General Question for Readers

Has anyone reading this blog participated in - or heard about - public schools successfully fighting (as in, winning a fight) with the DOE about having a charter school placed in their local public school? Would you care to share your insights and experiences? I was dismayed to see that some school buildings house more than two schools.

Please post responses!

Web Visitors

I'm glad we've got the web counter installed; on Friday, there were only 300 hits, and today there are over 360 hits. People have been busy - we're getting lots of visits. NOW I wish people would comment on what we've got posted. It would be great to hear what other people think of the issues and posts so far.

If this is your first visit to this blog...

Please make sure to scroll all the way down and also visit the archives for February for full background on the whole issue. There are a lot of layers to the story, and both the DOE and Spencer Robertson's plans don't seem to be as completely transparent as they should be, and some people have commented that there may be questions about the legalities regarding how the DOE is proceeding with their plans (especially in NOT having a community meeting to present what the plan IS before it was decided on).

More helpful advice from a parent

Emily,The only information I can share with you is that my son is at MS 447 where they placed the Khalil Gibran school. There are now 3 schools in that buiding. There was plenty of space for Gibran. Many school buildings have 2 or more schools and they seem to be working. In your negotiations around this, if the DOE makes any promises (e.g., we'll renovate your auditorium or your cafeteria in exchange for this...) get it in writing! and stay on top of them.Good luck Beth G. Kneller Deputy Director The CUNY Baccalaureate Degree for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies 365 Fifth Avenue, suite 6412 New York, NY 10016 212-817-8238 FAX: 212-817-1512 bkneller@gc.cuny.edu www.cunyba.cuny.edu http://cunyba.gc.cuny.edu/ (Blog)

Helpful feedback from Class Size Matters

Leonie Haimson to me show details 11:44 AM (12 minutes ago) Reply
Emily: are the class sizes expected to swell at PS 15 as a result of the charter’s placement in the building? If so, to what levels? Are you expected to lose cluster rooms etc. as a result? It would be helpful to have more detailed info about the likely impact of this move. I’ve forwarded your message to the NYC education news list serv. FYI, DOE pledged not to put new schools into existing buildings where it would force class sizes up above the levels principals planned or wanted for their schools. Let me know how I can help. Thanks, Leonie HaimsonExecutive DirectorClass Size Matters124 Waverly Pl.New York, NY 10011212-674-7320leonie@att.netwww.classsizematters.orghttp://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/ Please make a tax-deductible contribution to Class Size Matters now!

Fwd:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CEC15 D15 <CEC15@schools.nyc.gov>
Date: Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 1:09 PM
Subject:
To:




Good Afternoon To All,

Please seve The Date for CEC15's next calendar public meeting April 17th, 2008.

Thank you,
Community Education Council
District 15

PLEASE POST DISTRIBUTE

ALSO PLEASE ENCOURAGE PARENTS TO ATTEND

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You can also reach me by phone at 917-720-7335.

Check out my digital photography at http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyholiday/EmilyBrown; I also have a short slideshow video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4527071836788208173

Questions and observations

In March, I was able to meet Spencer Robertson at a meeting held at PS15; Ms. Wyns-Madison, several PTA and School Leadership Committee members, PS15 staff members and a representative from the Department of Education were also present - and I'll go into more detail on this meeting in a separate post.

Mr. Robertson seems like a personable enough fellow, but he doesn't really seem to be all that familiar with Red Hook as a community - and I am willing to bet that the other participants in this meeting were even more sensitive to this than I am because they actually live and work in the neighborhood - I've only been visiting for the past decade (my husband lived there for a while when I first met him; I've been over to the neighborhood frequently for events at BWAC, and of course my son has been attending school there for the past 5 years). I didn't get the gut feeling that he has a real commitment to Red Hook itself - I got the sense that his commitment is primarily to promoting his charter school - but I also wonder how much experience he has running a private business (he seemed to be extremely offended when I pointed out that I was surprised that he was given approval to start up the PAVE Academy without having secured a definite location to run his business from; he seemed to have an issue with calling a non-profit (501(c)3 organization) a business - but it IS a business! Either he's incredibly naive, or his reaction was a pretense; either way, the reaction was completely weird.

During the conversation, it also turned out that despite what his proposal presented about serving the Red Hook community, citing statistics about the 50-50 ratio of Hispanic and African American students he felt should be enrolled in his school, it turns out that he has had the Department of Education do a mailing to parents throughout the 11231 zip code to recruit students. That zip code certainly includes Red Hook, but it also extends through several other neighborhoods with very different ethnic compositions - all the way up Court and Smith Streets to Union Street, for instance, which some people would refer to as Cobble Hill. Something isn't adding up right here, and I don't know whether it's Mr. Robertson's true intentions, or the way the DOE is "helping" him.

One parent pointed out, after he made a pronouncement about wanting to "share" for the sake of mutually helping each other, that this comment was ironic: it was like having an uninvited guest barge into their living room and start babbling about sharing. I'd been having similar thoughts before the meeting myself, and it was a relief to hear someone else actually voice that concern. He offered to help PS15 out with things like building a green roof for the school, or providing air conditioning.

