The battle for the soul of a community: scenes from contentious charter school hearing in S. Williamsburg -- and the memory of another controversial co-location 25 years ago

Please check out the videos of Thursday night’s contentious hearing on the proposed co-location of yet another branch of the Success Academy charter school, this one in IS 50 in South Williamsburg, a proposal that the entire community has risen up in opposition to,  because of the discriminatory recruitment and enrollment policies of the hedge-fund backed Success Academy charters, their policy of pushing out high needs students, and the fact that there are four under-enrolled public elementary schools in this mostly Latino neighborhood within three blocks of the proposed charter. 

Nearly 500 parents, teachers, students, and community leaders filled the large auditorium, with more than 80 of them speaking out against this co-location proposal, and fewer than five parents from Brooklyn spoke out in support.  The rest of the audience consisted of parents bused in from the various Success charter schools in Harlem.  

And yet NYTimes/Schoolbook story ran a highly inaccurate and biased account, showing a large photo of the Success Academy parents, captioned with " parents turned out to support the co-location of a Success Academy charter school at J.H.S. 50 John D. Wells in Williamsburg, Brooklyn", without explaining that they were bused in by the charter operator from Harlem. The article went on to give most of its space to comments from the handful of supporters of the charter school, including the chain’s founder, Eva Moskowitz, with almost no mention of the huge outcry from the hundreds of community leaders, elected officials, and local parents who came out to oppose it. (Read what Williamsburg & Greenpoint Parents for Our Public Schools says about the piece, and read the irate comments from parents and community members at the Schoolbook website.)

Instead, see the video of the nearly 500 parents, students, teachers and community members leading off the hearing,  chanting, “Whose schools? OUR schools” and Ms. Denise Jamison Principal of IS 50, where the DOE plans to put the charter, saying how grateful she is for the support of the community.

Here's the video of Council Member Diana Reyna, pointing out that the District 14 Community Education Council that is supposed to preside over the hearing is not present because the members are boycotting it in protest; she says that we need the record to reflect that this proposal is not supported by this community.  She recounts how in Sept. 1986, more than 700 parents at S. Williamsburg's PS 16 kept their children home from school-- a 90% absence rate -- in protest of a plan to create segregated classrooms in the school.

(This 1986 protest occurred in reaction to a Board of Education plan to construct barriers inside PS 16, and to hire Jewish teachers to provide remedial education to Hasidic girls enrolled in a nearby yeshiva, in classes held in separate classrooms from PS 16’s mostly Latino students. The parents of PS 16 protested that this segregation was not only discriminatory but would also cause more overcrowded classes for their own children.  The plan also required the displacement of 69 students with disabilities to other public schools -- to make way for the Hasidic classes. The parents of PS 16 sued, asking the court to block this plan, and subsequently won on appeal.  Here is an excerpt of the decision from the US Court of Appeals:

....each day, the public school students would observe some 390 Beth Rachel students arrive at P.S. 16. The Beth Rachel students would be taught in classrooms only they may use; no public school students would be taught either in those classes or in those rooms. Yiddish would be spoken in the Beth Rachel classes. Only Hasidic girls would be taught; those girls would be allowed no contact with boys. Only female teachers would teach the Hasidic girls. And where once there was an open corridor allowing freedom to traverse the entire hall, there are now a wall and doors partitioning the Beth Rachel girls from the public school students....

The lengths to which the City has gone to cater to these religious views, which are inherently divisive, are plainly likely to be perceived, by the Hasidim and others, as governmental support for the separatist tenets of the Hasidic faith. Worse still, to impressionable young minds, the City's Plan may appear to endorse not only separatism, but the derogatory rationale for separatism expressed by some of the Hasidim.)
  

Here's another video clip, where  CM Reyna says that DOE has abandoned our public schools; despite the fact that our students have a basic unmet human right for quality education.   Evelyn Cruz, representing Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, ironically “thanks” DOE for once again dividing parents, children and neighborhoods, and disenfranchising them throughout the city. 
 
Rob Solano, head of Churches United for Fair Housing and former IS 50 student, then speaks out in support of the public shool and against the charter co-location: “this is where I learned how to be a boy and then a man and learned about the world,” Ruben Flores, lead organizer for Churches United For Fair Housing also speaks out against the proposal.

More video as Khem Irby, CEC member from District 13, says that Brooklyn does not need any more charter schools, which are here for only one purpose: the money, and not about education. As a former charter parent, she understands the abuse that happens to children in charter schools and that they do not need this in any of their communities, and parents are forming a united front in Districts 13, 14 and 15 against any more charters in their neighborhoods.

