Why Emily Kim, former attorney for Success Academy, should not be allowed to start her own charter school

       

This email was sent yesterday as a public comment to the SUNY charter committee and the Charter School Institute, to urge them to reject the application of Emily Kim to start her own charter school in District 6. See also Tory Frye's letter of opposition here.

By email to:  charters@SUNY.edu

September 13, 2017

To the SUNY Charter committee and Board:

I urge you to reject the proposed authorization of the Zeta charter school, for many of the reasons cited by the Tory Frye of the D6 Community Education Council,[1] but also because Emily Kim, the proposed founder, was the chief attorney for the Success Academy chain while the network proceeded to repeatedly violate state and federal laws and deprive students of their civil rights.

More specifically:

• ·         In October 2015, Success Academy retaliated against a parent of a special needs child who had spoken on a PBS show about his repeated illegal suspensions by Success, by posting her child’s disciplinary file online and sending the link to reporters nationwide.  This action was a flagrant violation of his federal privacy rights according to FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. [2]

• ·         Only after the parent, Fatima Geidi, filed a complaint with the US Department of Education, and several months ensued did Success Academy finally take down his file.[3]

• ·         On January 20, 2016, parents of 13 current and former students of Success Academy filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the US Department of Education, accusing the network of discriminating against students with disabilities by denying them their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them without providing alternative instruction, and in some cases pushing them out.  This complaint was joined NYC Public Advocate Letitia James; Councilman Daniel Dromm, the chair of the NYC Council Education Committee; Legal Services NYC; the Legal Aid Society; MFY Legal Services; the Partnership for Children’s Rights; and the New York Legal Assistance Group.[4] 

• ·         Subsequently, the federal Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation into Success Academy’s discriminatory practices, the results of which have not yet been released.[5]

• ·         SUNY itself was reported to have launched its own investigation into Success Academy’s push-out policies, and more specifically the infamous “Got to Go” list. [6]

• ·         In April 2016, parents at Success Academy Fort Greene launched a new federal lawsuit, alleging "illegal, discriminatory" campaign against children with special needs , including  sending their children to emergency rooms without cause, illegally suspending them, and threatening to call the Administration for Children's Services if they refused to pick their child up early from school These parents are represented by Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Advocates for Justice.[7]

• ·         In addition, the application for this new charter school should be rejected since Ms. Kim is planning to co-locate her school in a district public school building, which would prevent the already-overcrowded schools in the district from having sufficient space to reduce class size, as previously agreed upon by the city in its original Contracts for Excellence plan. [8]

• ·         In July 2017, a legal complaint was filed against DOE with the NY State Education Department for failing to comply with the its state-approved Contracts for Excellence class size reduction plan.  [9]  This complaint was prepared by the Education Law Center on behalf of Class Size Matters, the Public Advocate, the Alliance for Quality Education and nine NYC public school parents.[10]

Until the results of the investigations by the federal Office of Civil Rights and SUNY are released and these complaints and lawsuits are decided, it would be premature and ill-considered to allow Ms. Kim to open her own charter school, given her history of facilitating and defending repeated violations of children’s civil rights. 

Below are additional personal observations by Fatima Geidi of Ms. Kim’s behavior, while her child attended Upper West Success Academy.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director

_________

To the SUNY board:

Emily Kim worked for Success Academy from August 2011 to June 2017 as first the General Counsel, then Chief Policy & Legal Officer, and finally the Executive VP for Legal Affairs.  From August 2011 - February 2014 my son attended Upper West Success Academy. 

Emily Kim had a personal hand in making sure my son's IEP was not met. This happened continuously from first to third grade. She conducted herself unprofessionally in meetings, emails, and during phone conversations. On more than one occasion I had to not only seek but retain legal counsel to try to protect his civil rights and to obtain his mandated services as required by his IEP. 

When I was banned from entering the school, Emily personally enforced the ban with no evidence of any misdeed on my part, and instead offered to find a new school for my child. The ban wasn't lifted until I appeared at a press conference with the Public Advocate Letitia James, in which Ms. James asked SUNY to investigate the abuse of special needs children.

