Comment by Gavin Healy on proposed revision to Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 concerning Citywide & Community Council conduct

See below comment sent by Gavin Healy, parent leader and attorney, in opposition to the proposed revision to Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 concerning Citywide and Community Education Council conduct and complaint procedures, due to be voted on next week, December 17 Panel for Education Policy meeting,  at the Evander Childs Educational Campus (800 East Gun Hill Road, Bronx, New York 10467). All documents for this meeting  including contracts for four controversial AI products, including three that were voted down at the Oct. 2025 meeting, and the proposed regulation can  found on the PEP SharePoint file here. 

This Chancellor's Regulation revision grew out of a dispute and a lawsuit filed  by March 2024 three CCEC members challenging the constitutionality of the existing version of Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, issued on December 22, 2021, claiming it chilled free speech and viewpoint expression.  Among the allegations of the named plaintiff, Deborah Alexander, was that she was unfairly ejected from a CEC 14 meeting because she had expressed political views contrary to the chair and the vice chair at the time. 

In a preliminary injunction, the court found the regulation both unconstitutionally vague  and a violation of Free Speech.  

What is somewhat ironic is that I was summarily ejected from a Zoom meeting of the Citywide Council of High Schools on Wed. December 10, right before I was going to provide comment on a proposed resolution on the class size law, pointing out how the resolution was both factually inaccurate and unnecessary, given its purported aims. The author of that resolution and the co-chair of the CCHS is Deborah Alexander, the named plaintiff in the above lawsuit.

From: Gavin Healy <ghealy@cecd2.net>
Date: 11 December 2025 at 10:53:39 AM GMT-5
To: RegulationD-210@schools.nyc.gov, panel@schools.nyc.gov
Cc: Greg Faulkner <gregfaulkner1@gmail.com>, r.izquierdo06@gmail.com, CCasaretti@schools.nyc.gov, Marielle Ali <MAli38@schools.nyc.gov>, NHasan3@schools.nyc.gov, Adriana Alicea <AAlicea6@schools.nyc.gov>, Naveed Hasan <naveed@cs.columbia.edu>, Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos <NYCPSChancellor@schools.nyc.gov>, DMantell2@schools.nyc.gov, Noah Means-simonsen <NMeanssimonsen@schools.nyc.gov>
Subject: Comments on Revisions to Chancellor's Regulation D-210

Dear members of the Panel for Educational Policy: 

I am writing to urge you to table a vote on the revised Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 and/or amend the current revised draft. 

My concerns are as follows: 

(1)  The revised regulations conflate incivility with serious unlawful conduct  

The revised version includes necessary prohibitions against discrimination/harassment (IV.A.), threats of violence (IV.B.), disclosure of private student information under FERPA (IV.D. and IV.F.), and use of a CCEC position for personal financial benefit (IV.G.), all of which may be actionable under state/federal criminal law.  

However, IV.C. adds a new prohibition against “disruptive Conduct or Speech that prevents, or is reasonably likely to prevent, the CCEC from conducting business (including, but not limited to Conduct or Speech such as shouting, profanity or physical outbursts, where such Conduct or Speech interferes with the CCEC conducting business).” It is concerning that these revised regulations equate matters of simple civility and decorum in CCEC meetings (already governed by CCEC by-laws, parliamentary procedure, etc.), which are not legally actionable, with more serious and legally actionable discrimination, harassment, and threats of violence. IV.C. should be deleted or moved to a new category separate from these other prohibitions to underscore the profoundly different legal and ethical nature of these types of conduct.  

(2)  The DOE failed to meaningfully engage all stakeholders (CCEC members, parents, students) in deliberation of these revisions: 

The original Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 was adopted by the PEP in December 2021 at the end of the DeBlasio administration. A new DOE position of “Equity Compliance Officer” was created under the regulations as the designated DOE official responsible for processing complaints filed thereunder. The regulations also mandated establishment of an “Equity Council” tasked with providing recommendations on the resolution of complaints. When Eric Adams took office as mayor in January 2022, the new administration dragged its feet on implementing these regulations. The DOE did not fill the required position of Equity Compliance Officer until February 2023, more than a year after the regulations were adopted. On October 27, 2023 then-FACE Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd stated that Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 was “an unfunded mandate inherited from the previous administration,” implying that her office would not actively investigate complaints. It was not until late 2023 that FACE started to process complaints filed under Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, and it was not until February 2024 that positions on the Equity Council were filled and announced by FACE. 