I berate the two DOE officials presiding over the hearings, Gregg Betheil and Paymon Rouhanifard.  I say they should be ashamed of themselves and ask if they went into education to provoke the kind of division, anger and resentment seen tonight; I urge them to tell whoever who is making this decision to say no to this charter school; as there has to be someone in the city with the balls or guts to say no to Eva.  I add that if there was one thing good that came out of this evening, it is that it is clear that NYC parents love their public schools and want them protected and supported, no matter how hard the DOE has tried to destroy them  through budget cuts, test prep and rising class sizes.  Lastly, I recount how at the recent City Council hearings on college readiness, the only thing the Council and the DOE agreed upon was that El Puente is a great school and should be replicated; with DOE officials repeating this several times.  So why don’t they replicate El Puente here and create a great 6-12 school, instead of bringing in a charter school that no one in the community wants or needs?

The videos end with Luis Garden Acosta founder and President of El Puente, thanking Ellen McHugh of the Citywide Council for Special Education, for taking a strong stand in favor of the community and against the charter school co-location.  He concludes by saying, tonight the DOE has heard from white, Latino and black parents, all opposed to this proposal; from students, teachers, and community leaders; from our City Councilmember, our State Senator, and our member of Congress; in fact, they've heard from the entire Southside community in opposition, what else does it take?  He then leads us in a chant, “the People united will never be defeated,” first in English then in Spanish, and we walk out together, leaving the auditorium empty except for the DOE and their clients, the charter school operators and the parents they bused in from Harlem.

The Williamsburg Latino community fights back against Success charter expansion

In yesterday's State of the City, Mayor Bloomberg said he would encourage Eva Moskowitz' Success Academy charter chain and KIPP to accelerate their expansion.  He may have a fight on his hands. First, see the stickers being pasted all over the glossy recruiting ads in the Williamsburg subways and bus stops for her new charter, to be co-located in MS 50.  (thanks to GothamSchools for the photo to the right.)

According to many observers, Eva Moskowitz is recruiting almost exclusively in the northern, primarily white sections of Williamsburg.  (This is a practice she followed  with  the Upper West Success charter on the Upper West side, holding recruiting sessions in the Trump hi-rise condos and at the Jewish center, and producing thousands of glossy promotional flyers in English and almost none in Spanish -- despite the charter law which requires the recruitment of English language learners.)   

In Williamsburg, a new coalition, called the Southside Community Schools Coalition has emerged to fight the charter, and its openly racist tactics,  including long-time educational leaders and activists like Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente,  Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, CM Diana Reyna, several local churches, and the District 14 Community Education Council.  An excerpt from their message is below; the full message is here.

 

SOUTHSIDE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS COALITION

01-05-2012

 

Preamble to the SCSC

The Latino Community and all communities of Color are under attack throughout New York City. We are being displaced from our traditional neighborhoods at the rate of an endangered species.

City Policies are driving forward a city that, each day, is more polarized, more segregated by class, color, and ethnicity. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Williamsburg, in general, and the Southside of Williamsburg, specifically. The Southside, a community, that in the 1980’s was the most concentrated Latino neighborhood in New York City is now being “cleansed” of the Latino working class in favor of those not Latino or working class.

We must make clear that we will continue to and have always welcomed non-Latinos to our neighborhood. The Southside Community Schools Coalition (SCSC) is committed to creating a vibrant community for all. What we will never allow is a racist and classist inspired takeover of our schools – one that will raise, again, the ugly head of division in Williamsburg.

The New York City Department of Education’s proposals to both allow the Eva Moskowitz “Success School” into the Southside’s Middle School 50 as well as to impose the transformation of the Southside’s Roberto Clemente School (PS19) without community direction is an unethical, immoral policy that will only serve the eventual elimination of the Latino community from its longtime, iconic home of Los Sures (The Southside).

Eva Moskowitz’s corporation has never met with any Southside Community organization or any recognizable Southside leader to assess the needs of our community. Instead, she has blatantly canvassed, advertised and campaigned for the acceptance of her school in the Northside, creating a dangerous climate of potential polarization between Southside Latinos and Northside newcomers. She has invested in costly Madison Avenue-like advertisements but only in the L train, Bedford Avenue Station, ground zero of the newcomer movement. 

That the city has not prohibited these renegade, racist advertising campaigns or sought a court ordered injunction tostop Ms. Moskowitz’s flaunting of the rules governing the development of charter schools, exemplifies their complicity. Nowhere in their advertisements in the subway station or in their glossy hand-outs does it state, as it must, that the school is just a proposal. On the contrary, their tag line is; “A New Public School – Proven Record of Success – Easy to Apply Online”.