Ms. Kim was supposed to be involved in mediation and conflict resolution when she reached out to me; however, her focus was not mediation but pushing my child out. 

She helped cover the tracks of the staff when they didn't provide proper documentation for my son's numerous illegal suspensions.  Instead of making sure Success Academy followed the law, she helped them break it.

In 2015 my son's records were released to the public after a PBS interview. She did nothing to remove his records from the Success website knowing that it was a direct violation of FERPA.  Instead, my son's record stayed on the website until we filed a FERPA complaint and I joined a complaint to the federal Office of Civil Rights in 2016.

Through that same course of time Emily was attending press conferences and making public statements on behalf of SA. 

Her public and private actions have shown time and time again that she does not care for the well-being of children or their education. Emily Kim does not deserve to run a school, where vulnerable children will be subjected to her abuse. 

Yours, Fatima Geidi

---

[1] https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/09/tory-frye-why-application-to-authorize.html

[2] The PBS show is here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/kindergarten-young-suspend-student/ See also: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/10/success_academies_eva_moskowitz_published_a_student_s_disciplinary_record.html

[3] https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2015/10/ferpa-complaint-from-fatima-geidi-to.html

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/nyregion/filing-says-success-academy-network-discriminated-against-students-with-disabilities.html?mcubz=1  and http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-charter-network-accused-disability-violations-article-1.2503503?cid=bitly The legal complaint is posted here: http://pubadvocate.nyc.gov/sites/advocate.nyc.gov/files/a_and_parent_of_a_et_al._1-20-16.pdf

[5] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/nyc-charter-school-probed-alleged-bias-disabled-kids-article-1.2634057

[6] http://nypost.com/2016/01/18/suny-opens-probe-into-charter-school-over-forced-out-students/ See also https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/nyregion/at-a-success-academy-charter-school-singling-out-pupils-who-have-got-to-go.html?mcubz=1

[7] http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/04/as-it-presses-pre-k-dispute-success-hit-with-new-lawsuit-101229

[8] See the class size and overcrowding data for District 6 here: https://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/District-6-updated.pptx

[9] http://www.wnyc.org/story/parents-push-ny-enforce-law-smaller-class-sizes/  and http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/education/2017/07/20/nyc-public-schools-class-sizes-parents-complaint-possible-court-battle.html

[10] https://www.classsizematters.org/nyc-parents-file-complaint-to-enforce-law-to-reduce-class-size/

Funny if it weren't so sad: SUNY charter committee switches location of Success charter and switches it back

After the rally protesting the vote by the SUNY charter committee to approve 17 new charter schools for NYC-- including 14 more for Success Academy, despite the fact that two thirds of their schools are already underenrolled, a representative from the city told us that at the last minute Eva Moskowitz decided to switch the location for one of her charters from District 2 to District 1 or District 6, and the SUNY committee had approved this change.

Susan Miller Barker, Joseph Belluck and Ralph Rossi

This appalling practice is not all that surprising, given the way SUNY approves whatever Eva Moskowitz wants.  They allow her charters to repeatedly expand, despite the fact that she fails to enroll and retain equal numbers of high-needs students, which is required under the charter law and in fact, pushes out at risk kids with stunning regularity.  The committee also approved a stunning 14 more charters despite the public comments were overwhelmingly against allowing these charters to go forward.

You can see the tepid discussion of the last-minute switch and vote by the charter committee to approve it at about 30 minutes in a video of the meeting at the SUNY website.  You can also see that the committee members did not mention any of the public comment, or even appeared to have bothered to have read the summary beforehand.

The three members of the committee are Joseph W. Belluck,  the chair, Angelo Fatta and John Murad; two lawyers and a retired corporate executive, none of them with any background in education. Also present sowing more confusion in their wake, were Susan Miller Barker, the head of the SUNY Charter Institute, and the Counsel Ralph Rossi.

