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On a recent afternoon, dozens of teachers, social workers, and non-profit administrators, pored over the academic calendars of several charter schools. They were studying how a school can express its mission in the way it builds its calendar.

“There’s a lot to think about: Summer school — would that be mandatory?” asked Simeon Stolzberg, a former charter school authorizer who was leading the exercise. “You could have a year-round school, and maybe every eight weeks there would be a two-week vacation. Think about whether or not there is time in a day for teachers to plan and prep and grade — and eat lunch.”

Some of the teachers laughed, but Stolzberg was completely serious.

“Your calendar is one of the things that will set you a part from a district school,” he told the group, participants in a new program, Apply Right, that is helping prospective charter school leaders by taking them through the most minute details of school planning.

The program and two others, projects of the nonprofit New York City Charter School Center, reflect a growing sense that charter school leaders need more support than they have been getting.

“There were a number of schools that were approved in the last five years that frankly probably should not have been approved,” said James Merriman, the center’s director. “What I think we are seeing is that the bar of entry is being appropriately raised. … We want to see more charter schools, but we’re only really interested in seeing high-quality schools.” (more…)

A State Supreme Court judge has ruled that the city can move forward with its plans for 22 school closure and 15 co-locations.

In May, the UFT and NAACP filed a suit charging that the city had not adhered to the law and its own promises when planning the closures and charter school co-locations.

In a decision released late tonight, Judge Paul Feinman denied the UFT and NAACP’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the city from moving forward with its closure and co-location plans while those charges are considered. A temporary restraining order preventing the plans from advancing had been in place since early June.

Feinman’s decision came just hours after State Education Commissioner John King approved 12 of the closures, of schools on the state’s list of “persistently low-achieving” schools. The UFT and NAACP suit had argued that the city could not close schools on that list without state approval.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott applauded the decision, which he said validated the Bloomberg administration’s approach to fixing low-performing schools. (more…)

A small window of opportunity to resume settlement talks between dueling sides in the charter school co-location lawsuit has been slammed shut.

On Tuesday, an attorney for the teachers union publicly invited charter school supporters to discuss a deal on the condition that the group apologize for staging rallies against the NAACP, which is a fellow plaintiff along with the union. Today, a group of those supporters released a strongly worded statement declining the offer.

The union attorney, Charles Moerdler, made his comments after Tuesday’s hearing. Moerdler called the negative sentiment that has surrounded NAACP’s involvement in the lawsuit “disgraceful.”

“What they did to they NAACP is one of the most disgraceful acts I’ve ever seen,” Moerdler said, referring to a large rally organized last month. “This is an entity that made our education what it was. They opened the boundaries and cleared the way for people to get an education.”

He then presented NAACP’s critics a way out: Apologize.

“They’re not sitting with me until they apologize to the NAACP,” he said. ”I don’t even want to talk to them.”

But a statement released this afternoon and attributed to Joe Williams, of Democrats for Education Reform, James Merriman, of New York City Charter School Center and Eva Moskowitz, of Success Charter Network, makes it clear that no apology is coming:

“While the leadership of the UFT and New York City chapter of the NAACP have demanded an apology from the same charter schools that their lawsuit threatens to close before even sitting down to talk, the only people who should be apologizing are those trying to deny families the right to choose the best education for their kids.”

The three schools released from the UFT and NAACP lawsuit this week followed different paths to legal freedom.

The case for one of the schools relied on a broad base of community support, but a single man, Geoffrey Canada, made the case for the other two schools.

Charter school advocates believe Canada’s profile as a well-regarded, African-American education reformer made him an unpopular target for the NAACP. They say the decision to drop these schools from the lawsuit, which charges that the co-locations give preferential treatment to charter school students, weren’t made on legal merits.

“It makes it pretty clear that it’s not about equity. It’s not about the children,” said Rafiq Kalam Id-Din II, whose new school in Bedford-Stuyvesant is named in the suit. “This is about politics.”

Girls Preparatory Academy was unique from the other 17 schools named in the suit because its co-location plan had already received widespread community support. At the initial public hearing in February, both of the schools’ leaders endorsed co-location, as did Lisa Donlan, the district’s Community Education Council president and a frequent charter school critic.

“There was not one person who opposed this co-location,” Donlan said. (more…)

Last December, Community Board 12’s executive committee was discussing charter schools when committee members realized something: There were almost as many different perceptions of  charter schools as there were people in the room.

This epiphany, recalled board chair Pamela Palanque-North, was the inspiration for a forum the board held Saturday to give Washington Heights residents the basic facts about charter schools.

“This is an opportunity for us to have something called an educational intervention,” Palanque-North said in her opening remarks at the forum, titled “Our Children, Our Choices: An Informative Discussion on Public and Charter School Options.” About 35 neighborhood residents attended the event, which was organized by the board’s youth and education committee and translated live into Spanish.

The panel included charter school advocates and also critics, such as sociologist Pedro Noguera and the public school teacher who directed a new movie that takes aim at the idea that charter schools can fix all educational ills.

But perhaps as notable as who sat on the panel was who did not: a representative from the city Department of Education. Community Board 12 had advertised that Chancellor Dennis Walcott would speak on the morning’s first panel, although DOE officials said Walcott had never agreed to appear. (more…)

Charter school heads will visit City Hall tomorrow to present Mayor Bloomberg with an audacious request: They would like him to go over state lawmakers’ heads and restore a funding freeze that Albany probably won’t.