The SCSC does not want to imply that the Mayor is racist, nor that the NYC Department of Education is driven by anything other than the need to house Ms. Moskowitz’s school in the Southside. However, it is troubling that in a school system that is composed of well over 80% students of color, that the Department of Education would allow such disrespect to our community.

  

The impact of Eva Moskowitz’s School would be to undermine and destabilize the Southside’s Latino Community and its Middle School 50 in favor of the newcomer/non-Latino community. Again, we welcome Northside children to our schools, but our schools must remain characteristic of the communities in which they exist. They must be driven by our community, our vision of excellence, our moral sense of responsibility for all our children.

The entire, unfortunate effort to locate Ms. Moskowitz’s school in the Southside’s MS 50 is without educational merit. We do not need another elementary school. The NYC Department of Education’s own statements flatly declare that our elementary schools are underutilized. What we desperately need is a quality, A+ rated middle school. That is our community’s vision for MS 50.

The SCSC is committed to leading a plan to make all Williamsburg schools excellent learning and development centers, worthy of the needs and potential of our children, of all children.

         DEMANDS FOR PS 19:

      We demand that the SCSC be formally recognized as an advisory body for decisions regarding District 14 schools, particularly with respect to the development of PS 19.

·         We demand, with respect to the proposed transformation of PS 19, that the SCSC participate in the  decision-making on the hiring criteria of incoming school leadership; the development of new academic curricula and/or grant-funded programs; school outreach/recruitment and enrollment; monitoring of school resources (budgets, grants, etc.); and overall oversight of the school moving forward.

•        We demand that the Department of Education reissue the RFP for the transformation of PS19 to expand the range of proposals for consideration. Additionally, as a recognized advisory body, that the SCSC be part of the review process.

•        We demand that any transformation of PS19 stipulate that the name stays as is, “The Roberto Clemente School”.

•        We demand the assurance that the magnet grant previously awarded to PS 19 is secured, and will be maintained as part of the development of the school.

•        We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be bilingual (English/Spanish) and culturally competent.

•        We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be experienced working with and creating effective programs for English Language Learners, specifically dual-language programs.

•        We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be skilled and experienced in networking with community organizations and resource development.

•        We demand that the new PS 19 School Leader be experienced in progressive, accelerated academic approaches to address the holistic development needs of our young people.

•        We demand that the transformation of PS 19 include the integration of a dual-language program.

DEMANDS FOR MS 50

•        We demand that the SCSC be formally recognized as an advisory body for decisions regarding District 14 schools; particularly with respect to the proposed collocation at MS 50.

•       We demand that the Department of Education reject the proposal to collocate a Success Charter School into the MS 50 building.

•       We demand that the Department of Education reissue the RFP with an open, transparent process for a new school at MS 50 or for the expansion of MS 50 into a grade 6-12 school. Additionally, as a recognized advisory body, that the SCSC be part of the review process.

•       We demand that any RFP resulting in a new school or school expansion, include a 1-year planning process before full implementation.

 

UPDATED: Rally at City Hall and close encounters of the heated kind with Mayor Mike

We had a great rally this morning at City Hall to protest the budget cuts to schools. About fifty parents turned up, some with their children, with signs pasted to their jackets saying, “Do not balance the budget on our backs.”

Joining us were Council Members Robert Jackson and Margaret Chin of Manhattan, Mark Weprin of Queens, Jumaane Williams and Matthieu Eugene of Brooklyn, and Diana Reyna of Brooklyn and Queens, as well as Leroy Barr, staff director of the UFT and Donovan Richards, CM Sanders chief of staff.

At the end of the rally we had an unexpected encounter with Bloomberg himself. Pictures from the rally and our encounter with Mayor Mike are now up on the CSM Facebook page .

At the press conference, I showed charts revealing the sharp increases in class size that have already occurred, as well as a chart with the worsening distribution of income in NYC and NY state.

Eliminating 6,000 teaching positions would be an absolute disaster for our children, and would lead to even further increases in class size, probably the sharpest in over 30 years. I concluded that though the mayor may want to roll over the city’s $3 billion surplus, we as parents will not roll over when it comes to our children.

All of the elected officials were eloquent in their defense of our children’s right to a quality education, and pledged that they would fight hard to make sure that there would be no further increases in class size or any cuts to the classroom in the city’s education budget. I handed CM Jackson our petition with over 1,000 signatures and asked him to give it to Speaker Quinn, who will have to protect our children in the budget negotiations.

He emphasized that there was no need for any cuts with the city’s $3 billion surplus; Mark Weprin pointed out that there were plenty other areas that were expendable in the DOE spending policies, including wasteful testing, technology enhancements, consultants and private contracts. CM Chin said as a former teacher and married to a teacher, she knew full well how important class size is and that we cannot afford to let class sizes grow any more. Both Jumaane Williams and Matthieu Eugent pointed out that focusing on improving education is the best investment the city can make.

