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Protesters opposing Department of Education proposals brandished hand puppets before the Panel for Educational Policy.

In the start of what has become an annual ritual, the Panel for Educational Policy Wednesday night listened to hours of rowdy public comments opposing the city’s policy of placing charter schools inside existing school buildings, then signed off on plans to do just that.

The panel gave the go-ahead to a Success Charter school co-location in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, an affluent neighborhood where many parents and elected officials have said the school is not wanted.

Panel members Gbubemi Okotieuro, of Brooklyn, and Patrick Sullivan, of Manhattan, each raised issues about the co-location plan for the Success Charter school, which did not originally apply to open in the area.

Marc Sternberg, the Department of Education official in charge of new schools, said the department had determined the neighborhood had experienced an “explosion of kindergarten enrollment” and needed more elementary schools.

“It was made clear to us by SUNY that the charter school could be opened in District 15,” Sternberg said, referring to the state organization that authorizes charter schools, which approved the Success Academy school for nearby District 13 or 14.

Sullivan was the only panel member to vote against any of the plans, casting a “no” vote on the Cobble Hill c0-location and abstaining from several other votes.

The panel also approved plans to open a charter high school in the old Boys High School building and a second Success charter school in P.S. 59, both in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. It also signed off on a plan to expand Esperanza Preparatory Academy, a dual-language school in East Harlem that shares a building with a citywide gifted school, TAG Young Scholars, whose parents had opposed the change. (more…)