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Topics in the News:
co-location
Teachers and parents at the Andries Hudde Middle School in Flatbush won a rare victory in late May when the Department of Education was forced to drop its plan to co-locate a charter school inside their building.
A sad spectacle at a recent public hearing in Harlem shows how the Department of Education’s process for co-locating schools divides communities.
Harlem Success Academy chief Eva Moskowitz’s planned expansion of her charter network into a Fort Greene school is raising alarm among parents and staff, who say the co-location threatens the music and arts program at the heart of the 6-12 grade school.
A DOE hearing on May 20 on a plan to co-locate a new charter high school in the building of a thriving adult learning center in Harlem drew hundreds of protesting adult students and their supporters as well as several dozen charter-school students and their parents.
The Department of Education calls the meetings that it holds prior to closing or co-locating schools “public hearings.” But at a real public hearing, the public is heard.
Three members of the Panel for Educational Policy on March 11 challenged their fellow members to defy the mayor and impose an immediate moratorium on all school closings and co-locations until the policy could be reevaluated. But true to form, the panel, dominated by mayoral appointees, dismissed the proposal and voted to approve 22 more school closings and more than two dozen new or expanded co-locations.
The DOE plans to co-locate two schools with Flushing HS, one of the city’s most overcrowded schools. The addition of two new schools is the last thing that the struggling high school needs, parents and teachers said at a recent hearing at the school on the co-location.
Newtown HS parents, staff and students say the planned co-location of another school also targeting English language learners makes no sense for a school on upswing. They call for "one building, one school."
Three members of the Panel for Educational Policy on March 11 challenged their fellow members to defy the mayor and impose an immediate moratorium on all school closings and co-locations until the policy could be reevaluated. But true to form, the panel, dominated by mayoral appointees, dismissed the proposal and voted to approve 22 more school closings.
Why would the Department of Education want to open a second high school in the same building as Newtown HS in Elmhurst, Queens? Newtown is, after all, on the upswing, as speaker after speaker noted at a Feb. 27 hearing on the proposed co-location.
Angered by the mayor’s plans to close or phase out another 26 schools, UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined 100 elected officials, parents and community advocates who gathered on the steps of City Hall on Jan. 23 to demand a moratorium on school closings and co-locations.
Chanting “Eva, Eva Moskowitz, it’s time for you to call it quits,” educators rallied on Dec. 10 outside the Washington Irving Campus against the proposed co-location of a Moskowitz-run Success Academy charter school inside the Union Square-area building prior to a school-based hearing on the proposal.
“Hey, Eva, we’re no fools! We won’t let you ruin our schools!” chanted more than 70 teachers from the six schools on the Washington Irving Campus, near Manhattan’s Union Square, as they rallied on the campus steps on Oct. 18 against the possible co-location of a new Success Academy charter school inside their building.
Take two transfer high schools serving at-risk students and one GED program that have been successfully co-located for years, along with two programs that serve them — a health clinic and a program that cares for students’ infants and toddlers. Now, add to the five-story building a brand-new charter school that will serve previously incarcerated students and see what happens. That is the scenario come September when Roads Charter HS 2 joins the Bronx Regional campus in the South Bronx.
In a powerful rebuke to Mayor Bloomberg’s stewardship of the school system, the State Assembly on June 21 voted to impose a two-year moratorium on all future school closings, phase-outs or grade reconfigurations of city schools while the State Education Department assesses the impact.
While Twin Parks Campus in the Bronx appears to be a success — despite English-as-a-second-language classes conducted in the hallways, PT and OT in an AP’s office and parents holding meetings in the teachers’ lounge — I know that it is not such a happy gathering at most co-located schools.
Many parents are up in arms as Eva Moscowitz's Success Academy charter empire continues to devour public school buildings, cheating students out of space, services and programs.
Long before co-locations became about squeezing scores of new schools into already occupied school buildings, the Twin Parks Campus in the East Tremont section of the Bronx grappled with the issue of sharing space. At Twin Parks, at least four schools have been cheek by jowl in one large building for more than 14 years.
The Department of Education’s controversial policy of co-locating multiple schools in the same building faced sharp criticism at a City Council Education Committee hearing on April 19, one week before the city’s Panel for Educational Policy was scheduled to vote on 38 co-location proposals.
UFT Vice President Leo Casey testified on co-locations before the New York City Council Committee on Education.
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