Charter School Frenzy in Harlem

Imagine you’re a parent whose child will be entering first grade next September. Imagine as well that your town’s Board of Education has announced three public school closings in your area in just the last year and has graded seven or eight others as failing, a sure sign of more closures. Let’s take it one step further – your Board of Education has announced that 30 public elementary and middle schools in your area will likely forfeit roughly $10,250,000 from their current budgets by the 2009/2010 school year, while just 13 other public elementary schools will be adding about $1,851,000 (a net loss of $8.4 million that surely constitutes a statement of non-support to your community).

Finally, add to this cocktail of despair one ray of hope. Your Superintendent of Schools has established 18 new small schools in your area, with promises of still more to follow. Furthermore, that same Superintendent positively beams with pride over these new schools, clearly his favored children and his vision of the future. Where the vision is, of course, you know the money and effort will follow.

So, as the parent of a soon-to-be first grader, what do you do? What does a person dying of thirst in the desert do when offered a glass of water? What does a drowning person do when a life raft is tossed his or her way? You rush like a day-after-Thanksgiving shopper to enlist for the newest small school as soon as it is begins taking applications.

Where does this community exist? Right here in Manhattan, specifically in Harlem and East Harlem (Districts 4 and 5). All the numbers above are taken from DOE and NY Charter School Association data: school closures, schools with Progress Report grades of D or F, budget reductions under the paradoxically named Fair Student Funding formulas, and the number of charter schools in the Harlem area.

Before the local newspapers calm down from their orgiastic heavy breathing over Thursday night’s lottery at Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academy (see NY Daily News article, NY Daily News editorial, NY Post article, and NY Post guest editorial), a single slow, deep breath might be in order. To begin with, the DOE under Mayor Bloomberg effectuated an Orwellian triumph with last night’s scene, demonstrating its policy that “Failure Is Success.” Since when can 3,600 applications for 600 non-public school seats be viewed as a measure of the Mayor’s and Chancellor’s successful shepherding of the public schools? To the contrary, Thursday night’s frenzy only emphasized the desperation of NYC parents to escape a system the Mayor was charged with improving. Like parents anywhere else, those in Harlem are only doing the intelligent thing -- putting their children’s interests first based on what they see going on around them. In all likelihood, they aren't looking so much for charter schools per se as they are looking for any public school that works and that's being supported by the City. The DOE has made that choice crystal clear in Districts 4 and 5.

After five years of misrule and depressing lack of progress, the DOE is now end-running itself to convert Harlem into a veritable charter school educational district. Two entire school districts are effectively being privatized by stigmatizing their public schools with D and F letter grades (creating a self-fulfilling prophecy) and withdrawing budgetary funds to hasten their failure.

Joel Klein reportedly attended last night’s event, apparently anxious to see (gloat over?) the results of his handiwork at close range. Rather than expressing concern over Harlem parents’ panicked flight from public schools as a vote of “no confidence” in his stewardship, he waxed positively transformational about the proceedings. This event will “go down in the history of school reform,” he asserted. Don’t worry, Mr. Chancellor; it already has, and -- in the corporatized fashion of current American democracy -- with nary a vote.