For immediate release: Hearings and press conference tomorrow Friday July 14 on two lawsuits, challenging DOE co-location and re-location proposals

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.

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