Understandably, parent leaders from District 1 and 6 and their elected City Council Members were quite angry that there were no hearings or outreach in their districts before this vote.  Despite the fact that SUNY considers this a "non-material" change -- switching the charter from one end of Manhattan to another -- it makes hash out of the public process, including district hearings, required by the law.  Few would argue that Washington Heights and the Lower East side are the same in terms of student population as the more middle class areas encompassed by District 2.   So these elected leaders, including Councilmembers Chin, Dromm, Mendez and Rodriguez , along with the presidents of Community Education Councils in Districts 1,2, and 6, wrote a letter to the SUNY board President Carl McCall, which is below, saying that their practice of switching districts and ignoring public input at the last minute reveals their "extreme and marked disregard for a transparent, democratic process."  Here's an article in tomorrow's Daily News about the letter and the anger aroused by this switcheroo.

Meanwhile, the NY Times had reported earlier that SUNY had not made any changed but had approved the charter for District 2, as earlier planned: "The new Success charters are approved for Districts 2 and 3 in Manhattan; 9 in the Bronx; 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, and 23 in Brooklyn; and 24, 27, 28 and 30 in Queens."

I contacted the reporter, Liz Harris, who assured me that SUNY had told her that there was no such change and that the school had been approved for District 2, though this might later be changed if Eva wanted.  They told the same to the DNA Info reporter, who posted a correction to an earlier article that had reported on the last-minute switch:

However, SUNY did not allow Success Academy to change its application, said a spokesman. Instead, it approved its District 2 charter “after undergoing the legally required process, including a public hearing,” he said.“The Institute was notified that Success may pursue alternative arrangements in Districts 1 or 6, an adjustment which, for a variety of reasons, is not uncommon for a charter school,” he said in a statement.
“Should they follow that course, under the law and well established practice the Institute can amend the charter accordingly, and there will be a process for additional public input.”

But as the DNA info story noted, SUNY posted the following document tonight, showing the charter had  been moved to District 1 or 6 after all.  Check out the time stamp of 6:25 PM.

CM Chin saw the new document and tweeted it:

Now SUNY claims it didn't approve a Success charter for District 1 or 6. Let's look at the list of approved charters: http://t.co/XY6RotMhAV
— Margaret S. Chin (@CM_MargaretChin) October 14, 2014

Apparently noticing the article or CM Chin's tweet, someone at SUNY Charter Institute took down the document and revised their version of reality once again -- that the switch to District 1 or District 6 had not occurred after all:

It would all be a comedy of errors if it weren't so terribly sad.

Who knows what happened and how many ways back and forth the truth was revised? The indisputable reality is that these three men make such consequential decisions by authorizing and randomly siting 17 new charter schools,  in such a cavalier fashion, without any knowledge or apparent interest in the views of the community or impact on their schools, and our public education system as a whole. 

Oct 14 Letter to SUNY protesting last minute switch to1/D6 Re protesting last minute switch to1/D6 Re Success by leonie7851

Tory Frye on the questionable claims of supporters of Success Academy and charters in general

On Thursday, as the NY Times revealed, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Charters for the day, and told parents that they had to accompany their children to a rally near City Hall or find alternate baby-sitting for them. NY1 reported that all 32 of her schools had the morning off and parents got a wake-up call reminding them to attend. She bussed parents, students and staff to the rally; as did Achievement First charters.  One can only imagine the criticism in the media if any public school had called off classes and demanded that parents do the same for a political rally.

Here is an analysis of Victoria Frye, parent and CEC member in District 6 in Washington Heights on the claims of those who support Success Academy and charters more generally, with data and links for those who want to explore the issue further.

Waitlists

Looking at “demand” data for schools is obviously a market-based approach to education.  Even if one does believe that market or business models are ideal for educating children, waitlists prove nothing.  Guess how many kids are on the wait list for District 6 schools? Over 3,000.  How is that possible? The same families applied to multiple schools, probably including charter schools. 

