Leonie Haimson, hardworking CEO of Class Size Matters and New York City’s foremost parent advocate, has written a letter to the SUNY charter committee explaining why Eva Moskowitz’s former chief attorney for the Success Academy charter chain, should NOT be allowed to start her own charter school.
Open the link to read the citations and the letter written by the parent of a student with special needs whose file was made public by Success Academy in retaliation for her appearance on John Merrow’s program about the abusive practices of Success Academy.
To the SUNY Charter committee and Board:
I urge you to reject the proposed authorization of the Zeta charter school, for many of the reasons cited by the Tory Frye of the D6 Community Education Council,[1] but also because Emily Kim, the proposed founder, was the chief attorney for the Success Academy chain while the network proceeded to repeatedly violate state and federal laws and deprive students of their civil rights.
More specifically:
· In October 2015, Success Academy retaliated against a parent of a special needs child who had spoken on a PBS show about his repeated illegal suspensions by Success, by posting her child’s disciplinary file online and sending the link to reporters nationwide. This action was a flagrant violation of his federal privacy rights according to FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. [2]
· Only after the parent, Fatima Geidi, filed a complaint with the US Department of Education, and several months ensued did Success Academy finally take down his file.[3]
· On January 20, 2016, parents of 13 current and former students of Success Academy filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the US Department of Education, accusing the network of discriminating against students with disabilities by denying them their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them without providing alternative instruction, and in some cases pushing them out. This complaint was joined NYC Public Advocate Letitia James; Councilman Daniel Dromm, the chair of the NYC Council Education Committee; Legal Services NYC; the Legal Aid Society; MFY Legal Services; the Partnership for Children’s Rights; and the New York Legal Assistance Group.[4]
· Subsequently, the federal Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation into Success Academy’s discriminatory practices, the results of which have not yet been released.[5]
· SUNY itself was reported to have launched its own investigation into Success Academy’s push-out policies, and more specifically the infamous “Got to Go” list. [6]
· In April 2016, parents at Success Academy Fort Greene launched a new federal lawsuit, alleging “illegal, discriminatory” campaign against children with special needs , including sending their children to emergency rooms without cause, illegally suspending them, and threatening to call the Administration for Children’s Services if they refused to pick their child up early from school These parents are represented by Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Advocates for Justice.[7]
· In addition, the application for this new charter school should be rejected since Ms. Kim is planning to co-locate her school in a district public school building, which would prevent the already-overcrowded schools in the district from having sufficient space to reduce class size, as previously agreed upon by the city in its original Contracts for Excellence plan. [8]
· In July 2017, a legal complaint was filed against DOE with the NY State Education Department for failing to comply with the its state-approved Contracts for Excellence class size reduction plan. [9] This complaint was prepared by the Education Law Center on behalf of Class Size Matters, the Public Advocate, the Alliance for Quality Education and nine NYC public school parents.[10]
Until the results of the investigations by the federal Office of Civil Rights and SUNY are released and these complaints and lawsuits are decided, it would be premature and ill-considered to allow Ms. Kim to open her own charter school, given her history of facilitating and defending repeated violations of children’s civil rights.
Below are additional personal observations by Fatima Geidi of Ms. Kim’s behavior, while her child attended Upper West Success Academy.
Yours sincerely,
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fabulous, Leonie! This kind of direct action is what’s needed!
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Harmony Public Schools (charter in Texas) got away with this. I bet they do too. It’s disgusting and immoral, and people like that do not have the decency to educate our children. But our fine government disagrees.
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Wow. After all this, to think you could open your own school? That’s real chutzpah.
And thank you, Leonie Haimson, for your efforts on this.
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May KARMA (the physics of life) GET THOSE GREEDY and SICK DEFORMERS.
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Back when Michael Bloomberg was mayor of NYC he gave Moskowitch the free run of NYC schools allowing Moskowitches schools to INVADE our public schools. It got even worse.
First, Bloomberg started giving Moskowitch prime space in our NYC Public school buildings with no regard for special needs students already in the building and in many cases moving the special needs student classrooms in favor of Moskowitch charter classrooms.
Second, as Bloomberg continued to bow down to Moskowitch, even giving her schools not only prime space in our NYC Public school buildings but suddenly Bloomberg started to jump for Moskowitch when she requested something. For example Moskowitch would call Bloomberg and request new furniture, new computers, white boards, etc and Bloomberg jumped. Our NYC kids in a typical building had old refurbished furniture and 5 year old computers while success academy moskowitch kids had new furniture and state of the art computers. Finally, Bloombergs days were numbered and along came Mr.Bill diblasio the new mayor.
Third – So now diblasio put an end to the steam roller of the moskowitch schools and told Moskowitch she would have to find her own space now as our NYC school buildings are full and in many cases over crowded. diblasio told Moskowitch that she is responsible for her own space for her schools. Not to be out done, this witch went to the Governor (Cuomo) and greased the politicians hand with the many billionaire donors from success academy. So what happened next you say? Cuomo passed .a law that said NYC public schools must give Moskowitch schools space otherwise NYC must pay for outside rent for the Moskowitch poison schools. Boy oh boy does money talk.
So, now Moskowitch continues to push diblasio for more and more space not for one minute thinking about the 1.1 million NYC public school kids but rather her little word of kids walking around in bright, eerie orange tee shirts. So, here we have another success branch wanting to invade our PUBLIC school buildings and break law after law with no regard for the law because the billionaire donors can just buy the politicians. This my friends is the current state of education in NYC.
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I am glad this is getting some coverage and that former Success Academy parents are speaking out.
Emily Kim claims in interviews that her charter will “limit suspensions”. But that directly contradicts the claim that she makes representing Success Academy that every suspension was necessary to address how violent those children are.
Is Kim now stating for the record that most of the kids who were getting suspended were never violent and she just looked the other way when Eva Moskowitz went on national television to convince America that they were and that was the only reason she was forced to suspend so many 5 year olds?
Or is she simply saying that she plans to limit the number of violent children before they get to her schools by somehow making sure her charter has a fraction of the violent kindergarten children than Success Academy does?
And does her claim that she feels no obligation to serve low-income students at all have something to do with her certainty that she can limit suspensions? Because she knew suspensions were used to get rid of at-risk kids who were tough to teach and she plans to have very few of them in the first place? So she won’t have to train her teachers how to target them for humiliation and punishment and make them feel like nothing if they aren’t proper “scholars” so that they act out in outrageously high numbers as they did at Success Academy? But Kim has spent the last few years promoting the idea that lots of 5 year olds enter charter schools with naturally violent natures and despite loving teachers are just violent very frequently due only to their naturally violent natures. Kim has supported the idea — legally — that it is only due to the child’s nature and nothing that the teachers did to cause any acting out. So how can she ever claim she won’t have to do the same in her charters?
What a hypocrite. What is more disgusting is that the media allows her to get away with these hypocrisies.
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