Eva Moskowitz moves charter school into another public school's space, boots them from classrooms.

madfloridian

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Sep-15-10 12:45 AM
Original message

Eva Moskowitz moves charter school into another public school's space, boots them from classrooms.

She runs the Harlem Success Charter schools, and she is good buddies with school Chancellor Joel Klein. Pushing her school into public school space is getting to be a habit with her. It works for her because she has the power of the positive media on her side, and she has the money from the foundations pushing the reforms.

From the New York Daily News:

Public schools feeling squeeze of charters

The "Eva" Empire has expanded to the Bronx, bringing a Harlem turf war for school space into the borough. Eva Moskowitz, the City Council member-turned-charter school CEO, has opened two new academies from her charter school franchise, Success Charter Network, inside Public School 30 in Mott Haven, and PS 146 in Morrisania. And Bronx Success Academies 1 and 2 are already ruffling feathers with district school staffers.

"It's having the new person move in, and they decide they want to take over everything and do it their way," said PS 30 Educational Council President Belinda James.

It is not going over well with the public school staff.

Staffers at the district schools say their new neighbors have booted them from classrooms and stairwells, while sharing the libraries, cafeterias and playgrounds.

...."Staffers at PS 30 say Bronx Success 1 sealed off the third floor to its staff and students - even taking over a stairwell - so Success students don't mingle with their district school neighbors.

"We are not allowed there," said one PS 30 teacher, noting the classrooms taken over by Success were formerly used for tutoring children with special needs. Now we have to do therapy sessions in the hallway."

Recently the New York Times Magazine did a special article on Eva Moskowitz and her schools.

The Patron Saint (and Scourge) of Lost Schools

What struck me so much was their attitude about keeping the students "on edge"...as if they will learn more that way. These are children, and this is the only childhood they will have...and instead of making learning a happy thing they want them to be "on edge"?

"We have a gap to close," says Paul Fucaloro, director of instruction. "I want the kids on edge, constantly."
(Photo: Yolo Monakhov for New York Magazine)

The day before the scheduled math test, the city got socked with eight inches of snow. Of 1,499 schools in the city, 1,498 were closed. But at Harlem Success Academy 1, 50-odd third-graders trudged through 35-mile-per-hour gusts for a four-hour session over Subway sandwiches. As Moskowitz told the Times, “I was ready to come in this morning and crank the heating boilers myself if I had to.”

“We have a gap to close, so I want the kids on edge, constantly,” Fucaloro adds. “By the time test day came, they were like little test-taking machines.”

They were like "little test-taking machines"? He's bragging about that?

He also doesn't approve of special education.

At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”

Note that they counsel families out if they fall short. Remember that public schools can not do that. Of course that makes it a heck of a lot easier to have higher test scores to show.

Her charter schools have done this to other schools. One notable example is PS 123.

PS 123 in NYC....fights having building taken over by charter school.

Video at the link.

They are calling it the invasion of the charter schools.

It seems to work this way:

Parents at a neighborhood public school suddenly learn Chancellor Joel Klein has decreed they must surrender scarce classroom space in their building for a new charter school.

No parent or faculty meeting to gauge whether anyone wants the new school. No official vote of the local Community Education Council. Some young bureaucrat from the city Education Department's Office of Portfolio Development arrives one day with a bunch of maps under his arm and promptly orders a new allocation of rooms.

Boom. Done. All part of Klein's rush to create 100,000 new charter school seats over the next few years.

More about the hostile takeover of PS 123.

P.S. 123 Parents Feel Bullied by Harlem Success Academy

The tensions began when the charter school first moved into the building, but increased this year when P.S. 123 lost its computer room to the charter school, as well as part of its teachers’ lounge and half its library, now devoted to Harlem Success Academy office space, said Hargraves.

P.S. 123 was offered basement rooms to replace some of the space Harlem Success Academy has commandeered, but “there’s no way a kid can learn in that environment,” Hargraves said, describing the basement as “no more than a storage area.” The school squeezed in classes elsewhere in the building.

Moskowitz and her Harlem Success Academy have the power to do a squeeze play on the public school, its teachers and students. They seem to feel entitled to do so.