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Lydia Bellahcene, a mother of students at P.S. 15 in Brooklyn, calls for a halt to the DOE's practice of giving charter schools space in district school buildings. She is flanked by Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio, City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and members of the Coalition for Educational Justice.

A group of parents, advocates and elected officials today asked the city to end its practice of placing charter schools in district school buildings until an outside agency evaluates the impact of the shared space arrangements.

Standing on the steps of City Hall, protesters argued that the city’s policy unfairly weakens district schools that are forced to give up needed classroom space to make way for growing charters and sometimes pits poor, minority parents against one another.

Protesters erected a small school-shaped tent, emblazoned with a sign reading, “Tweed is at 75 percent capacity,” and tried to carry it into City Hall (they were stopped by security officers). Organizers originally planned to “co-locate” the tent school in Tweed Courthouse, where the DOE is headquartered, but moved to the covered steps of City Hall due to bad weather. (more…)

Chelsea families have been organizing for weeks to oppose a city plan to relocate their middle school. But city school officials say no such plan has ever existed.

In fact, they say they never even made a formal proposal to move the Clinton School for Writers and Artists, a small school currently sharing space with an elementary school on West 21st Street.

The apparently mistaken idea has its roots in the popular school’s desire to expand. Department of Education officials suggested moving Clinton to PS 33, a nearby, lower-performing elementary school that has classrooms to spare. But Clinton’s principal, Jeanne-Marie Fraino, convinced DOE officials that the move would not be good for her school, so they dropped the idea, DOE spokesman Will Havemann told me today.

“We have no intention of moving Clinton for Fall 2009,” Havemann said.

The news has not gotten to Clinton parents, who are sending frenzied e-mails in advance of a meeting tomorrow of the Community Education Council for District 2, the elected parent council that is supposed to advise the DOE on school siting decisions. “We should dress in red so we can make our presence felt,” read one e-mail sent to Clinton parents. (more…)

After a rocky journey marked by allegations of dystopianism and favoritism and almost too many principals to count, the charter school founded by the millionaire Courtney Ross is moving out of Tweed Courthouse and into a home of its own. That’s happening despite the fact that there is still no resolution to the cheating scandal that hit Ross Global Academy charter school last year, when its principal was pushed out after being investigated for tampering with tests.

Next year, Ross Global Academy charter school will move to a new East Village space, which it will share with the progressive East Side Community High School. Another small high school, the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women, is leaving the building for its own new space, at an office building in Lower Manhattan.

A person at Urban Assembly today told me the school is excited to get a new space. “It’s very crowded here,” the person said. “We were supposed to be here for one school year, and it’s already four.”

Ross expects to have more students next year, 384 up from 316 this year, Department of Education spokesman Will Havemann said.

In Ross’s place, two new elementary schools are starting off with kindergarten classes in the basement of Tweed next year. They are eventually scheduled to move into larger spaces now under construction. Downtown Express has a profile of the new schools.