 Charter school waitlists are equally inflated.  Even a D6 elementary school that is labeled as failing by “Families for Excellent Education” in their laughable “research” report TheForgotten Fourth,  PS 132 (The Juan Pablo Duarte School) had 152 applicants for just 50 seats; what does that demonstrate?  Some D6 schools had hundreds of students wait listed last spring. School acceptance rates were  18 and 14% for PS 311 and 314 -- both smaller than the acceptance rates of 19% percent claimed by Success Academy in its SUNY application, asking for the authority to establish 14 new charters across the city. 

Data on enrollment at the Success Academies in D2 shows that good portions, from a quarter to a third of students, come from outside the district.  How does that demonstrate “demand” within D2 for a Success Academy?  So the “evidence” (if you choose to interpret it that way) is clear: the demand for public schools eclipses the demand for charters.  So, no, charters should not get space or resources until we replicate the "high demand" and "high performing" public schools in our city.  For more on this see this analysis.

Apples to Apples Comparisons

Luckily some serious researchers have looked at this issue.  Bruce Baker, a professor Education at Rutgers, for example put together this chart: 

According to 2013 school report cards, “PS 149 has nearly double the number of special needs students compared to Academy 1: 20.6% compared to 12.6%, and more than four times the number of English Language learners  --18.9% compared to only 4.1% at Success Academy.”  (As described here: )  Success also suspends students at double the rate of their local public schools, for example Harlem Success 1, 2, 3, and 4 suspended students at a rate of 22, 15, 14 and 19% as compared with 6, 7, and 9% in Districts 3, 4, and 5. And again the IBO reports that special needs students leave charters at a much higher rate than comparable public school students (). And when charter students leave or are counseled out of a charter they do not go to another charter, they go to a public school.  Even SUNY, as the charter authorizer, acknowledges that attrition at Success is problematic.  

Regarding inclusion at public schools, we have a citywide policy of inclusion that mandates that local neighborhood schools must accommodate special needs students.  Budget realities constitute real barriers to schools being able to do this, so there is a tension between the relatively new inclusion policy and years and years of budget cuts.  The Chancellor has acknowledged this issue; but as of yet, I have heard of no solution to it.

Space

Our D6 public schools do not have space – FULL STOP.  We are over 90% capacity district-wide with the faulty capacity formula and we have numerous schools that are desperately in need of new facilities. We have the largest average class size in D6 since 2006. Last year, 6 D6 schools have K class averages of 25+. Ten D6 schools had grade 1-3 class averages of 25+. Five D6 schools had at least one 1-3 class with 30+. 14 D6 had at least one 4-8 class with 30+. PS 366 had a K class with 28 students. PS 153 had a 1^st grade class with 32 students. PS 28 had a 2^nd grade class with 31 students. PS 132, a struggling school, had a 3^rd grade class with 29 students. The average D6 utilization rate is 94%.  

Thirteen schools are over 100% utilization, including PS/IS 187, which is blocks away from the Mother Cabrini High School, which the DOE handed over to Success Academy.  D6 also has 19 “TCUs” (aka trailers) at 3 schools, not including the “mini buildings” at schools like PS 192/325.  Mott Hall is in a building that is dilapidated and dangerous; it ought to be condemned. So someone please explain to me how our D6 public schools have “space” for charter schools?  Taking space from D6 schools will HARM D6 students.

Hedge Fund supporters

Hedge fund people do not donate to systems that educate the masses; if they did, they would have been donating to public schools all along and/or advocating for increasing taxes on capital gains and investment incomes to levels that would fund public schools at the same levels of private schools.  Why have they not been doing this?  I thought they cared deeply about public school students?  Why do they only donate to charter schools or PACS that advocate vouchers and charters?  They see a business opportunity wrapped in a bogus charitable donation; they are about creating new “markets” and the best way to do this is to engage in "disruption," which is exactly what charters do.  The fact is they see public education as a 700 billion dollar (now 1T?) industry waiting to be privatized; and they need an education "crisis," a private-public "solution" (created by ALEC) and then lobbyists and politicians to pave the way for them.  This is well documented, for example here.  