In March 2024 three CCEC members filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Chancellor’s Regulation D-210. Those three CCEC members are represented by the Institute for Free Speech (IFS), a right-wing group that has represented Moms for Liberty and Gays Against Groomers. IFS has also represented pro bono clients in efforts to invalidate college guidelines on anti-racism. In September 2024 the three CCEC plaintiffs were granted an injunction, preventing the DOE from enforcing the provisions of Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 that prohibit CCEC members from (1) “engaging in conduct that serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten others” and (2) “engaging in conduct involving derogatory or offensive comments about any DOE student.” Settlement negotiations have been ongoing since then between attorneys for the CCEC plaintiffs and attorneys for the DOE. These revisions to Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 are a result of those negotiations. 

The DOE held a 45-minute “engagement session” with CCEC presidents on October 14, 2025 to discuss the revisions, although no draft of the revisions was presented at that time. Some of the CCEC presidents in attendance at the session objected to the presence of at least one of the plaintiffs in the above lawsuit, commenting that it created an unsafe space for discussion of sensitive issues such as harassment and doxxing of minors. The DOE has not held any engagement sessions about the revisions with other CCEC members, parents, or students, and has not engaged in any meaningful solicitation of feedback from the broader community other than sending two emails to CCEC members notifying them of the PEP vote.  

Instead of rushing through a revised Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 to resolve a lawsuit filed by just three CCEC members, the PEP should table a vote until the DOE can engage in a more thoughtful deliberative process with parents, students, and CCEC members. Since the former Deputy Chancellor of FACE under the Adams administration declared that Chancellor’s Regulation D-210 is an “unfunded mandate inherited from the previous administration,” it would be better for the new mayoral administration that will take office in January 2026 to handle these revisions, since it will be the new administration that will be tasked with implementing them. 

Respectfully,

Gavin Healy

Member, CEC2 (writing in my personal capacity)

How investors make money from NYC Charter Schools despite purported ban on for-profit charters by Gavin Healy

The following post is by Gavin Healy, a public school parent and a newly-elected member of CEC2.  Though ostensibly, all new for-profit charter schools are banned from opening in NYC, there are still ways to make a buck off the proliferation of charters, especially as NY State law requires the city to reimburse charter schools for the cost of its leases at a very generous rate, one that it appears many charter schools including those whose management organizations own their own buildings have used to their advantage in many cases to inflate their own rent.  See the Class Size Matters 2019 and 2021 reports on this issue, and the letter from Senators John Liu, Robert Jackson and CM Rita Joseph asking the City Comptroller to audit these payments.  

Now that some charter schools are closing due to falling enrollment, such Harlem Hebrew Language Academy, they can sell off their buildings or rent them back to DOE,  and garner even higher profits, despite the fact that the city has already spent nearly nine million dollars on lease payments in the case of HHLA over the years.

Here Gavin reports on how Barone Management, which is in the process of building and managing a portfolio of 10 charter school buildings throughout the city, mostly in the Bronx, promises a steady rate of 22.5% internal rate of return (IRR) to its investors. What Barone explained below is that the per student amount set by the state and received from the city in rent doesn't align with the actual cost of the land, construction or maintenance; thus building charter schools in less expensive areas of the city like the Bronx guarantees a higher profit to investors. 

Thanks to Tanesha Grant, who first noticed this ad on Facebook.

Recently, I came across an ad seeking “investors” for the Bronx Charter School for Children, and immediately the question popped into my head: How can a NYC charter school have “investors” when for-profit charter schools are now prohibited under New York State law? 

Nationally, approximately 12% of charter schools are run by for-profit management companies. In New York State, charter schools had once been permitted to contract with for-profit operators, but the state legislature closed that loophole in 2010, and now only six for-profit charter schools remain in New York (four of them in NYC), grandfathered under the previous version of the law. Bronx Charter School for Children is not one of them.

So how can a “non-profit” NYC charter school be sold to investors? The answer to that question lies in what drives much of NYC politics: real estate.

The developer of this real estate project is a firm called Barone Management. Barone boasts of an “educational portfolio” of a dozen charter schools in NYC with close to 6,000 students, plus several more schools in development. For the Bronx Charter School for Children, Barone is renovating an existing building into a 28,000 square foot school. 

