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Charter’s intrusion causes hard feelings

Washington Irving HS staff, students feel like have-nots
New York Teacher

Washington Irving HS special education teacher Trevor Johnston can't set up his classroom because of the computer carts left in it.

Special education teacher Karen Williams arrived at Washington Irving HS the week before classes began to find her newly assigned classroom filthy and all of the materials from her old room dumped in the gym.

She also found that nearby rooms given over to a just-opened Success Academy charter school were sparkling from a new renovation.

Trevor Johnston, another special education teacher at the school, came back from summer break to find a dozen computer carts taking up a large part of his classroom.

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Gregg Lundahl, the chapter leader at Washington Irving, points out the broken window shades in his room.

And Gregg Lundahl, the school’s chapter leader, returned to find nearly an entire floor that had formerly belonged to his school now closed off for use by Success Academy. He also lost his chapter leader office.

The Success Academy network’s chief, Eva Moskowitz, expanded into the shared school building near Union Square over the vocal and organized protests of UFT members at the building’s six co-located district schools.

With construction for the new charter completed over the summer, district teachers and students returned this month to witness the startling extent of their loss.

Washington Irving HS has suffered the greatest loss — almost an entire floor, including the school’s former music and computer rooms, English and language classrooms, and college-guidance office. “Those rooms are now reserved for charter school students when they used to be available for the students of all New York,” Lundahl said.

In addition to the practical impact of the loss of so many rooms, Lundahl said he is concerned about the effect on students’ morale to see the ragtag condition of their rooms compared to the charter school’s shiny surroundings.

“Our kids are going to feel that they’re not as good as the other kids,” he said.

Lundahl said the charter school got new doors, lights, floor tiles, furniture, paint, plaster, trim, closets, shelving and smartboards. In his classroom, by contrast, four lights are out, the shades are broken, the shelves are sagging and the walls are in need of a new coat of paint.

Amenities for the teachers are also unequal.

“Their faculty bathrooms were redone, but the sink in our women’s restroom has no water,” Lundahl said. “They can wash their hands, but our faculty can’t.”

In the days before students came back, when teachers normally are busy preparing for classes, Lundahl, Johnston and Williams had to spend the time putting their rooms in order.

Williams said she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.

“If you look at Success Academy, they were ready; we were not,” Williams said. “The bottom line is that the DOE is able to completely renovate a floor, but they have never even washed the floors in our school. They haven’t washed the floors in our classrooms in two years.”

The differences between the charter school and district school weren’t lost on Washington Irving senior Andryl Semple.

“It isn’t right that they get new equipment and rooms when the Department of Education claims that they don’t have enough money to give us new equipment,” he said. “It makes me feel like they’re saying the other school is better than us, they’re more deserving of these new things.”

Nyah Benjamin, also a senior, agreed.

“It upsets me,” she said. “The charter school got completely remodeled. Everything is new. Nothing got fixed at Washington Irving. It is old and rusty. We didn’t get the same treatment.”