The Truth About The Charter School Situation Dear New York State Senators: The way the charter school law was written when it was first enacted did not provide facility funding to charter schools. In fact it deemed charter schools to be non-public schools when it came to land use regulations. In other words the legislature did not give the state direct power over New York Citys property. Hence, A charter school may own, lease or rent its space. Hypothetically, a charter school could even buy a public school building no longer being used as a public school. Weve had plenty of empty public school buildings in New York City in the past but our city government had chosen to sell such buildings to private developers for private housing instead of using these buildings for charter schools. However, one thing I believe that the state did not want to happen. And that is charter schools taking resources from public schools. When our former mayor started this trend of giving charter schools public space inside of public school buildings for free it created a windfall of problems for public school children. Because the state had chosen not to give charter schools facility funding (the 2.7K mas or menos per public school child to cover occupancy costs) the former mayor took resources from public school children to accommodate the deficit in occupancy costs. And because there really wasnt enough room for the two schools and the mayor wasnt getting any rent from charter school corporations or willing to build new facilities he started sticking public school children in any nook and cranny location in a building; i.e., basements, closets, bathrooms converted to classrooms and stairwells. He also increased public school class sizes and cut their programs such as arts and music. He took away public schools specialty spaces too giving them either totally for the charter schools or common area spaces. He made public school children eat lunch at 10 am in the morning to accommodate charter schools to have a normal lunch hour. He also gave charter schools premium contiguous learning space in public school buildings while the public school children in such school building had to be scattered all over the building. He also didnt care about co-mingling older students with younger students, which many principals opposed. There is a reason you keep younger children away from older children in school. The younger children are still developing and need to learn discipline. Lastly, because charter schools have a different admissions policy and they can enroll students living outside of a particular school zone (because they are deemed non-public when it comes to local zoning) they often dont serve the same kind of children (children with special needs) that public schools serve and they fair better with securing their enrollments than public schools. As a result of this, a child who lives in District 3 for example and cant get into a charter school co-located in a public school building in District 3 may not be able to go to that school in his or her neighborhood because the charter school is occupying the space. So these co-locations displace children and cause them to go to schools way outside of their neighborhoods. This encourages a lot of other problems, including truancy. Thus, when the state law states, A charter school may contract with a school district or the governing body of a public college or university for the use of a school building and grounds, the operation and maintenance thereof. Any such contract shall provide such services or facilities at cost, I would think that the legislative intent was to have charter schools help cover the services or facilities at cost so public school children or children of public school age wouldnt be put at a disadvantage, not to bleed them from their resources. So yes, this is messy. And many people know that they helped create this mess. But you cannot blame Mayor de Blasio for trying to fix this mess. If these charter schools were allowed to co-locate or expand there would be more disparity between charter school and public school children. And that cannot happen otherwise the state legislature will find itself in court. Temporary Solution The only way this can be fixed for now is in the following way. Since technically our former mayor and by force the new mayor have created defacto public schools out of charter schools, if they are to be co-located then all of the age appropriate children will have to eat lunch together. Meaning, for example, take one of Success Academys middle schools located inside of a public school building. Success Academys lunch hour is close to 12 noon. And because Success Academy students have to eat lunch separately the public school children have been forced to co-mingle younger children with older children and eat their lunch at an earlier hour. Under a new plan all of the upper grades will eat lunch together regardless of what school they attend and all of the younger grades will eat lunch together. All lunch hours will be appropriate for everyone. All of the public school children learning in basements, closets, stairwells and bathrooms will cease. This may now give the impression that there is no room for the co-located schools. But that may only be because the charter school doesnt want to have a class size larger than 25 students. But if they are to remain co-located then their utilization of space will have to be equal to the co-located public school. If a public school is deemed to be under utilizing a classroom space because it has 25 students in a class then so will a charter school be deemed to be under utilizing space if it has 25 students in a class. It may have to be that the two schools will have to share a classroom and period at the same time. Thats already happening with some public schools due to co-locations. Some schools have to use the same classroom for as much as four different types of instruction at the same time in order for the charter school to have space. Also it may have to be that charter school children have to be a little scattered all over the building too. Furthermore, a charter school can no longer just automatically project expansion and take more public school space. All enrollment time periods must be equal and at the same time. In fact if a public school building is being considered for co-location and that is finally determined then the local zoning rule should be waived for all of the co-located schools. Finally, to correct some of the myths out there, the DOE starts counting from the 9th to 12th grade when determining graduation rates. So if for example FDA II started with 100 students in the 9th grade and only 10 made it to the 12th grade and graduated, the DOE would classify FDA IIs graduation rate for a certain year as 10%. Charter schools calculate their graduation rate starting from the 12th grade. So if they lost 90 children the same way that FDA II lost 90 children and only had 10 children in the senior class and all ten graduated, the charter school can boast that they had a 100% graduation rate for that particular year. Also, charter school teachers can score their students city-wide and state-wide exams. Public school teachers are chosen to score exams and have to go to a location where thats done. If a public school teacher came across an exam that came from the school where he/she teaches, let alone from the very same class, the teacher has to notify his/her supervisor. If that teacher gets caught scoring his/her students exam he/she will be disciplined. So please know that there is a lot of skewed information out there about charter schools. Permanent Solution If all that I have offered is unacceptable to charter schools because they have to teach their method or no way at all then I respectfully advise you to do the above for a short while and come up with money to accommodate them with their own space. This property would not be subject to city land use regulations during the time that a charter school occupies such space. However, if any law is enacted that creates an unequal or inequitable remedy that continues disparity or creates one, the state legislature will be strenuously challenged, as we the people would deem such law repugnant to the Constitution. Respectfully yours, Julius Tajiddin Harlem Advocate and Former Chairman, School Leadership Team Frederick Douglass Academy 2 CECD3 P.S. In defense of de Blasios decision to not let those charter schools expand or move into public school buildings when the DOE under Bloomberg and his controlled Panel for Educational Policy (sort of like the Board of Ed only a puppet board under Bloomberg) approved all of these inequitable charter co-locations and expansions before he left office, I can tell you from first hand knowledge, de Blasios actions were based on fairness and equity. There was just no room. However, If Bloomberg were still in office he would have taken the public school children and scattered them across the city somewhere or found some other corner in the building to stick these children in. He certainly would have added more children to a classroom. Some of these public schools where charters are co-located have close to 40 students in a classroom, while the charter school has no more than 25 in a class. When they talk about increasing the occupancy to 110 % utilization capacity we may not look at that as being so bad. Just 10% more, right? But the areas where the public school children are located are over crowded or they are in closets or basements Bloomberg also systematically steered children away from certain public schools that he planned to move a charter school into or just shut down the enrollment. So when the enrollments went down it looked like the school didnt have any interest out there. Most of these co-locations are in neighborhoods being systematically gentrified. At some point the black and brown faces in those charter schools are going to turn to white. You see that was the bigger plan. It was never about building schools for charter school children. The plan was to get them black and brown faces out of the public school building so more white folks can move into the neighborhood and have schools for their children. Charter schools know how to control who gets into their schools. So a few years down the line it wouldnt be de Blasio keeping them out. It would be the charter schools keeping those black and brown faces at a minimum. I know this letter is long but I have to let people know the truth. So de Blasio didnt have to honor unjust agreements. And these charter school parents arent free from blame either. They see the public school children getting shafted. But theyre just worried about their child. Forget someone else. So it has to end. Make them public in every way. And if they have to co-locate in a building they have to do it fairly and equally. And if that cant happen, the charter school execs have to take salary cuts.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:56:30 +0000
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