Sue Dietrich, Staten Island parent and head of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, representing all the PTAs in the city, said her son’s class was already at 34 students; and that it can’t possibly go any higher. She pointed out that the city’s arts programs, like the great chorus at PS 22 that sang at the Oscars, could be lost if there were any more budget cuts to schools.

Noah Gotbaum, President of CEC D3, said the Governor and the Mayor should be ashamed of themselves for favoring millionaires over our kids, and that though Cuomo talked about “shared sacrifice” it was hard to see what if anything the wealthy had sacrificed in this budget.

Lisa Donlan, parent leader and member of the Grassroots Education Movement led us in a chant, “Whose schools? Our schools! Whose taxes? Our taxes? Whose priorities? Our priorities!” Sarah Porter, parent activist from PS132K in Williamsburg, wrapped up by pointing out the mayor’s math was defective and that he needed remedial lessons, since there was no need to cut 6,000 teachers with such a large surplus.

After the rally was over, some of us remained talking on the plaza in front of City Hall, including Sarah, Tina Schiller of PS 234, and Benita Rivera of the Mother’s Agenda, when I noticed the Mayor walking down the steps.

I waved to him and shouted, “Please, Mr. Mayor, do not balance the budget on our children’s backs” and that “Millionaires should pay more, including you!”

To my surprise, he briskly walked over to us. He asked if we were teachers, and we said, no, parents. I showed him the class size charts, and asked him if he would want to have his child in such large classes; how could he consider letting them increase even more?

He countered by saying that city had been subjected to big cuts from the feds and the state and we should criticize them, not him. I followed up by pointing out that the city’s had a $3 billion surplus, but he claimed that there was no surplus; when we disputed that, he added that he needed to save the surplus for the year after.

I told him that I knew he wanted to roll over the surplus, but our kids cannot have their education further damaged. We said he should use the surplus now to fill holes in this year’s budget, and if he needed more money, he should raise city taxes on the wealthy. He said, go tell Albany; and that he’s been up there arguing with them.

We pointed out that he didn’t go to Albany to support the surtax on the wealthy but that he had instead opposed this. Several times he said, “Listen to me! I won’t talk unless you listen to me!” After about five minutes, he got tired of the discussion, and walked off.

Luckily, Benita Rivera was snapping photos with her cell phone; these are on the CSM Facebook page along with earlier ones from the rally, taken by Michelle Faljean of the SI Federation of PTAs:

Thanks Benita, Michelle, and everyone who came today!

After our exchange with the mayor, Erin Einhorn, City Hall Daily News reporter ran over, along with Samantha Gross of the AP, to ask us about it. She has already posted an account of our debate on the DN blog, entitled Mayor Bloomberg Listens! (But Does He Hear?)

UPDATED: The mayor's press spokesman has responded and so have I. several times on the DN blog. Go check it out!

Go check it out and leave a comment! And please leave a comment below.

NYC Kids PAC launches; check out our endorsements!

Whether you're concerned about governance and Mayoral control, or about school overcrowding, you know we need real change in our public schools.

Public school parents have started a new organization, called NYC Kids PAC, to support candidates who are working to make the sort of changes we need. More information about NYC Kids PAC is at Gotham Schools ; also see our (very new) website at www.nyckidspac.org, that has our mission statement and a list of founding members.

As we learned from from the school governance battle in Albany and the struggle in the City Council for a better capital plan, we need to elect representatives who take their responsibilities to our kids seriously. We call for real action to end overcrowding, ensure parent input, and give our children real opportunity and protect their civil rights. We will build parent power through the ballot box.

We have endorsed the following candidates in the primaries taking place on Tuesday, and hope you will support them for their work on behalf of better schools:

--- For City Comptroller, we endorse John Liu, who as Councilmember voted against the school capital plan and demanded enhanced accountability from the DOE as a member of the Council's Education Committee;

--- For Public Advocate, we endorse Norman Siegel, for his pro bono work representing the interests of public school parents in the cell phone and Randall's Island lawsuits.

--- For reelection to the City Council, we endorse the six members who voted against the inadequate school capital plan: in alphabetical order,Charles Barron, Alan Gerson, Robert Jackson, Ken Mitchell, Diane Reyna, and Al Vann;

--- For City Council, we endorse Mark Weprin, who as a state Assemblymember voted against the Silver/Padavan legislation that continued the current system of mayoral control, with no checks and balances;

If you would like to become a member of NYC Kids PAC, or send a contribution, send an email to nyckidspac@gmail.com

thanks,

Ann Kjellberg, President, NYC Kids PAC