Judge Frank's decision to reject the lawsuits to block the damaging co-locations of charter schools and re-locations of transfer schools

Sadly, on Friday, Judge Lyle Frank ruled against the lawsuit to stop two Success charter school co-locations and the relocation of two transfer schools.

 Here is the Daily News story on these decisions; here are previous blog posts about the lawsuits, which were based primarily on the fact that the Educational Impact Statements required by state law omitted critical information, such as whether the existing schools would have the space to lower class size  in the future to the levels mandated by state law.  

Moreover, the EIS's never mentioned the loss of other critical space and services that these students would suffer, such as the loss of their science lab by Waterside students, and the loss of the GED program and LYFE day care center by the  students who are young parents at West Side HS, not to mention in both cases the space to lower class size.

The Judge's decision was quite narrow -- simply that the plaintiffs should have gone to the Commissioner first with their complaints, even though this was a matter of statutory interpretation that could be seen as subject to the court's jurisdiction.  In fact, there was a precedent for this: in a previous decision by Judge Lobis in 2010, she had thrown out several DOE decisions to close schools on the basis of inadequate Educational Impact Statements -- including their failure to mention how students would lose their LYFE day care center: 

The EISs completely failed to provide information about specific programs existing at the schools proposed to be closed or phased out, or where the students would be able to find such programs. For example, where the school had a Living For The Young Family Through Education (L YFE) Center, no mention was made of that program, or where a similar program existed in other city schools.

Meanwhile, the powerful and wealthy networks that will benefit from his decisions, Success Academy and The Young Women's Leadership School, are the beneficiaries of millions of dollars contributed by billionaires, and could have easily afforded to lease their own buildings without any help from DOE and without depriving NYC public school students of these critical resources and space.  

TYWLS, founded by Ann Tisch of the billionaire Tisch family, recently received a $7 million grant from Mackenzie Scott.  Success Academy's wealth is well-known, having received $100 million from Bloomberg and many more millions from hedge funders and the federal government.

The students at Waterside are suffering a double whammy - not just losing their space but their principal as well, who has been offered another job by DOE.  The parents at Waterside hadn't even been informed of her departure when I told the PTA president about this on Friday. She confirmed the information in the article that only a small fraction of the middle school applicants had been accepted for the upcoming year.  As the former PTA president said to the reporter,  “I honestly feel like our district wants to get rid of Waterside Middle School but doesn’t want to directly tell us.” 

This suggests that DOE may plan to shrink the school  into nothingness so as to be able to give over the entire building to Success Academy.

Why is the Chancellor so unmoved by pleas to not force the students of Edward Reynolds HS out of their building?

A particularly destructive and unjustified proposal is on the PEP agenda for tomorrow night, Monday May 1: to evict the students at the transfer school  Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School from their home of many years to make way for the Young Women's Leadership School (TYWLS) of E. Harlem.  See the article about this heart-breaking proposal in the Daily News   

Instead, the students of West Side High school, many of them under-credited and overage and already at high risk of dropping out, will be displaced to be housed at the current building of TYWLS -- where they will lose their wrap-around services, their GED program, and LYFE center-- a day care center for their young children.  None of these programs or services are likely to be needed or utilized by the relatively-high achieving students at TYWLS .

What's especially striking is how the Educational Impact Statement required by state law fails to discuss any of the profound losses that will be suffered by West Side students if this move is approved by the PEP, in contravention to state law.  These glaring deficiencies are similar to those exhibited by the EIS's that purport to describe the effects of the co-locations of two Success charter schools, in Brooklyn and Queens, as pointed out by the lawsuit filed last month to block them.  In those cases, the EIS's omit any mention of how public school students in the existing schools will lose their science lab, their rooms for special education services, and space to lower class size to the levels set forth in the new state law, if these charter schools are allowed to move into their buildings.

Every elected official that represents the neighborhood in which the West Side transfer school is located from the Manhattan Borough President on down has urged the Chancellor not go forward with this proposal. Here is the letter written by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to the Chancellor. An especially impassioned champion of the school has been Council Member Gale Brewer, who pleaded to Chancellor Banks that the building "needs to be filled with students who need the resources it offers.” And yet none of their entreaties  seem to have moved the determination of the Chancellor or the Mayor to go forward with this proposal.  One wonders why.

Some clues may be found in the fact that TYWLS is a chain of single-sex girl schools for grades 6-12, founded by Ann Tisch, a member of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in NYC.   Ann's sister-in-law, Merryl Tisch is the former Board of Regents chancellor and now the SUNY board chair; her niece is Jessica Tisch, the current Sanitation Commissioner.  Andrew Tisch, her husband, is a billionaire and the co-chair of Loews Corporation.  Together with his brother, James S. Tisch, and cousin, Jonathan Tisch, he  runs a holding company involved in hotels, oil, and insurance companies. From 1990 to 1995, he was CEO of Lorillard Tobacco Company, and in that capacity testified before Congress that "nicotine is not addictive," and that he didn't believe that smoking causes cancer.  He currently heads the board of the secretive and controversial Police Foundation, which has been called the "Piggybank of the NYPD."

Ann Tisch and her wealthy friends have given millions to the Student Leadership Network, the non-profit that subsidizes her chain of schools, to hire college counselors, trips, and other opportunities for their students. The network recently received $7 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. An investigation by Liz Rosenberg at NYC News service found that from 2006 to 2018, the Tisch Foundation gave nearly $50,000 to the Eagle Academy Foundation,  which supports the single-sex chain of schools for boys started by Chancellor Banks.  

Moreover, this year, the Student Leadership Network paid $12,000 to one of the top lobbyists in the city, Kasirer LLC to lobby Banks and other city officials. Further digging by Daniel Alicea under his twitter handle Educators of NYC  reveals that they have spent over $120,000 on lobbying since 2021.  A look at NYC lobbying reports shows the Network has paid Kasirer $194,000  for lobbying since 2020.  As a result, they have received $250,000 in NYC Council discretionary funding every year since at least 2016.  (I couldn't find any discretionary funding for West Side High School.)

As Diane Ravitch points out, the Network could easily use some of the $7 million given them by Mackensie Scott to obtain a new home for TYWLS, rather than force the West Side students out of their home.  Yet according to a reliable source, when alternative sites were recently proposed to the Chancellor for TYWLS, including the buildings of a nearby charter school that is closing and/or several closing parochial schools, he rejected these options to say that these buildings may be needed to house some of the 14 zombie charter schools that Governor Hochul has now insisted be authorized as part of the state budget, whose rent will be paid for at public expense.

So this is the Darwinian universe that NYC students are subjected to. Schools with wealthy backers, whether charter or public,  can afford to spend thousands of dollars to extract more in government funding, further widening the opportunities and resources offered their students.

Be sure to listen to tonight's Talk out of School show with Daniel Alicea on WBAI.org at 7 PM EST, which will feature the voices of West Side High School community, fighting to retain their home.   Tomorrow's PEP meeting at which their fate will be determined starts at 6 PM.  If you want to speak at the meeting, you should sign up starting at 5:30 PM at https://www.learndoe.org/pep/may01/.