More background on these lawsuits here and here.
For immediate release: July 13, 2023
Contact: Sarah Frank 617-828-2032 (sarfrank@gmail.com), Laura Barbieri 914-819-3387 (lbarbieri@advocatesny.com)
What: Press conference at NY State Supreme Court, 80 Centre St, NY, NY
When: Friday, July 14, 2023, at 9:30am (arguments to be heard at 10:30 am)
New York, NY – Tomorrow at 10:30 AM, at the NY Supreme Court building at 80 Centre St., Judge Lyle Frank will hear arguments in the lawsuit to block the co-location of two Success Academy charter schools in the Waterside Academy middle school building in Queens and the Sheepshead Bay high school complex in Brooklyn. At the same time, preliminary hearings will be held on a concurrent lawsuit to block the re-location and co-location of three transfer schools designed for under-credited and over-aged students: the forced move of the Edward A Reynolds West Side High School to a building across town to East Harlem, and the co-locations of Brownsville High School and Aspirations Diploma Plus High School in Brooklyn.Last summer, Judge Lyle Frank ruled that the budget cuts to
schools had been illegally imposed by the city, and more recently issued a
preliminary injunction against the City's plan to change the healthcare of NYC
retirees to a Medicaid Advantage plan.
Before the hearing, a press conference will be held at
9:30 AM in front of the courthouse, with students, parents, teachers at the
affected schools, as well as attorneys representing the plaintiffs. The
lawsuits argue that these proposed changes in school utilization should be
blocked, primarily because the Educational Impact Statements prepared by DOE
were profoundly deficient and omitted much critical information about how these
changes would affect students. For example, there was no discussion of
the educational impact of the loss of a science lab on the Waterside Leadership
middle school students, or the loss of the Lyfe Center in the case of West Side
High School students, which takes care of their young children while they are
enrolled in school.
In addition, none of the Educational Impact Statements
mentioned the new class size law and no assessment was made whether there will
remain sufficient space in the schools to lower class size to mandated levels
if the proposed changes of school utilization are adopted. Instead, the
EIS’s wrongly assumed that class sizes at the existing schools would continue
into the indefinite future, even though their current class sizes are above the
level mandated by the new law.
###
No comments:
Post a Comment