this issue. Indeed, I am mightily sick of people attacking other people’s views by claiming that they are in lockstep with the UFT. That might pass for an argument in the NY Post, but I hope not on this website.

Spencer the “Riper” Robertson has millions of his own money yet takes public money to lie about a building he will NEVER build. His goal is to TAKE OVER our public school building and push us out! PAVE Academy is a joke in Red Hook and has to go! This charter school administration has lied to the community; to it’s students’ families; and to its’ own teachers and staff!

Why else is there such a high turn-over rate in BOTH PAVE’s staff and students? People are waking up to all of the LIES! The Mayor and other rich politicians need to stop funding new charter school buildings, stop building new prisons and start putting our PUBLIC money back into PUBLIC schools!