Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the State Legislature passed a budget bill that allows charters to have free space inside public schools, even though the charters are private corporations. Not only that, the charters that are already located inside public schools may expand as much as they want, pushing public school children out of their buildings. In some cases, the charters will push out programs for students with profound disabilities to make way for a larger, highly privileged charter school. If the charters rent private space, the city is obliged to pay their rent. All this, despite the fact that many charters have billionaires on their private boards of directors. Today, leaders of New York City parent organizations and community councils rallied on the steps of the New York Public Library, then marched to the office of Governor Cuomo.
The Governor should remember–this being an election year–that there are 1.1 million children in New York City who attend public schools. There are 60,000 children who attend charter schools. Parents will remember in August what Governor Cuomo did in April.
For immediate release
April 10, 2014
Noah E. Gotbaum: 917-658-3213; noah@gotbaum.com
Rashidah White: 646-229-1610; white.rashidah@gmail.com
Electeds and Parent Leaders Representing 1.5M NYC Public School Parents Say “All NYC Kids Matter”
Rally Against the Governor’s Giveaway of Public Space To Hedge-fund Backed Charters
This afternoon, in an unprecedented show of unity, elected officials, including State Senators Liz Krueger and Brad Hoylman of Manhattan and Council Member Danny Dromm, chair of the Council Education Committee, Hazel Dukes, President of the NAACP NY State Conference, and hundreds of parents and children from across the five boroughs filled the steps of the New York Public Library to say that all kids matter, and that the privileged few who attend charter schools should not be allowed to hijack space in our already overcrowded public schools. Then they marched to Governor Cuomo’s office where children present his representative with a large signed post-card, with counterfeit dollar bills attached, to symbolize how he has enabled his wealthy contributors in the charter lobby to engineer a hostile takeover of our public schools, over the needs of NYC’s 1.1 million public school children.
Said Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President, “It would be a mistake for Albany to force the City to provide public space for all charters or else require the DOE to pay charter rent for private space. Our City doesn’t benefit from Albany’s meddling; it can only breed resentment and the vast majority of New Yorkers will not stand for it. If Albany truly wanted to be helpful, it would make funding available to alleviate overcrowding and support class size reduction. In too many Manhattan school districts, pre-k seats have been eliminated to make room for kindergarten seats; and, year after year, class sizes continue to rise. New York City must have the ability to determine best uses for our public school buildings without intervention from Albany.”
“Governor Cuomo’s education budget is unfair to New York City schools,” said NYC Council Education Chairperson Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights, Elmhurst). “Giving privately operated charter school students preference for space and more per pupil public funding than public school students if the city is forced to pay their rent is totally unjust. Forcing co-locations in favor of privately run charter schools and forcing out public schools creates a logistical nightmare that begs the question about where will our public school students go. We stand united against gubernatorial control of our schools.”
“Despite school leaders’ best efforts and the best intentions of the Department of Education, a co-location disadvantages students from both schools by forcing them to share already-overburdened resources,” said Assemblymember Aravella Simotas of Queens. “I applaud the dedicated efforts of community parents, teachers, and students in working towards a vision that will benefit every New York student with fair and equal access to a quality education.”
John Fielder of Community Education Council in District 7 in the Bronx said, “The new charter law is absolutely disgraceful. Our public schools are losing classrooms and programs right and left because of co-locations. PS 162 in District 7 had one of the best music programs in the Bronx; now with the charter school being forced into the building it may lose that program. I say, let charters pay for their own buildings because they can afford it, instead of hurting the education of our public school kids.’
According to Lisa Donlan, President of the Community Education Council in District 1 in Manhattan, “Parents, educators, students and community members are coming together to send a strong message to Governor Cuomo: these are our public schools , and we will not allow the Governor to bully us and hijack them to satisfy private interests. The Governor needs to improve opportunities for ALL students, not for the small number who are already protected by wealthy special interests. He could start by addressing the fact that makes our state’s schools the most segregated in the country, with NYC charter schools the most segregated of all.”