This year, lawmakers froze charter schools’ per-pupil funding levels at last year’s level, denying school leaders almost $1,000 per student in an expected increase. Given the rotten budget climate, it’s likely the legislature will do the same to next year’s budget.

To fight back, charter school leaders tomorrow will meet with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott — and, they hope, with Bloomberg, too — to suggest two possible solutions. Bloomberg can either “negotiate with Albany to remove the freeze,” as Charter School Center head James Merriman wrote in an e-mail last week. Or, Merriman wrote:

he can substitute other funds in the City’s own budget. (more…)

When it comes to New York City charter schools’ co-location in district buildings, the current debate has generated far more heat than light-and even the heat is exaggerated.

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking something like this: Charter school co-location involves widespread “space wars” provoked by elitist outsiders who invade neighborhood schools, exacerbate over-crowding, and take more than their share of scarce resources.” Yet every one of these impressions is wrong. In this column, I’ll explain why, and I’ll also offer my suggestion for a way to make the co-location process more fact-based.

1.  Charter school students are neighbors, not invaders. They come from the same districts and communities as children in co-located public schools. They are public school students, who would still need to be educated in a neighborhood school building if charter schools disappeared tomorrow.

No, charter students aren’t statistically identical in every respect; at the district level, charter students are more likely to be African American and somewhat less likely to have special needs (the reasons for this are complicated). (more…)

Assembly Democrats are ready to approve a lift to the state’s charter school cap — but only if they get a substantial change to the way charter schools are launched and approved in return.

Under the plan being developed by members of the state Assembly, the power to approve charters would be consolidated under the state Board of Regents, who currently share that authority with the State University of New York and local school districts. (Schools authorized by a school district are also granted final approval by the Regents.) The SUNY office has the strongest reputation and has been praised by the Obama administration as a model for developing charter schools around the country.

The plan would also change who decides when and where a new charter school is needed.

Right now, wannabe school leaders pitch plans to either SUNY or the Regents, who let the school open if the plan is solid and there are spots available under the cap. Under the Assembly proposal, the state education department would determine when and where a new charter school should open, and would then issue a request for proposals from charter school operators to launch the school.

Formal language on the proposal has not yet emerged, but there is consensus on the contours of the plan, sources said.

“It makes sense to have one authority,” said Democratic Assemblyman Alan Maisel. (more…)

Spurred by a series of meetings held by Queens’ borough president, charter school administrators, parents and students are gathering at The Renaissance Charter School in Queens to dispel “misinformation” about their schools in a discussion on Wednesday night. Queens is far from the center of the city’s charter school debate, which has been raging in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but with the opening of two new charters in as many years, and increased attention to the issue city-wide, some parents and elected officials have voiced their opposition to the schools.

Nicholas Tishuk, the Director of Programs and Accountability at Renaissance and the organizer of the event, said that the discussion is the beginning of an “information campaign” targeted at charter school critics. Principals of two other Queens’ charter schools, VOICE and OWN, will participate in the panel.

Tishuk has been attending Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s monthly Advisory Board meetings, where he said charter schools dominate the conversation. (Marshall said in February she has ” fought against charter schools.”) He invited some of the most outspoken critics at Marshall’s meetings to Wednesday’s discussion, hoping to show them that charter schools  aren’t “this big bad thing.”

“We’re all mom and pop schools here,” Tishuk said. “We’re all single-standing schools that are not ‘invading’ communities.” Tishuk wants to address complaints that charter schools take away funding from regular schools, aren’t connected to communities, and counsel out “problem kids”—none of which apply to Queens’ schools, he says.

Queens will have six charter schools next fall, including the city’s biggest, Our World Neighborhood Charter School. VOICE charter school started in 2008, and Growing Up Green, in Long Island City, opens this fall. VOICE is using a Department of Education school location for now, while the borough’s other charter schools occupy their own space. In Brooklyn and Manhattan, charter schools taking over public school space is a hot-button issue, one that has mostly been avoided in Queens. (more…)

Charter school supporters say they are on the brink of a victory in their battle to restore about $1,000 per student in funds that lawmakers tugged out of next year’s state budget. They expect that Malcolm Smith, the State Senate majority leader, will restore the funds to charter schools through a last-minute appropriation of Senate funds.

“We’re hoping that Senator Smith will be able to, through his good offices, get our funding restored,” said James Merriman, the executive director of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence.

The message comes after charter schools spent the last two days badgering Smith, whom they had counted as a strong ally. One Queens school that says it is slated to face a $600,000 cut held a rally, while others sent in form letters to Smith declaring, “We thought you were a supporter of charter schools. This budget betrays that support.” Charter lobbyists also rushed out e-mails urging “parents, trustees, and supporters” to call Governor Paterson and Smith asking for help.

But the charter lobbyists reversed their position on Tuesday afternoon, sending out an e-mail declaring that the efforts had paid off. The full text of their letter is below the jump.

A spokeswoman for Smith did not return a phone call immediately today.

Merriman said he can’t 100 percent guarantee that Smith will fill the funding gaps. “He hasn’t told me, but we’re certainly hoping that he will do everything he can,” he said. (more…)