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January 19, 2012

City charter schools gearing up for February’s advocacy efforts

by Philissa Cramer, at 3:51 pm

Students at a charter high school who have been learning about state politics evidently think Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the right questions during his State of the State address earlier this month.

During the speech, Cuomo argued that students are the only people in schools who don’t have advocates in Albany. Who should represent them? he asked. His answer: “This year, I will take a second job — consider me the lobbyist for the students.”

That answer satisfied students the Renaissance Charter High School for Innovation, who created a short video recapping Cuomo’s comments.

“Who’s OUR lobbyist?” one student asks. Later, she says, “My governor, my lobbyist.”

The video is part of the school’s preparation for Charter Advocacy Day on Feb. 7, according to Principal Nicholas Tishuk. It follows another video, about cyberbullying, produced earlier this month after legislators visited the school.

Each year, charter school students, parents, and teachers caravan to Albany for a long day of pushing legislators to support the schools, which now enroll nearly 50,000 students in New York City.

This year’s goal, according to the New York City Charter Schools Center’s online calendar, is to “share positive stories about charter schools all across the state and work with the legislature to ensure that parents have a voice in the system.”

Last year, more than 2,000 charter school parents, teachers, and students rallied in Albany for facilities funding. The year before that, they sat in on a budget hearing and took aim at a state law that capped the number of charter schools in the state at 200. Later that spring, legislators raised the cap during a spree of education legislation aimed at boosting the state’s chances of winning federal Race to the Top dollars.

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  • Marty

    Creepy!

  • Proteach

    This is disturbing.  clearly this school is not teaching critical thinking.  What is the deal with gotham schools now.  They just publish anything at face value.  This site has moved even more toward the pro-deformer camp. 

  • http://twitter.com/leoniehaimson leonie haimson

    the charter industry has a huge amount of money and power to influence politicians; this video is a joke.

  • Machvelian

    gates, moskowitz, bloomberg, canada, klein/foxnews, I think Charter Schools, with 1% of the student population and a larger % of the tax pool and a lower % of high-need students, have sufficient representation in New York State, to say the least.

  • http://www.innovationhs.org/ Nicholas Tishuk

    Civic engagement is the heart of a healthy
    democracy.  Every public school (whether district or charter) has the
    responsibility to give its students an opportunity to discuss and debate issues
    that effect their lives. In NYC, education is clearly one of these issues.

     

    Students at Innovation have been learning about
    these kinds of issues since the school’s founding in 2010. Last May, we led a
    delegation of NYC high school students on a practicum to Jackson, MS to attend
    Mississippi 50th celebration honoring the Freedom Riders. They met over 100 of
    these civil rights heroes, interviewed them, heard their stories and
    kickstarted their understanding this country’s path long path towards racial
    and economic justice.

     

    Last month, we had the honor of hosting NY State
    Senator Klein and our East Harlem local elected officials to learn more about
    Cyberbullying. Besides meeting Perry Aftab, a nationally recognized expert on
    the issue, our students engaged in NY’s first youth cyberbullying survey and
    got a chance to talk about their perspectives with State policymakers. You can
    see Innovation students’ response in the clip linked above in the story.

     

    The ‘My Governor’ clip is a nod to the Governor’s State of the State
    speech. Most of them had never seen a SoS speech and were excited to hear the
    Governor’s thoughts on education.  Our
    students are looking forward to visiting Albany as a part of a school practicum
    next month coinciding with Charter Advocacy Day, where they are learning about
    NY State policy issues, with a focus on education.  

     

    While some of the cynics on this board will undoubtedly attack our students and these efforts because they are learning at
    a charter school and not a district school, I think the lesson is clear: Students
    such as ours at Innovation (37% of whom have IEPs, 85% receive free lunch, 99%
    African American or Latino) are not empowered in US society and the effort to
    encourage them in civics, engagement and experiential learning in issues
    affecting them is a vital necessity.

    Best,
    Nicholas Tishuk
    Principal, Renaissance Charter HS for Innovation
    nicholas.tishuk @ innovationhs.org

  • PublicCharterMom

    Thank you so much for what you are doing for these children. It is very disturbing to read that there are people who can make our children a percentage and dismiss them. Thank you for giving a voice to those who are truly at the front line of this issue. 

  • Anonymous

    Our children are not a joke. But thanks for always thinking of children first. 

  • bee

    Actually, Leonie Haimson, does think of the children first. She is an amazing advocate for children. (Class Size Matters) It’s fairly obvious she wasn’t referring to the children as a joke, she was referring to the charter industry.

  • Guest

    So do the teachers unions. Duh. And does Class Size Matters disclose its funding sources?

  • Flerp

    http://www.classsizematters.org/
    It doesn’t look like it discloses its funding.  But I’d be shocked if it didn’t take money from the union.  

  • dirk

    For those that are critical of the school and its efforts I would suggest you reach out to them and try to base your comments on greater background ( I am sure they would invite you to visit)– they took the kids with the original freedom riders to retrace those historic trips– that’s not teaching deep critical thinking in a way that will stick with kids and instill a sense of justice?  The dialogue on this site is often so knee jerk and really not a dialogue i.e charters are all rich corporate money grubbers or charters are the cowboy on the white horse with the silver bullet.  Please do your homework prior to mis casting stones

  • http://twitter.com/ceolaf ceolaf

    It’s too bad that this school is not teaching its students what a lobbyist is or does. It’s too bad that they think that the chief executive of a state could be a lobbyist. It’s too bad that this that school doesn’t teach students about the numerous NGOs who lobby for students. 

    And it’s really too bad that the school would use student like that for political purposes instead of actually educating them on how government works. 

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