The smoking gun of Eva's emails

Be sure to check out Juan Gonzalez’s Friday's column where he revealed the smoking gun of emails, showing how Eva Moskowitz asked Klein to close two neighborhood zoned elementary schools in Harlem, PS 194 and PS 241, so that her charter schools could take their place.

Less than two months later, Klein announced plans to phase out those schools and use the space for two Harlem Success academies on the pretext that both schools were "failing"; yet both of them got "A's" at the end of the year.

Don’t forget to read all the emails on the News website – full of fascinating nuggets about the battles for space; also discussed are Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton and how Eva persuaded Klein to change DOE policy in order to provide her with the addresses of parents through mailing houses so she could saturate them with her mailings and recruiting efforts.

As she writes Klein at one point, "the decisions that have to be made are are political. Deciding on merits of quality of school and space allocations per pupil is in our system political."

Absolutely. And in every case, his decisions were politically based.

The emails also show how Moskowitz even now trying to engineer her schools' expansion into preK and get double the state funding for it – even though state law officially disallows charters to provide preK. Meanwhile, the DOE has cut back on preK in several Harlem public schools to give the space for charters!

FYI, anyone can FOIL the emails themselves sent between charter school operators and the DOE. It would be instructive to read them all. I imagine much of Klein’s time is taken up by agreeing to the aggressive demands of these privatizers. READ them for yourself.

Below see an excerpt from Democracy Now, where Juan Gonzalez talks about how he fought DOE for eight months to obtain these emails:

Civil war in Harlem over charter schools: shame on DOE!

An excellent description in Gotham Schools of the bitter hearings that took place yesterday about the DOE's plan to eliminate PS 194, a zoned neighborhood school in District 5, and move another branch of Harlem Success Charter School into the building: A divided house spars over charter schools’ growth in Harlem.

As we have pointed out previously in relation to the intention to close PS 241 in District 3, this unilateral decision is illegal according to state law -- one cannot eliminate school zones, according to Section 2590-e of NY State education law, without the approval of the Community Education Council. It is also immoral.

I have witnessed these charter school hearings before. They are the worst experiences one can imagine. Shame on the DOE for creating this situation by throwing crumbs before starving parents.