Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters explains here in shocking detail how charter co-locations harm New York City’s neediest children.
Here is a sample:
“These proposals will uniformly disadvantage the children in the existing schools, cause even more overcrowding and larger classes, and push disabled students out of the spaces they need for special services.
Some of the examples have been described in newspaper accounts. Here is how the severely disabled children in the Mickey Mantle School in PS 149 have already been affected by the co-location of Harlem Success Academy in their building, according to Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News:
Originally, these children had a “cafeteria, playground, library, and cluster rooms (for specialized activities).” In 2006, when the charter school moved in, they lost their library and a bunch of classrooms. The following year, according to a teacher,
“We lost our technology room, our music room, our art room and we had to start sharing the cafeteria, the gym and playground,” Manuell says.
Now she is “teaching theater at Mickey Mantle in a former office with no windows. A fellow teacher conducts four periods a week of gym in a regular classroom because so little time has been allotted in the main gym to the Mickey Mantle pupils”
Now DOE wants to give space to up to “375 middle-school pupils to Manuell’s school over the next several years. They will come from another Moskowitz school, Harlem Success 4.
As for the Mickey Mantle School, 20% of its enrollment will be cut and displaced elsewhere. “Even with that reduction, officials concede the building may reach 130% of capacity.”
Of the 23 proposals to be voted on today, there are 21 co-location proposals and two expansions. Ten of the 23 co-location proposals will cause a building utilization rate of over 100% in the next few years, according to the DOE.
As the DOE severely underestimates the amount of overcrowding in these buildings, one can assume that even more schools will lose their art rooms, libraries, science labs, and intervention spaces, and will suffer class size increases as a result.
Simple justice says this is wrong. Why should we have two publicly-funded school systems, one free to select students and kick them out; the other require to accept all?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Talk about child abuse, again! This is it and reads just like a page of Kozol’s Death At An Early Age! We must face up to this because we as a society have simply manipulated the charter, testing, accountability, corporate paradigm to keep the same old institutionalized racism and class-ism in place. An educational system committed to Democracy would not allow any of this to happen in the first place and would not tolerate it (once discovered) not for one hot minute. Since everything is curriculum, and there are no unintended consequences, then this is by design pure and simple.
Yes, it really is child abuse, too. Children are being seen merely as game pieces to be manipulated any which way in a race to grab the cash. It benefits no one except greedy charter school CEOs and their political hacks.
Thank you, Leonie Haimson, for all the good work you do to bring sanity to an insane situation.
Obviously, no one gave a second thought to the needs of the children attending the existing public schools, or the effects of the “co-location” on the existing public schools.
My suggestion to those public school children is to find a billionaire or celebrity to back them. Apparently the elected officials have completely abandoned them.
Have their been any studies on the effect of co-locations on the children who attend existing public schools? I see plenty of studies on charters. Is anyone even interested in what happens to those children as a result of “reform”?
Maybe someone could apply to the Gates Foundation for a grant.
“The Effect of Reform On Existing Public Schools” Since MOST children attend public schools, I would think many parents would be interested in reading that.
How do the charters and charters supporters themselves justify co-locations? I mean, if schools are supposed to function like businesses, there is no way a business would tolerate a forced co-location – the harm to the existing occupant would be immediately obvious. So why is it okay if the current occupants are public school children?
“. . . there is no way a business would tolerate a forced co-location. . .”
You mean a McDonalds wouldn’t allow a Burger King co-locate on it’s property?
Taco Bell and KFC co-locate (oh, that’s right there both part of the same corporation and really don’t compete against each other due to differing menu focus.
It’s all about charter schools getting free rent (and amenities).
Indeed. But what I’m curious about is what spin they could possibly put on this to make it defensible or palatable? Or have they gotten so powerful (and/or arrogant) that they no longer feel the need to explain or justify themselves any more?
I don’t think they really have to say very much to get a district under mayoral control, with an obedient superintendent and puppet school board, who don’t listen to parents, to be amenable and agree to co-locations.
Though co-locations in other cities are not as frequent (yet) as in NYC, they do exist elsewhere and I believe they were accepted as an outgrowth of the small schools initiative, where larger schools were broken into two or more smaller schools within the same building. In Chicago, under Daley and Duncan, military schools (the real kind) were co-located in CPS schools despite very strong parent and community opposition at some schools.
And their operators squeezing every $ out of cash meant for students & taking it for themselves.
OH, yeah, it’s definitely a dash for cash particularly in locations where no one is regulating how much money goes to administrators (and their friends and relatives).
Excellent point. When I worked in R&D, “business units” were popular .Despite the fact that we all worked for the same company, issues over resources were a constant problem.
How is this even remotely legal? Also blatantly undemocratic as well
I believe this will be dealt with when DeBlasio gets elected Mayor.
You probably already know this but Chicago schools that were shut down last Spring and children had to go to other schools, Chicago Tribune reports that about half of them chose not to go to the new schools provided for them but are going to private schools and next year the public schools will have funding decreased because funding depends on enrollment.
The Sun-Times reported an increase in enrollment at Chicago Catholic Schools and more scholarships were awarded there this year. However, the Trib did not say that half of the students sent to receiving schools went to “private schools”. Most went to other public schools, instead of the schools that CPS had designated for them. And, from what I gather, few went to charters.