Parents group files related suit

Micah Landau

A new organization of public school parents, the New York City Parents Union, announced on June 13 outside DOE headquarters that it will file a lawsuit challenging the DOE’s co-location policies.

Dozens of parents, teachers and students held a press conference on June 13 outside the Department of Education’s headquarters to announce that a new organization of public school parents, the New York City Parents Union, will file a lawsuit against the city related to the suit already filed jointly by the UFT, the NAACP and other plaintiffs to stop the city from closing 21 schools and co-locating or expanding charter schools in another 18.

It is one of three lawsuits filed by parents challenging the DOE’s co-location policies.

Going a step further than the existing lawsuit, the Parents Union’s suit challenges inequalities between more than 75 already co-located district and charter schools, the DOE’s refusal to count dedicated special education rooms as “classrooms” for the purpose of determining available space in school buildings and the fact that charter schools do not pay rent to use public school buildings.

Mona Davids, a key player in both the Parents Union and the New York Charter Parents Association, thanked the NAACP and the UFT for “standing up and fighting for equal access to a quality education for all our children,” and condemned the recent attacks on the NAACP from charter school supporters.

Muba Yarofulani, a co-president of the Campaign for Public Education and vice president of the Parents Union, said the co-location of charter schools, which often have access to much greater resources than the district schools with which they share space, sends a message to the children in the district schools that some are better than others.

“The chancellor and Mayor Bloomberg must understand that all our children must be treated equally,” she said.