Eva Moskowitz is a tough taskmaster. Lucky for her, the New York City Department of Education was willing to do whatever she demanded, no matter the cost.
As this article reports, what Eva wants, Eva gets. That may explain why Eva closed her schools this fall and led a protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate her opposition to Bill de Blasio’s demand that her charter chain pay rent for using public space. Unlucky for her, de Blasio won the election and will be the Mayor on January 1, 2014.
James Fanelli writes:
“NEW YORK CITY — When Eva Moskowitz starts a new charter school, top officials at the city’s Department of Education move heaven and earth to meet her demands.
“During the past two years, the DOE gave Moskowitz’s controversial chain, Success Academy, rent-free space in city school buildings to open 14 new co-location sites. In each handover, Moskowitz demanded the DOE deliver the space clear of furniture and broom-swept by 5 p.m. on the last day of the school year, according to sources and emails obtained by DNAinfo New York.
“But since students used the space until the second-to-last day of the school year, the DOE was left with less than 36 hours to clear the area — costing the department tens of thousands of dollars in overtime from contracted workers scrambling to meet the onerous deadline.
“The cost was astronomical,” a DOE insider told DNAinfo New York. “We don’t have to do it the very last day of school. There’s absolutely no need for this.”
The high-octane moves, insiders say, show the preferential treatment that DOE officials — including deputy schools chancellor Kathleen Grimm — give Success Academy, whose 22 schools serve just 6,700 of the city’s 1.1 million students.
Emails obtained by DNAinfo highlight the special relationship the high-profile school leader has with the DOE.”
As Mercedes Schneider reported recently, after reviewing Success Academy’s tax returns, the chain has millions in assets and can afford to pay rent. Moskowitz’s salary for overseeing 6,700 students is nearly $500,000, about double that of the NYC schools’ chancellor, who is responsible for overseeing 1.1 million pupils.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NYC DOE likes most charters but as far as I know they only jump through hoops like this for Eva. Yes, she can be tough but I’ve wondered if something else is going on, not that I have a clue as to what that might be.
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There must be other factors at work!
The list could get long when exploring creative scenarios.
Parting the waters is only done out of admiration, fear, power, money or sex.
A, B, C , D….
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The Times just ran a series (excerpt below) about a homeless girl named Dasani. Dasani’s chaotic and unstable home life is contrasted with the warm refuge she finds at McKinney, her public school. But McKinney is about to be invaded by Success Academy Fort Greene, which was promoted to the community as an alternative to expensive private schools, rather than an option for the local public school students.
Shame on Eva Moscowitz for undermining the one public institution that gives Dasani and the 22,000 homeless children like her a glimmer of hope. Shame!
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Dasani knows about charter schools. Her former school, P.S. 67, shared space with one. She never spoke to those children, whose classrooms were stocked with new computers. Dasani’s own school was failing by the time she left. ….
She is not the kind of child to land a coveted scholarship to private school, which would require a parent with the wherewithal to seek out such opportunities and see them through. For the same reason, Dasani does not belong to New York’s fast-growing population of charter school students.
In fact, the reverse is happening: a charter school is coming to McKinney. Approved last December by the Education Department, Success Academy Fort Greene will soon claim half of McKinney’s third floor. This kind of co-location arrangement has played out in schools across the city, stoking deep resentments in poor communities.
The guiding ethos of the charter school movement has been “choice” — the power to choose a school rather than capitulate to a flawed education system and a muscular teachers’ union. But in communities like McKinney’s, the experience can feel like a lack of choice.
Dasani watched, wide-eyed, during a protest last December as McKinney’s parents and teachers held up signs comparing the co-location to apartheid. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, serve fewer students with special needs, and are sometimes perceived as exclusive.
A web posting for Success Academy Fort Greene does little to counter that notion. Parents, it says, “shouldn’t have to trek to other Brooklyn neighborhoods or spend $30,000+ on a private school in order to find excellence and rigor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/#/?chapt=2
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Why are charter schools given preferential treatment in these “portfolio” part-privatized models, and how has that damaged existing public schools?
Is NYC a one-off, or are reformers in other cities treating the two school systems, public and charter, differently?
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My first year as a NYCDOE principal I discovered an incredible gym in my school bldg that had been unused and filled with thousands of pieces of discarded furniture. So here lay an incredible resources for my school and the Harlem community, unused, except in the sense of a huge closet (aka garbage dump) for old and useless furniture, files, etc. This unbelievably irresponsible deterioration of a prime facility (an immoral misuse of a public asset) in a public school went on for decades, I tried to do an Eva Moskowitz to leverage DOE to clear the place out so my new school could use it in its first year. Deaf ears. Months of deaf ears. So we called in all the students and parents and we cleared the place in one week of lots of hard work and sweat (and countless boxes of pizza)- 7,000 pieces of classroom furniture, 0ver 100 tables, desks, 100 old computers/printers/etc, etc. – we gave away to other schools what we could, and we cleaned and mopped the place ourselves and when school started we had made the gym wonderful gym for our students, Cost to DOE = 0. Help from DOE = 0. And we were a new DOE school that garnered accolades indeed a DOE’s poster school in every respect. Yet we could not manage an Eva Moskowitz, ever. How she does it is beyond me. But check out her emails to Joel Klein over the last 8 years to get an idea. And I have to hand it to her – she moves mountains for her schools and her kids. Why regular schools with high need kids led by less influential school leaders can’t get DOE’s attention for even more basic stuff is beyond me, but strikes me as one of the key problems with how power an influence distorts attention and magnify inequities of NYCDOE.
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With the kind of results she is getting we should all be moving heaven and earth to help her open more schools. Interesting that student growth never comes up here.
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She has a disproportional amount of funding and cherry picks students and kicks out low test performers to the public schools–among other things. Please read…
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That must be some heavy duty cherry picking to triple the reading results of the closest ny city district school. Have you ever visited one of her schools? The instruction is absolutely incredible. If you don’t think that has something to do with the incredible results than we may have a different vision for what good teaching looks like and what it means for student growth.
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Asa, great posts. We left our zoned school for SA and the experience is changing our childs life. I went from being mildly opposed to charters to a full fledged supporter willing to do everything I can to support the school!!! Its really been an eye opening experience. Most of all the level of hate directed towards SA has been spectacular to come to see. Ive done as much research as I can and its clear this hate is based on the school success, for lack of a better word… The school and everything it stands for is a knockout blow to the establishment and its scaring the bejebus out of the union-political power complex.
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someone needs a tinfoil hat….
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