“Perhaps we should thank Gov. Cuomo for finally uniting 1.1 million families across all five boroughs. To minimize co-locations in New York City’s public schools, we stand as many…we stand as one,” said Deborah Alexander, a member of Community Education Council in District 30 in Queens.
Miriam Aristy-Farer, President of Community Education Council 6 in Upper Manhattan said, “To ignore what the state owes the public school children from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit was wrong. To further fuel the divide in our city by giving more funding and power to charters was not only short sighted but foolish. To then allow these same charter lobbyists to flood parents’ mailboxes with propaganda, saying we should thank the Governor, is particularly outrageous.”
“Traditional public schools will now suffer even greater financial strains, thanks to the NY legislature and Governor Cuomo mandating NYC pay rent for all charter schools. I appreciate charter schools and the competition they create for better schools. I just wish we had more safeguards in place to ensure charters retain all students, especially those with disabilities. Far too many charters counsel students out of the school. The charters “cream” the high performing and less costly students while the local zoned public schools absorb the costs of providing services to the students with the most needs,” pointed out Mike Reilly, Community Education Council member from District 31 on Staten Island.
Noah E. Gotbaum, Vice President of Community Education Council District 3 in Harlem and the Upper West side said, “12,000 New York City public school students have traded classrooms for rat-infested trailers, almost half a million of our children sit in schools above capacity, and all 1.1 million face class sizes at levels not seen in decades. So why have Governor Cuomo and the Senate Coalition leadership given unregulated expansion rights to all new and existing charters, and handed over control of our public school buildings to the charter school lobby, while defunding the 94% of kids in public schools? Because the hedge fund-driven charter lobby told them to.”
“During the Bloomberg years, our communities had a difficult time communicating the educational needs of our schools to the disconnected educrats in Tweed. Now the people making decisions are in Albany and even more removed from direct input from the stakeholders. What does a state charter school authorizer know about my Brooklyn neighborhood!? NOTHING! And now these folks are in charge! Is this any way to run a school system? As we say in Brooklyn, you bet it ain’t!” said David Goldsmith, President of the Community Education Council 13 in Brooklyn.
Andy Lachman of Parent Leaders of the Upper East Side said: “For the majority of NYC public school children this budget spells D-O-O-M. It dooms public education and puts control of education in the hands of private citizens and corporations. It will mean less funding for public schools and larger class sizes in an already overcrowded system. It will mean fewer essential services, and less space for art and physical education, already lacking in too many schools.”
Rashidah White of Community Education Council in District 5 in Central Harlem said, “In the national competition to “Race to the Top”, Albany legislatures have not only neglected to provide standard state regulated learning environments for some of our country’s most needy public school children, but their decision last week leaves them ill equipped to even enter the race at all. The parceling off of NY State’s constitutional obligation to provide equitable education to all students and the funneling off of public resources to corporate backed charters is wholly unconstitutional and must be reexamined.”
Kemala Karmen of the group NYCpublic said, “The voters of New York City gave Bill de Blasio an overwhelming mandate to charge charter schools rent. Now Andrew Cuomo, who seems to take his marching orders from the wealthy hedge-funders who donate to his campaign, has reversed that popular mandate to make the city pay charter rent. This is outrageous and undemocratic. Every single public school child in New York City is a potential victim of this budget. Lock up your teachers and your guidance counselors, because the city may have to lay them off to pay for the leases of well-financed charters.”
Ellen McHugh, member of the Citywide Council on Special Education said, “Please Governor Cuomo, be a Governor for every child. If you want to be a champion of education, see to it that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement is implemented. Don’t abandon the most vulnerable 109 students with special needs at PS 811, who will be evicted by the charter school for the sake of a favored few. Where will these students go? To a Success Academy, which refuses to enroll disabled children? I don’t think so.”
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters said, “ While the Governor claims he is the ‘students lobbyist’ his new budget favors the pet charter schools of his contributors while cheating 1.1 million public school children out of space and resources, at a time when our schools are already hugely overcrowded and our class sizes the largest in fifteen years. Kudos to our elected officials and the parents elected to serve on Community Education Councils, for speaking out against this unfair and damaging mandate, and insisting that all NYC kids matter, not just a privileged few.”
