Yes, Virginia, charter school co-locations do indeed cause more overcrowding

Protesters against a charter co-location credit: Daily News

Correction:  I linked to last year's report by mistake, as the comment below from Michael Regnier points out. Here is this year's update from the NYC  Charter Center, which is only one page.  I have changed one of my critiques below accordingly. None of my other points need amending.

Today’s report from the NYC Charter Center claims that buildings where charter schools are co-located tend to be less overcrowded than average school buildings.   Our analysis of the Education Impact Statements (EIS’s) of charter co-location proposals considered by the Panel for Educational Policy between December 2010 and March 2012 finds that of the 79 charter school co-locations proposed by DOE, 22 of them, or nearly 30 percent, were projected to push the building to 100 percent utilization or more during the following year or soon thereafter.  

Moreover, in 47 of these proposals, or nearly 60 percent, the EIS projected that the charter school co-location would soon create a building utilization rate of 90 percent or more – a rate that is often experienced as significantly overcrowded, as shown in our principal survey (How Crowded are Our Schools )  and in the views of many independent observers.  Advocates, parents and elected officials have all pointed out that the DOE’s utilization formula significantly understates the actual level of overcrowding in our schools. 

Despite the claims of DOE that they only co-locate schools where there is room, the insertion of every new school within an existing school building has the effect of causing more overcrowding.  When multiple schools share a space originally intended for one organization, classroom space is lost as administrative, cluster, and specialty rooms have to be replicated for each new school.  

In the past, DOE officials estimated that each new co-location diminishes a school’s capacity by about 10 percent. (See EPP, Capital Promises.)   In a school system that is chronically overcrowded, with more than half of all elementary and high schools at or over 100 percent, the co-location of hundreds of new small schools and charter schools has significantly exacerbated the problem.   

Many parents, advocates, and teachers have seen how charter co-locations have had damaging results, causing students in the existing public schools to be squeezed out of the space they need for a quality education, resulting in loss of art rooms, science labs, libraries, and classroom space, and causing class sizes to rise, especially as there are NO class size standards in the instructional footprint used for these decisions.  It is also common for special needs students to lose their dedicated spaces for mandated services such speech or occupational therapy, and to be pushed out into hallways or closets, especially since the utilization formula does not properly account for the number of students needing these services in each school.

This new report makes another major error: it claims that the Blue Book, the annual report on school capacity and utilization, is not yet available for the 2011-2012 school year, when it was actually released months ago.[Actually, the new one-pager is based on the most recent Blue Book.]

Finally, the statement of James Merriman, the Center’s head in the press release is false: that “charter schools [are] disadvantaged in terms of funding”.  Not even counting the millions of dollars in private funding their receive, NYC charter schools in co-located buildings receive more in per-student public funds than students in public schools receive, when the provision of free space and services are counted, according to an Independent Budget Office analysis.  

The authors of the IBO analysis concluded that co-located charters received about $650 more per student in public funding during the 2009-2010 school year, and that “When complete data from 2010–2011 become available, they are almost certain to show an even greater advantage for those charters housed within public school buildings compared with traditional public schools.” 

At least one statement in the [earlier] NYC Charter Center report is true:  

"…when they [charter schools]are allowed free co-location in district buildings it is without legal right to the space."

We agree.  The provision of free space to charter schools not only causes more overcrowding, but is also a violation of New York state law.  With the help of the pro-bono law firm, Advocates for Justice, we  sued in state court last year to stop this damaging and inequitable practice and the case continues.

Gates-funded charter school "compact" vs. the real thing

Bob Hughes of New Visions and James Merriman of the NYC Charter Center, beneficiaries of gobs of Gates money, join together in the Daily News to praise the one-sided Gates-designed “compact” signed by Chancellor Klein as well as the leaders of other districts around the country who receive Gates money. Nice little self-appreciation club, guys.

Real parents and other stakeholders were as usual left out of the discussion.

Not mentioned in the “feel-good” oped is how the actual “compact” requires that NYC continue to provide charters space in district buildings – which has sparked controversy and bitter battles as district public school children are increasingly squeezed out of their own schools, into basement rooms or even hallways.

As usual, the heedless charter lobby continues to be their own worst enemy, as resentment against charter schools grows as a result of their greedy actions. Unfortunately, in our chronically overcrowded, space-starved and underfunded system, the provision of a quality education continues to be a zero-sum game, as many of our neediest students suffer under worse and worse conditions with the continued proliferation of charters. While the city is contributing more than half a billion dollars to charter schools, the budgets of district schools continue to be slashed to the bone.

