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An advertising onslaught to promote a new charter school is being met by anonymous adversaries who have a guerilla marketing strategy of their own.

Glossy ads featuring smiling children went up this week in the Lorimer subway station for a Williamsburg branch of the Success Charter Network set to open in August. On one poster, a child is playing with blocks; in another, a child is looking through a magnifying glass.

“Most students learn science from a book,” one ad reads. “We teach science by allowing them to experience it.”

Within days of the ads’ arrival, someone had adorned the posters with quote bubble-shaped stickers criticizing the network, whose already ambitious expansion plans Mayor Bloomberg promised to fast-track during his State of the City speech Thursday. (more…)

By the end of tonight’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting, Eva Moskowitz’s new Success Academy charter school is virtually assured of having a home next fall in Brownstone Brooklyn. For another charter school that, unlike Moskowitz’s, had applied to open there, the future is less certain.

The charter school that the Department of Education has proposed siting in District 15 was originally authorized to open in nearby District 13 or District 14, but in an unusual move, the city altered the plan.

Meanwhile, the department has not yet proposed locations for two charter schools approved for District 15, and a founder of one of them says she isn’t optimistic that her school will open in the area.

The Brooklyn Urban Garden School, a mom-and-pop charter middle school founded by a group of parents and educators who live in District 15, applied for public space when its charter application was approved in August. But there were only two school buildings in the district with enough space for new schools and co-founder Susan Tenner said she doesn’t expect BUGS to be offered space in either of them.

As a result, she said she’s unsure if the school, which has an environmental theme, can afford to open for the 2012-2013 school year.

“We’re still shooting for August, but we’re kind of in a tough spot until we’ve signed a lease,” Tenner said.

One option the school might have: To open in District 13, where there is more available school space and fewer high-performing schools — and where Moskowitz originally proposed siting her school. (more…)

Two days before the Panel for Educational Policy is set to vote on Brooklyn co-locations for two Success Network charter schools, a proposal for a third school in the heart of Williamsburg is taking shape.

The Department of Education is expected to release the proposal as early as today for the school, which would open next year with about 180 students in Kindergarten and first grade. The school would be sited at J.H.S 50 John D Wells, a middle school with about 450 students.

The proposal comes weeks after a plan was announced to expand the Success Network into a more affluent part of the borough known as Brownstone Brooklyn in District 15. That announcement was met with fierce opposition from the district’s Community Education Council and from education activists who say that the school is not in demand from the community.

In both instances, the interest in entering new neighborhoods underlines a strategic shift for the Success charter network’s academic mission, which has previously been to concentrate on narrowing the achievement gap for low-income students living in poor communities. By opening in areas with larger populations of middle class families, Success Network head Eva Moskowitz said she wants to open enrollment at her schools to more affluent students.

Moskowitz has already expressed interest in opening a school in Williamsburg and its charter was approved for District 14 in September, but details about where it would be located were not certain. (more…)

Judy O'Brien, the librarian at two schools in the building the city has proposed for a new charter school, speaks against the co-location plan. (Video below.)

Tensions ran high at the city’s first charter school co-location hearing of the year Tuesday night as advocates and opponents of the city’s plan to open a new Success Academy school in Brownstone Brooklyn packed the proposed site.

Officials from the Department of Education and SUNY’s Charter School Institute defended plans to add Brooklyn’s third Success Charter Network school to a four-story Cobble Hill building that already houses three other schools, saying that the building has space for all four schools.

The charter school would admit 80 to 90 kindergarten and first-grade students in 2012 and grow by one grade per year until becoming a kindergarten through 5th-grade school.

According to the DOE official in charge of new schools, Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg, enrollment at the charter school would ultimately increase to somewhere between 500 and 640 students, and the total number of students in the building would climb to 1,400 or more.

“That would bring the school to 108 percent occupancy,” he said.

In response, a member of the sometimes-rowdy audience who said he was a teacher and was later ejected by police after he shouted inappropriate words called out, “Where do you want the kids to learn, the bathrooms? Where do the other 8 percent go to class?” (more…)

Success Charter Network CEO Eva Moskowitz cut short a pitch to Brownstone Brooklyn parents Saturday after dozens of protesters interrupted her presentation.

Moskowitz was holding an informational meeting at a public library about her newest school, which the Department of Education has proposed siting in a Cobble Hill building that currently houses two secondary schools and a program for severely autistic students. But the roughly 15 parents who said they came to learn more about Cobble Hill Success Academy, which would open next fall, were easily outnumbered by opponents of Moskowitz’s bid to open a school in the area.