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Was this filmed at all? What other council members and assembly members came or showed their support for the public school rally? Kudos to all the folks who support public education!
“Remember in November!” should be spread and repeated over and over again. We need to speak with our votes.
So true! I’m curious about if the “progressive” party spoke up for public schools. If they didn’t, I’ll be rethinking about my votes.
Intelligent parents will save us from the current insanity. I have no doubt about that.
The Mayor is in charge of education, alone. He should refuse and let this go to court. Stand up Bill! You were given those broad powers by those in Albany. Carpe diem.
You said it! We need civil disobedience. Parents should refuse the state tests by which our schools have been mis-measured for so long, and public officials in our city must stand up to Washington and Albany and defend our children and their schools from the rich, arrogant, incompetent fools who have highjacked our education system (and with the help of the Supreme Court’s elimination of campaign finance restrictions, our entire society).
The protesters are not only defending their children, schools and their wallets, they are defending the mayoral election results from the .1% who buy and sell politicians and influence at will. Without parents having DeBlasio’s back, his election as mayor is meaningless. Now more than ever before in America, showing up to vote is less than the absolute minimum participation required of citizens if their voices are to be heard and acted upon. For popularly elected politicians like DeBlasio, might will always win out over right unless the might of numbers, the vigilance of those who elected him remains strong.
Cuomo reminds me of Christie, in more ways than one 🙂
Just received the pictures, group was a bit larger than the one that I joined at Tweed a few weeks ago. I feel that the movement’s most effective mobilization will be for the Governor’s race and the 3rd party. NYSUT has no endorsement at this time and won’t until August with new leadership. Can they be co opted in four months?
Are they posted somewhere?
Lots of pictures on Twitter. Search for Leonie Haimson, then view her tweets, or “follow” her. Or view article http://raginghorse.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/hundreds-protest-cuomos-pro-charter-education-budget/
Add to the other comments the Community Board 9 (Queens) resolution seeking to stop co-located charter schools. This resolution was adopted on April 8th with just a few no votes.
April 8, 2014
COMMUNITY BOARD 9: RESOLUTION SEEKING TO STOP FUTURE CO-LOCATED CHARTER SCHOOLS
Community Board 9 wants N.Y.C. and N.Y.S. to disapprove all future requests to co-locate charter schools in traditional public schools. Those charter schools that are already co-located have occupied valuable rooms and space from their traditional public schools. These rooms often housed many important academic programs, such as art programs, science and computer labs and classes for at risk and special education students. Some traditional public schools used available rooms to reduce class size. A special education program in a Harlem school would have had to dis-band in order to accommodate the needs of a charter school. Co-located charter schools should never have this kind of impact on the vast majority of NYC school children who attend traditional public schools.
According to the 2012 NYC Charter School Center, charter and traditional public schools received the same amounts of tax-levy dollars ($13,527 per pupil + Federal and State grants and various Federal entitlements). These funds will vary depending on students’ demographic and academic characteristics. Charter school proponents would not allow the N.Y.S. Comptroller’s Office to audit their books and a recent court case prevented N.Y.S. from doing so on the grounds that charter schools are not “units of the State”
Community Board 9 takes issue with this very narrow view of charter schools, since charter schools do receive substantial amounts of money from tax-levy funds and they should be audited with the same kind of scrutiny as all other State funded entities, including traditional public schools. We support the recently enacted N.Y.S. 2014 Budget law which will now require the N.Y.C and N.Y.S. Comptroller offices to audit all charter schools.
Community Board 9 has seen copies of some charter schools’ 2012 IRS 990 forms which show schools receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from unnamed sources. According to Ronnie Lowenstein, Director of the N.Y.C. Independent Budget Office, “While all of the city’s charter schools get the same funding allocation for each student as well as the same additional amount of aid for textbooks and some other items, there’s a big noncash benefit for charter schools housed in public school buildings, (since they don’t pay for utilities, safety, janitorial services, etc.) For these charter schools, IBO estimates savings valued at $2712 per student”. Community Board 9 strongly supports Mayor Bill De Blasio’s recent plan to charge rent to those charter schools that have high income and are presently co-located in traditional public schools. We also agree that these charter rental funds should support educational programs of the public schools they are housed in.
