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!

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.

can’t geoff canada pay for this on his own? i’m so tired of charter schools sucking public money out of the system.

I worked in a school that housed K-1 in portables in the back of the building. They had been there much longer than anticipated and have contributed to a deplorable and dangerous learning environment for the students. There was a rat infestation so bad that vermin were lurking around the room with students. It got so bad that it eventually made the news and the trailers had to be evacuated.

The investment should be in high need areas such as my old school.

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?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10marketing.html

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’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?

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