Last week, the opponents said they planned to stand outside the Carroll Gardens library during Moskowitz’s noon information session, but freezing rain drove them inside, where they distributed brochures criticizing Cobble Hill Success and charter schools more generally.

Shouting, “We have information for parents also! This district doesn’t have failing schools, it has successful elementary schools!” they interrupted a presentation made by parents from the Upper West Side school that was Moskowitz’s first foray into a neighborhood that, like Cobble Hill, includes many middle-class families and high-performing schools.

As the back-and-forth between audience members and presenters grew more confrontational, Moskowitz admonished the crowd. (more…)

Success Charter Network head Eva Moskowitz is making her first public appearance in Brownstone Brooklyn—and as usual, she will be joined by protesters.

Moskowitz is holding an informational session tomorrow to detail her plans for a new charter school that is likely to open in the affluent Cobble Hill neighborhood next year. Most of tomorrow’s protesters are parents from the neighborhood, who say they are planning to attend the meeting to tell Moskowitz that the Success Charter Network is not wanted there.

Opposition is also starting to rise from another group: School leaders in the Baltic Street building where the city has proposed to house the new school. The principals say they are nervous that the charter school’s presence could derail their attempts to improve their schools.

“We have had monumental success this year, and I’m concerned about how we can sustain that with another school added to the building, with the division of space,” Joseph O’Brien, principal of the School for Global Studies, one of the three schools currently housed in the building, told GothamSchools last week, before the co-location plan was announced.  (more…)

Parents in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood say they’re happy with their children’s schools but wouldn’t mind seeing a charter school move in.

Charter school operator Eva Moskowitz yesterday announced plans to open a new school in the Success Charter Network in Cobble Hill, an affluent, tree-lined neighborhood whose public schools are flush with parent involvement and, in some cases, parent donations. It would be Moskowitz’s second foray into a middle-class neighborhood after pushing through a contentious plan to open a school on the Upper West Side this year.

In District 15, Cobble Hill’s district, 1,500 parents signed a petition supporting the charter school’s bid to open, according to a press release from Success Charter Network.

But parents I spoke to today at a coffee shop and housing project in the neighborhood said they hadn’t heard of Moskowitz and weren’t aware that space-sharing was a likely scenario — or that co-location fights can turn ugly.

Still, they said that the neighborhood could use more school options, no matter what they are.

“If there’s a good school set up in the neighborhood and has a program my kid would like, I’d consider it,” said Madely Rodriguez, a P.S. 29 parent who was sipping coffee outside Cafe Pedlar, a magnet for neighborhood parents after morning drop-off. (more…)

Success Charter Network 2009 lottery. (GothamSchools Flickr)

Excerpt from sneak peek of "Ultimate Spider-Man" #1, via Comic Book Resources.

According to a new comic book, one of the children who needed Superman to lift him out of subpar schools was a young Spider-Man.

In a new “Ultimate Spider-Man” series launching next month, the inheritor of the Spider-Man mantle is Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Hispanic Brooklyn-born teenager. A sneak peek shows a young boy accompanying his parents to what appears to be a charter school lottery, held in a cavernous space with video screens at one end and bleachers along the sides.

Down to the balloon arches flanking the seats, the arrangement closely resembles that of Success Charter Network’s 2009 lottery, held in the Harlem Armory in front of thousands of people. The carefully orchestrated event was depicted in the documentary “The Lottery” but was later dropped in favor of a lower-key drawing held out of the public eye.

The preview suggests but does not make clear that the young Spider-Man is selected for admission. The excerpt shows him sitting with his parents and looking worried, then zooms in on the number 42 after it is drawn in the lottery. The family members’ eyes widen, and then Spider-Man, with tears welling, gets a hug from his mother.

A contingent of New York teachers joined thousands of protesters from across the country in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to march against the Obama administration’s education policies.

Joining them was actor and budding philanthropist Matt Damon, who railed against “corporate reformers.” In an interview with GothamSchools, Damon exhibited a familiarity with New York City education politics, criticizing co-locations of charter schools and district schools and calling out the Success Charter Network in particular.

The march was the main draw of a four-day event called “Save Our Schools,” which included a conference and a film festival. A coalition of more than 100 teachers came down from New York City, including groups from the United Federation of Teachers (this reporter embedded with a UFT-sponsored charter bus) and the Grassroots Education Movement. GEM also hosted a workshop at the conference and showed its documentary film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman to an audience of about 250.

More than a dozen speakers – including Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier – spoke at a rally that directly preceded the march. The lineup featured songs, performances, poem readings, in addition to a pre-taped message from The Daily Show host Jon Stewart (here’s an excerpt). (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.”