The N.Y.S. Legislature has enacted sweeping legislation that would substantially increase funding for charter schools. In addition, N.Y.C. is now required to offer charter schools rent-free space in public schools, even if the traditional school is already over-crowded. Charter schools already co-located in traditional public schools will now be able to expand within their school, as a matter of right. If the city denies requests for space, tax-levy funds would have to cover the rental costs of private space, chosen by the charter school. This law will divert scarce tax funds that should be going to build and repair schools and to remove unsafe and healthy transportable classroom units. Charter schools that are already endowed with large reserves of cash and public tax dollars should not be entitled to rent-free space in public schools and tax-payer financed rental space in private buildings. Community Board 9 cannot support this unfair and unreasonable law.
Charter schools purport to have better educational programs than district schools. Last year, traditional public schools out-performed charter schools on the ELA by 1.4% (26.4% proficient for district public schools vs. 25% for charters.) The charters out-performed the district schools on the math test by 5% (35% proficient for charters vs. 30% for district public schools.) These scores must be controlled for the obvious differences in school population. According to the N.Y.C. Independent Budget Office, there are significantly fewer special education students and English Language Learners in charter schools than in the surrounding district public schools. Charter students with special needs are also more likely to transfer to traditional public schools than the higher performing charter students. The N.Y.C. Independent Budget Office concluded that “the fact that leavers from charter schools have lower test scores than those who stay suggests that such attrition serves to increase the overall academic performance [of these schools].” In other words, if charters were to enroll and retain the same percentage of special education students as the traditional public schools (a requirement under the existing charter agreements), charter scores would undoubtedly have significantly LOWER test scores than they now have.
In line with charter school proponents’ claims of high academic achievement, specific mention should be made of the Success Charter Schools’ ELA and Math scores last year. The tests showed that 82% were proficient in math and 58% on the ELA. These scores were unexpectedly much higher than both the district schools as well as the other charter schools in N.Y.S. The N.Y.C. Charter School Center Data Brief for 2012-2013 acknowledged that “while Success Schools high results will doubtlessly draw scrutiny, a great deal of that attention should be directed to the network’s instructional practices and literacy curriculum.” Most government agencies routinely examine testing conditions and procedures when unusually high or unexpected test results occur, and N.Y.C. should do the same for these schools as well.
Therefore:
1. Community Board 9 strongly believes that Success Charter Schools’ unusually high scores should be scrutinized and investigated, to ensure that test documents and testing conditions were not compromised.
2. Community Board 9 in NOT advocating for the dismantling of already established co-located charter schools, but we are demanding that the these schools not be offered additional space in their schools and that no more future charter school co-locations be authorized.
3. Community Board 9 supports the N.Y.S. law that requires the N.Y.S. and N.Y.C. Comptroller’s Offices’ to audit ALL charter schools and networks, just like traditional public schools. Charter schools receive a significant amount of public tax dollars and the public should be assured that these monies are being well-spent.
4. Community Board 9 strongly SUPPORTS Mayor de Blasio’s recent plan to charge rent to those charter schools that are co-located in traditional public schools. These funds should be earmarked specifically for educational programs in the host traditional public schools. The recently enacted N.Y.S. legislation, which prohibits charters from paying rent, should be amended to allow the imposition of rental fees.
5. Community Board 9 WILL NOT SUPPORT the proposed N.Y.S. Senate budget provision that will provide additional funding for charter schools and that will require N.Y.C. to pay for rental space if charter schools cannot be co-located in traditional public schools.
Community Board 9 demands that all relevant provisions of the 2014-2015 N.Y.S. budget be amended to reflect the wishes of our community, as proposed in this resolution.
I posted a few photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sjmcdonough/sets/72157643806021494/
Bravo to the officials that are speaking out against the inequity and injustice to our public school children! It is disgraceful that Governor Cuomo is giving in to the special interests and corporations that head this charter schools for the benefit of his future campaigns; our 1.1 million students are being left out in the cold.