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Latest PEP appointees’ ties to charter schools are questioned

Mayor Bloomberg’s latest appointments to the Panel for Educational Policy are two men with ties to charter schools that have faced panel votes.

The appointments — made without fanfare — are drawing criticism from other panel members and critics of the panel, who say the new appointees’ interests make them unable to assess proposed policies fairly. A proposal involving Success Academy Charter Schools, which one of the new board members has represented in legal proceedings, is up for a vote at tonight’s panel meeting.

Last month, Joseph Lewis, Jr., was appointed to replace Rosemarie Maldonado, an administrator at John Jay College who had been on the panel since last July. According to his biography on the PEP website, Lewis attended New York City schools; has served on the board of Leadership Prep Charter School; and is currently on the boards of several other education organizations, including NYCAN, a group that has advocated for public school parents to be able to turn their schools into charter schools.

The other new appointee is David Brown, an attorney who works at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison LLP. While he mostly focuses on business litigation, according to the firm’s website, he also does pro bono work for nonprofit clients, including the charter school network that most often seeks space in city school buildings.

“Recently, he has represented Success Academy Charter Schools in cases where plaintiffs sought to prevent the co-location of charter schools in school buildings owned by the New York City Department of Education,” Brown’s profile says.

The network, which is run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, has been the target of several lawsuits from parents who say the city has unfairly allocated space in their children’s schools to Success Academy schools. In each case, the PEP approved the co-location plans, as it has every time the city has brought a proposal to the table since it was created in 2002.

Brown’s first panel meeting was last week, when the panel voted to close 22 city schools. It also approved three different plans to install Success Academy schools in Department of Education buildings. Brown recused himself from the votes, according to a department spokeswoman.

Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee to the panel, first drew attention to Brown’s ties to the schools in messages posted on Twitter Tuesday night that included a link to Brown’s profile on the law firm’s website.

Dmytro Fedkowskyj, the Queens borough president’s appointee, responded to Sullivan with a message of his own. “He is also a board trustee for another charter school (per BIO). Appears to be a conflict of interest on the #PEP,” wrote Fedkowskyj, who along with Sullivan forms one half of a bloc of borough president appointees who usually vote against city proposals.

Brown’s biography on the Department of Education’s website says that he is a board member at Harlem Link Charter School. It does not mention his work with Success Academy.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew criticized Brown’s appointment as fitting into a pattern of favoritism that he said Bloomberg had shown Success Academy.

“First Mayor Bloomberg gives Eva Moskowitz a pipeline that feeds millions of public dollars from the DOE into her operation,” Mulgrew said. “Now he gives Eva a vote on the PEP.”

A spokesman for the union said that even though Brown will recuse himself for votes involving Success Academy schools, his appointment is still a problem because he will vote on school closures and co-locations, two policies that have enabled the network’s expansion.

But a spokeswoman for Success Academy pointed out that Brown’s recusals would give the charter network a slimmer margin of support when proposals involving its schools come before the panel. “We weren’t aware of David Brown’s appointment until after the fact,” said the spokeswoman, Jenny Sedlis.

It’s not the first time that Bloomberg has picked someone with ties to Success Academy for the school board. In 2010, he chose a Goldman Sachs vice president who had been on the board of one of the network’s schools until he resigned days before the city announced his position on the PEP.

Tonight, the panel will vote on 17 additional new school and co-location proposals, including one to move the middle grades of Success Academy’s second school into a Harlem building where another school’s middle grades are being phased out. According to a city analysis of comments at a public hearing in February, which 118 people attended, every speaker opposed the plan.

This story has been updated with comment from Success Academy Charter Schools.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tommy-Calderon/100000263260717 Tommy Calderon

    How is this:
    “Truman High Principal Sana Nasser told teachers to sway students’ city survey responses.”
    worse than this:
    “Mayor Bloomberg’s latest appointments to the Panel for Educational Policy are two men with ties to charter schools that have faced panel votes.”?

  • Les Vegas

    Bloomberg either doesn’t care about the conflict of interest (because it fits his agenda) or he didn’t do his homework. Either way, total BS and even more proof why he needs to leave and mayoral control needs to be amended.

  • MrKotter

    The fox is guarding the henhouse. Sadly, nothing new for the Bloomberg Administration.

  • Theorem_Ox

    Lesson learned: Conflict of interest are an issue only for the rank-and-file and offenders should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

    Those on top are too important to care for such trivial matters and shouldn’t be inconvenienced at any cost.

  • gideon4ed

    how is this any different than Patrick Sullivan being president of the board of directors of Class Size Matters, which has a clear anti-charter agenda?

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    I am not a member of Class Size Matters, but an avid supporter, and long-time fan of Mr. Sullivan.
    I dare say the difference is that Mr. Sullivan does not have his paycheck involved in PEP vote outcomes, that class size reduction is the primary mission of CSM, and that Mr. Sullivan’s record speaks volumes as a voice of intergrity on behalf of all New York City schoolchildren – not just the ones in charters.

  • noryeln

    What’s more interesting is the rapid turn over of mayoral appointees on the PEP. Maybe they have figured out it means nothing to be on the PEP, members get no respect and the policies supported by the Mayor and Chancellor are not education policies.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ari.steinfeld.3 Ari Steinfeld

    Two more Cathy Black appointments. After reading their biography I wonder what makes them capable of representing the cities interests in these issues. Counting days and hoping for real change in governance law. Walcott should be man enough to protest these appointments, they can not understand the issues facing the school system.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tommy-Calderon/100000263260717 Tommy Calderon

    1) He does not gain personally from his involvement.
    2) He defies the Miny Dictator at every turn which makes him a man of integrity.
    3) In this city, anyone with an anti-charter agenda is aces.

  • MrKotter

    Ari, Let us all hope they are just as revealing to the public as the Cathy Black appointment was regarding the motivations and the whims of the Mayor. He really is way past his expiration date. Walcott does as he is told on all the important issues. I know, not a ground breaking observation.

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    Just fixed a typo on “integrity.” Ack.

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    The question should be: Why does the Mayor have such a PRO-charter agenda?

  • norm

    I don’t understand why people have a problem. Each borough president
    gets one appointee, the Mayor 7 and Eva gets to pick one of her own.
    Look for a bill in Albany making Eva equal to a borough president.

  • Les Vegas

    …asks the millionaire trying to privatize public education…

  • vanna

    Another, sham of a sham with the current mayor involved. It doesn’t matter because the PEP will be dismantled once our new mayor gets appointed so this article is a mute point

  • domauc

    It’s amazing at these PEP hearings how there are 9 votes for every proposal and 4 against. There were 15 to 20 proposals voted on the other night. In what other arena can you get 9 people to fully agree on 20 separate issues. Stating the obvious, but the PEP is not a group of people weighing the merits of each proposal, but rather a puppet show. What a disgrace.

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