Mr. Robertson, by the way, spent a lot of time at the meeting talking about how he would actually prefer to use the Miccio Center than PS15, because in some ways that building has several advantages from his point of view - including easier access to mass transit (it's closer to the Smith & 9th Street F station), which would be more appealing to the young teachers he wants to recruit to work in his school, as well as some of the families he's trying to recruit to attend the school. (Again, whatever happened to his original plan to serve student from the immediate Red Hook neighborhood?) Fine. He's got his eye on another location - but what he wants may not connect smoothly with what the DOE decides to do in the long run. He also took offense again when I pointed out that Red Hook has been cut off from the rest of Brooklyn with only bus access ever since Robert Moses built the expressway, and that despite that, PS15 has committed teachers and some families who value the school enough to make the effort to commute in from considerable distances EVEN THOUGH it's not right next to a subway station. His reaction to this was borderline hostile, and another parent attending the meeting basically told him to back off.

After he left the meeting, the DOE representative pointed out several things that PS15 may need to seriously consider: the PAVE School has more money attached to it than some other charter schools, and that with the low enrollment situation at PS15, the PAVE Academy might be one of the more positive alternatives because we might be able to negotiate more positive "sharing" options with them than some other schools with very little financial backing - for instance, an up to date science lab, rather than merely air conditioning systems which have a limited lifespan. It appears that - according to the DOE - as long as PS15 has low enrollment, it's almost inevitable that there will be pressure to place SOME charter school in its building. We may need to develop strategies to boost enrollment if we don't want another school dumped on us; we might add 6th through 8th grade to the school (which could actually be a positive move for many of the Red Hook families who may not want their kids bused out of the neighborhood for middle school). We could also include a bilingual lab, and/or a Mommy and Me program for kids who are younger than pre-K students (and this could be a feeder program for the pre-K program at the school).

Things to think about. I'll be adding more posts soon - but these issues have been on my mind for a while now.

I'd love to see some comments posted here - the webcounter is showing nearly 300 hits as of today (March 27), so I know people are looking at the blog.

Gmail - Google Alert - PAVE Academy Charter School - emilyholiday@gmail.com

Follow the link to see several stories about the issue... here's the thing, though - it seems like the story's been dropped, at least for the moment, but we're still sitting in the dark about what the DOE will end up deciding go do.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?source=navclient#inbox/118e1abe52cc46ae

Real Estate Brooklyn coverage Bay Ridge Eagle Brooklyn, 2007 NY information :: daily paper in Brooklyn

Real Estate Brooklyn coverage Bay Ridge Eagle Brooklyn, 2007 NY information :: daily paper in Brooklyn

*************FOUNDING LEAD Teachers K & 1*********************

*************FOUNDING LEAD Teachers K & 1*********************

Editorial Notebook; In Defense of 'Bloody' Red Hook - New York Times

Editorial Notebook; In Defense of 'Bloody' Red Hook - New York Times

This is an old story, but reinforces the point that the staff of PS15 has worked very hard to create a safe haven in a neighborhood that outsiders have a lot of preconceived notions of. It also underscores how grating it is that the DOE wants to "reward" PS15 by parking a Charter School, run by a novice who doesn't apparently have much of a clue about Red Hook or our school, in our building.

P.S. 15 Patrick F. Daly School

P.S. 15 Patrick F. Daly School

Just some background that reiterates the importance of small class sizes at PS15

The Brooklyn Paper: Parents win: Education Department agrees not to add charter school to Red Hook’s PS 15

The Brooklyn Paper: Parents win: Education Department agrees not to add charter school to Red Hook’s PS 15

501(c) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

501(c) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "private"

OK: this gets a little sticky, and Wikipedia's not the Ivy League choice of reference, but when I asked Spencer Robinson whether he didn't feel there was a conflict of interest operating a private business in a public school (and asked whether most private businesses asking for investment backing wouldn't need to secure a definite site of operation before they'd be able to convince investors that they were stable), he got all flustered and tried to make it sound like his charter school was a public business...

Charter schools are often 501(c)3 organizations - that's the designation for educational organizations - and they're also PRIVATE organizations. For all the gory details on tax exempt status, etc., click the link above.

Education Law - Google Search

The Department of Education may be in violation of Education Law because it didn't present the charter school issue to the communitybefore making their bombshell announcement about putting the PAVE Academy in PS15 last month. Here are some resources.
Education Law - Google Search

Gotham Gazette is an excellent source of additional information...

I've posted links to some of their articles on this blog to give readers a sample of the kind of fair and balanced reporting they present. For more, go to www.gothamgazette.org and find the "Education" tab and click on it. Then type in "charter schools" in the search box - the results are quite fascinating.

The Edison Election (Gotham Gazette, March 26, 2001)

The Edison Election (Gotham Gazette, March 26, 2001)

History repeats itself... this article focuses on the privatization issue in connection with charter schools, and shows how parents and community groups get shut out of the decision making process. Is this really what we need in our schools? There are privacy issues involved as well, and parts of the issue also underscores the divide between families that are well off and those that aren't.

Poor Grades for a School ‘Contract’ (Gotham Gazette, July 2007)

Poor Grades for a School ‘Contract’ (Gotham Gazette, July 2007)

If you're at all concerned about budget cuts and how money is distributed between public schools and charter schools (and you should be), make sure to read this one!

The City’s Resistance to Cutting Class Size (Gotham Gazette, April 24, 2006)

The City’s Resistance to Cutting Class Size (Gotham Gazette, April 24, 2006)

PLEASE read this article if you're at all concerned about funding discrepancies and legal responsibilities...

Cloning A Charter School From Connecticut (Gotham Gazette, August 2004)

Cloning A Charter School From Connecticut (Gotham Gazette, August 2004)

Charter schools are nice, but some public schools with dedicated staff are just fine, too, thanks - and if we respect our unionized teachers, should we support charter schools who don't have to use them? And the privatization issue is still very much there....