Finally, although the "compact" calls for sharing best practices, it would be more convincing if they and their sponsors admitted what is obvious to most independent observers: that many of the best charter schools and small schools benefit from the smaller classes which are denied the rest of New York City students. But I imagine that would be taboo, given the insistence of Bill Gates that class size for public school kids doesn't matter. (For more on this, see my latest Huffington Post column, Bill Gates, Bloomberg, Cathie Black and the Condescension of the Oligarchy, and this Alternet article, Where Does Billionaire Bill Gates Come Off Saying Bigger Class Size is the Answer?)

For a charter/district compact with principles that, if enacted, would provide real equity and opportunity for all NYC children, check out the framework of common principles that Class Size Matters and NY Charter Parents Association developed with input of actual public school parents from both sets of schools. As parents had a say in its design, it includes the key issue of class size.

Merriman's appeal: political payback time for the charter school lobby

James Merriman of the Charter School Center sent out an alert to charter school leaders over the weekend, urging them to attend an important meeting tomorrow with Deputy Mayor Walcott to which the Mayor is invited as well.

At the meeting, the charter school lobby will ask the city to voluntarily increase funding for charters out of the city’s discretionary funds, if the state maintains the freeze on per pupil charter funding that occurred last year.

Merriman’s appeal is nakedly political, and he writes that the mayor needs to pay them back for their support for his re-election and extension of unlimited mayoral control (as well as the charter cap lift, though why that benefited him more than them is unclear.):

The Mayor has been a strong supporter, but it is your unprecedented record of success that has allowed him to hold up New York City as a model of educational achievement. It was your results that helped make such a strong case in Albany for the recent cap lift. It was your parents who rooted him on during the mayoral control battle and his re-election campaign. We've been there for him and now he needs to be there for us.

Meanwhile, even if charter schools have suffered a one year freeze, our district schools have had their budgets slashed to the bone. If the 4% cut now being proposed goes through, their budgets will have been cut by 12% since 2007.

As it is, the overall charter school budget is still growing fast -- because of increased enrollment, which is estimated to grow another 31% next year. Even if the per student freeze is maintained, charter school funding will cost the city an estimated $545 million next year.

If the mayor accedes to the charter lobby’s demands, it will be yet another sign how politics rules at City Hall; and how charters continue to get favorable treatment compared to district schools.

More questions than answers about charter schools on the NY Times blog

See the extended commentary and answers from James D. Merriman IV, the chief executive of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence on the NY Times blog.

Merriman goes on at some length about how disadvantaged charter schools are in terms of funding and support. I posted the following question:

Question: Mr. Merriman says that charter schools are seriously hampered by receiving less funding, but according to DOE budget documents they received more than $11,000 per student his past year, and are projected to receive $12,500 per student next.

Meanwhile, the school that my child attends receives about $7400 per student. Mr. Merriman also argues that charter schools don’t receive any funding for facilities — but why should they need to when the administration gives them prime real estate in our existing public school buildings, at the same time taking away valuable classroom and cluster spaces from the students at the existing public school?

Moreover, as mentioned above, charter schools have the most valuable advantage of all — the ability to cap enrollment and class size at any level they want.

My question is this: who pays for custodial services, lunch, and transportation services at charter schools that share buildings with traditional public schools? Does the DOE charge the charter schools extra for this, or is this also provided free of charge?

My question went unanswered.

Also, the following statement made by Mr. Merriman on the NY Times blog was inaccurate:

“What the chancellor has not done is move to close neighborhood zoned elementary schools and replace then with a charter school. If the neighborhood zoned elementary school is shut down, the chancellor has replaced that school with another zoned school—and everyone who was in the zone who was attending the old school has the right to attend the new one.”

To the contrary, the Chancellor closed down PS 101 in East Harlem – a neighborhood school that was in good standing with the state and federal government and that had just received a “proficient” rating on its quality review.

At the time, I found it very suspicious – and suspected that the real motivation for this action was so that its building could be given over to a charter school. Reporters asked DOE whether this would occur, but the administration denied this was in their plans.

Nevertheless, a few months later, it was announced that a charter school, another branch of the Harlem Success Academy, would open in the building of the former PS 101 at 141 East 111 St.