GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Chancellor Joel Klein signed an order today to close a Brooklyn charter school that city school officials said had some of the most egregious charter violations they’d ever seen.

In June, East New York Preparatory Charter School will become the fourth charter school to close in the city’s history. In his recommendation to Klein that the school close, Deputy Chancellor John White wrote that although the charter school’s new board members acknowledged prior wrongdoing, many problems remained.

“ENYP has not presented any evidence responding to the findings that lower performing students were being involuntarily transferred from the school or discouraged from attending the school,” White wrote.

Klein’s decision marks an end to a contentious closure process that pitted parents who wanted the school to remain open against city officials charged with making sure the school followed its charter. (more…)

City officials made the case today that a Brooklyn charter school should be the first to close before its charter expires.

East New York Preparatory Charter School was the subject of oral arguments today, as the school’s brand new board members tried to convince Department of Education officials to keep it open and officials from the charter school office argued for its closure.

Accused by both the city and state of egregious mismanagement, the school’s principal Sheila Joseph is alleged to have pushed students with low test scores out of the school, given herself a significant raise, and created an environment so unstable that Teach for America is threatening to pull all six of its members out of the building. Were the organization to severe all ties, the school would be left with two teachers. (more…)

The head of the Brooklyn charter school whose charter could be revoked is firing back at the Department of Education and the former teachers who reported her.

In a letter sent to parents on Tuesday, Sheila Joseph, superintendent of the East New York Preparatory school, called the DOE’s allegations that she artificially inflated her salary, violated its charter by shortening the school year and expelled nearly 50 low-performing students before they took state tests “unfounded and untrue.” Joseph also argued in the letter that the school’s high faculty turnover rate was necessary to preserve high standards for the students.

“No one enjoys faculty turnover, but just as we have high and uncompromising standards for our students we also will not compromise on faculty performance,” she wrote. Between the end of last school year and the beginning of this one, the school lost every teacher it had.

“Some of our best teachers are now here because others had to be let go,” Joseph continued. “I don’t take lightly the fact that there has been turnover. However, I will never allow your children to have anything less than the absolute best.”

Former teachers at the school reacted angrily to Joseph’s explanation to parents.

“She’s lying,” said one former teacher who was dismissed in June. (more…)

Students from 34 city public schools and and an influx of tearful well-wishers — including some members of the New York Guard, a family that traveled to Harlem from New Jersey, and city charter school lobbyists — filled the enormous Harlem Armory this morning to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration on three giant television screens.

Just before noon, some children squirmed while students and teachers spoke at a dais. Others sank into their seats and nodded quietly to the iPod music plugged into their ears. But when the CNN announcer declared that, although he had not yet been sworn in, Obama was now officially president, even the too-cool-for-school students stood up to scream. When he took the oath of office, children jumped up and down, grinning, and waved American flags. Adults sitting on the sidelines wiped tears from their eyes.

Douglas Noble, an eighth-grader at KAPPA II, said Obama caused him to reevaluate his dreams.

One former sloucher, Douglas Noble, a 14-year-old eighth-grader at KAPPA II, a middle school in East Harlem, had drawn a picture of Obama on a posterboard and written the words “YES, WE, CAN” at the top. “He showed every black person that, even though you’re at the bottom, you can still make it to the top,” Noble said.

He said Obama’s rise changed his life goals. He had wanted to be a basketball player, but now he’s set his sights on engineering. “Everybody wants to be a basketball player, but I want to be something that’s harder,” he said. “A basketball player, all you have to know how to do is dribble and shoot. An engineer, you have to know a lot more.”

Noble, who wore a hooded sweatshirt and a Yankees t-shirt, sat down for most of the day’s events, even as other students danced around excitedly, but he pushed his chair back and stood when Obama took the oath of office. “I’m showing my respect to Obama for making it,” he said.

The Democracy Prep charter school, a three-year-old middle school in Harlem which will extend into high school next year, organized the event, coming up with the idea of a party in their own neighborhood after the school’s plans to travel to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration didn’t transpire. A group of about 25 students sat on an inauguration committee that planned the alternative event. (A lone student supported John McCain.)

Their Harlem Armory party proved so popular that the entire floor of the Armory today was packed with round tables filled with children. Seats in upstairs bleachers were also filled. Students found blank poster boards and markers at their tables, and they filled the posters with pictures congratulating Obama.

Democracy Prep founder Seth Andrew made the event political, too. Next to the markers and posterboard were postcards pre-addressed to President Barack Obama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The postcards said:

Dear President Obama:

I want to congratulate you on this historic day and ask you to keep your promise to support more school choice and parent voice in education.

The postcards also included room for students to write their ideas for how to improve America’s schools, and a request: “Please write back if you can.”

The executive director of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, James Merriman, sat in the crowd of students alongside Michael Thomas Duffy, who runs the Department of Education’s charter school office. Merriman addressed the crowd, and a press group that works with his organization, Knickerbocker SKD, handled the gaggles of press who converged in Harlem for the event.

“Out of all the choices, I wanted to come to Harlem,” said Cathy Salley, a mother from New Jersey who brought her children to the Armory for the day. “It’s the environment, it’s the camaraderie. This is an experience they’ll never forget.”

There were some moments when the entire room came alive, like when Obama took his oath and students stood up with him and put their hands over their hearts, and when Aretha Franklin sang. One girl, a student at East New York Prep Charter School in Brooklyn, registered a note of disappointment when she realized Obama himself would not be in Harlem. “I was excited because I thought I was going to see Obama,” she said.

The final time the room exploded came via a song the event organizers put on the loudspeaker, after fading out the sound of CNN. It was Natasha Bedingfield singing “Unwritten.”