To partially finance the ground lease and renovation of the building, Barone is seeking investors through a “crowdfunding” platform called RealtyMogul, which hosted a webinar to answer questions about the project. RealtyMogul and Barone structured this project as a private placement of shares in a limited liability company established to lease the building to the (non-profit) charter school operator. As a private placement, shares can be sold to “accredited investors” (generally, people with a net worth of $1 million or more) without registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Bronx Charter School for Children is Barone’s second “crowdfunded” charter school project in NYC, following one it completed for the Renaissance Charter School in Elmhurst, Queens in 2020.

In its webinar for potential investors, Barone offered a primer on the economics of what’s driving charter school demand in NYC. As Barone’s chief executive put it, “the NOI [net operating income] only grows as more students are enrolled.” Unlike payments under a more traditional commercial lease, which might be calculated on a simple dollars per square foot basis, total lease payments for this charter school depend on overall student enrollment. NYC is the only school district in the nation obligated to provide charter schools with rental subsidies, and this fact is a key element in Barone’s marketing pitch to investors. 

In the words of Barone Management CEO Scott Barone: 

“How does per pupil funding translate to real estate? Per New York City State and City charter regulations, 30% of an individual charter school’s per pupil funding is permitted to be spent on its real estate and facility needs. For the ‘23-24 school year, this equated to $5,502 per child per year. So, the short answer is that the more students you have enrolled in a particular school, the more robust its overall budget is, including its real estate budget, which is referred to as rental assistance in New York City.”

“Rental assistance” refers to payments NYC is required to make to charter schools established after 2014, or charter schools operating before that time that have since expanded, if such schools are located in buildings not owned by the NYC Department of Education. When the NYS legislature amended the charter law in 2014, it imposed the requirement to pay rental assistance only in respect of charter schools located in NYC and in no other school district in the state. As Barone notes, the amount NYC is required to pay to charter schools for rental assistance is $5,502 per student for the upcoming school year, a per student amount that has more than doubled since 2014. 

The Bronx Charter School for Children, established before the 2014 amendment, had not been able to take advantage of rental assistance until it expanded from a K-5 to a K-8 school starting from the 2020-2021 school year. The new location for the school will house these expanded middle school grades.

The amount of “rental assistance” due under the law is the “actual rental cost” of the charter school’s lease or 30% of per pupil funding, whichever is lower. In its pitch to investors, Barone is clearly setting the expectation that the amount of rent they will charge the charter school is the highest amount possible - 30% of per pupil funding - regardless of the actual rental cost. As the private placement memorandum provides, the base rent due under the charter school lease will initially be an amount equal to “(A) the greater of: (i) 30% of the Tenant School’s per pupil funding from New York State for the first Lease Year” and “(ii) $5,284.69; multiplied by (B) the Student Count.” 

The lease terms provide that the rent will increase by a minimum of 2.25% per year, plus a corresponding increase in that amount as student enrollment increases. Since “Student Count” is defined under the lease as the greater of the school’s actual enrollment and minimum enrollment numbers of 189 students in the first year, 200 students in the second, 213 students in the third, and 225 students in the fourth, the profits of Barone and its investors will rise as enrollment rises. The charter school also has a clear financial incentive to maintain its enrollment numbers, since if enrollment drops below those minimums, its rental payment obligations will not decrease. 

“Rental assistance” also explains why investors push for new charter school development in some neighborhoods rather than others. Responding to questions about crime and security around the school, Barone emphasized the presence of NYPD school safety officers, but ultimately turned the answer back to real estate economics, saying: “from a real estate perspective, for real estate dollars associated with a charter school, we get $5,500 per kid per year in rent. … I get that same $5,500 in the South Bronx that I would on Park Avenue. Obviously, the cost of my real estate is far cheaper in the South Bronx.”

Barone’s investment sales pitch is indicative of how charter schools can blur the line between the non-profit and for-profit education sectors. Barone’s chief financial officer projected total returns on a $100,000 investment in the school to be over $219,000 over the course of four years, and hinted at the potential for selling the project in its entirety to other investors at a later point. As an example, he cited how in 2019 “a large package of charter schools was sold … for over $450 million,” referring to the sale by a real estate investment trust of a portfolio of close to 50 facilities leased to a charter school operator. In that case, as with the Bronx Charter School for Children, it was buildings being sold rather than schools, but that distinction gets lost in the sales pitch to investors. In the real estate economics of the charter sector, schools are assets and greater student enrollment equates to a higher return on investment. NYC rental assistance guarantees these returns, and it also drives investor demand for charters in the South Bronx rather than on Park Avenue.