Just a taste of what they have in store for children in the future: virtual schools. “Baird Equity Research, in a giddy note to investors this year about the potential growth of K12 Inc., noted, “capturing just two million (3.5%) of the addressable market yields a market opportunity of approximately $12 billion … Over the next three years, we believe that the company is capable of 7%+ organic revenue growth with modest margin expansion.” How will it achieve this growth? According to Baird, K12 Inc.’s “competency in lobbying in new states” is “another key point of differentiation.” The analyst note describes “K12’s success in working closely with state policymakers and school districts to enable the expansion of virtual schools into new states or districts” as a key asset. “The company has years of experience in successfully lobbying to get legislation passed to allow virtual schools to operate,” Baird concludes.”

Funding

The Independent Budget Office, which is just what its name says, reports that charters get more money per student than public schools. As well, each new charter gets $500K to start up, along with renovations etc.  This new round will cost us a cool 7M just to start.  If we accept that a competition-/market-based model of education is the way to go, and schools should be marketing to and competing for students, then we need an even playing field where public schools can offer the same programs and resources that charters do, with their hedge fund donor-money and extended days.  

 Eva Moskowitz earns 475K per year and according to Wikipedia has 4 assistants.  She runs 22 schools.  The NYC schools Chancellor earns $200K.  Eva also moved her offices to Wall Street recently.  So let's start paying public school teachers and administrators similar salaries and see what happens.  The truth is that Eva is getting paid this much because it is expensive to be the face of the destruction of the public education in the US, which is what she will go down in history as, if we let her do it.

Quality Schools

First, I have to point out that one of the schools included in The Forgotten Fourth report is D6’s Harbor Heights middle school, which is a school for new arrivals to the US.  The research was so sloppy that they did not even eliminate schools where students who just arrived in the US and do not speak English AT ALL attend and - as would be expected - do miserably on the state ENGLISH tests.  It’s also incredibly disrespectful to the educators and students in the school. 

According to CEC1 President, a D1 school for new arrivals was also included in the report.  Ignoring this, but accepting charters’ definition of “success,” if they are doing something unique, why is it not being replicated in public schools? If some children flourish under this model, then we do not need to remove the charter school cap statewide; we can just start doing what charters do.  If it is the longer school day, then lengthen it and pay teachers for their time.  If it is instruction that has been replicated many times over at various charter schools, then teach public school teachers to do it and implement it in magnet public schools to which parents can choose to send their children.  

But the truth is that this is not about implementing successful strategies in a public system to the benefit of all public school students.  It is about privatizing public education in the US and opening up a trillion dollar market to investors.  And the best way to go about this is to make it look like and to help public schools “fail” and that there is a “demand” for charters and thus we should just turn the whole system over to charters.  That’s what today’s rally was about; next is to try to lift the charter cap. 

  

 And, finally, teacher attrition…

Teacher attrition at Success is stunning.  As noted in this recent article: “In Harlem Success Academies 1-4, the only schools for which the state posted turnover data, more than half of all teachers left the schools ahead of the 2013-14 school year. In one school, three out of four teachers departed.”  The model is clearly unsustainable and obviously not “family-friendly” (which may explain their relatively young and inexperienced teachers and principals), but then again they only have to sustain it long enough to disrupt the system, buy the politicians, pass the legislation and open the market…

Plenty of NYC public schools stink and need very serious attention - don't get me wrong.  The current state of racial, ethnic and social class-based segregation must be addressed.  School funding must be addressed and child poverty must be addressed.  And no we cannot wait to get all of that right before we implement evidence-based education strategies that drive student achievement, like integrated schools and small class sizes (both shown to drive performance).  And if the research shows (using apples to apples comparisons) that some charters use techniques that improve achievement that public schools do not, given the same students, resources and environments, then we should implement the techniques in public schools.  

-- Victoria (Tory) Frye