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The Department of Education is proposing to bring one Harlem space war to a close by moving one of Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools to another building.

Under the proposal, to be released tomorrow, Harlem Success Academy II would move out of the building it currently shares with P.S. 123 and into the East Harlem building currently occupied by KAPPA II, one of the 20 schools the DOE plans to shutter.

The new proposal is likely to be greeted with cheers by parents and teachers at P.S. 123. Whether it will be embraced by P.S. 30 and P.S. 138, the two district schools that currently share their building with KAPPA II, is less clear.

Harlem Success Academy administrators were also not enthusiastic about the plan. Jenny Sedlis, spokeswoman for Success Charter Network, which operates the charter school, said the school considered its possible move a setback.

“The union has won this space war,” Sedlis said. (more…)

Protester William Hargraves in front of P.S. 132 this morning

A gaggle of public officials and reporters weren’t the only ones crowding entrances to New York City public schools this morning. Students at Harlem Success Academy 2 were welcomed to school with protests over the use of their building space.

“No justice, no peace,” chanted roughly fifteen protesters as they circled in front of the 140th St. entrance of P.S. 123, where Harlem Success Academy principal Jim Manly and dean of students Khari Shabazz waited for their students to arrive. As students arrived for school, the two escorted them through the circle and into the building. Several smaller students dodged and weaved between demonstrators to get into the building and many looked upset and perplexed at the hubbub. (more…)

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer reflects on his tour of P.S. 123 today.

Scott Stringer and Eva Moskowitz are fighting again, not over an elected office this time, but over school space.

Stringer, who defeated Moskowitz in a fierce borough presidency race in 2005, reignited the flames by taking a tour of a Harlem elementary school today. The school, P.S. 123, shares space with Harlem Success Academy 2, one of Moskowitz’s four charter schools. Charter schools are public schools that are privately operated.

Stringer’s visit, guided by P.S. 123 parents, teachers, and members of the activist group ACORN, was the latest attempt by supporters of the school to try to stop Harlem Success from expanding into its classrooms as the charter school adds a first grade. (An earlier scuffle between the two schools ended with police intervention.)

The building tour provided a rare on-the-ground view of the space wars that have accelerated as more and more school buildings house multiple schools.

Piles of furniture and boxes of supplies cluttered a third floor hallway, the detritus of Harlem Success’ move last week, P.S. 123 parents and teachers explained. School supporters also pointed to spaces they fear they will lose to the charter school, including a gym that Harlem Success has proposed splitting in half by partition so that both schools could use it at once. They said they also worry their library will be converted into a classroom. (more…)

I have a story in this week’s Village Voice about the fight over how to improve struggling public schools. Should the schools be rescued from the inside or replaced?

I focus on P.S. 194 in Harlem, which school officials favor replacing with the fledgling Harlem Success Academy 2. Both the principal at HSA 2, Jim Manly, and the principal at P.S. 194, Charyn Koppelson Cleary, are trying to give Harlem’s children a radically different experience of school. Yet they have very different tools to work with.

Cleary’s world:

Before the school year began, staffers recall, she gathered her whole faculty, from the teachers to the security officer to the secretary, in what she called a “circle of change.” Each person talked about what needed changing at the school. “The good news,” Cleary told them, according to people who were there, “is that 94 or 95 percent of the stuff you guys are talking about, we can change.”

In some ways, Cleary was constrained in her efforts. She could not hire a staff of her own, since the bulk of the teachers were inherited from the school’s previous years. She could not ask the custodian to repaint the entire building, since his contract only permitted a certain percentage. But she did the best she could, asking for the neediest rooms to get fresh paint and finagling a handful of other educators she trusted onto the payroll.

She also only had last three months to prepare for her turnaround: She began the job last July.

Now, here’s Manly’s world: (more…)