At ex-Governor Cuomo’s urging several years ago, the Legislature passed a law requiring the New York City Department of Education to provide free space to charter schools, and if no space was available, to pay their rent in private space. This requirement gave rise to the dreadful practice of “co-location,” in which a new charter school was crammed into an existing public school. The public school typically lost space for class size reduction, performances, special education services, and everything else that was not designated as a classroom. Meanwhile, the charter school got fresh new furniture and the best of everything. There was no collaboration between the schools under the same roof.
A few days ago, charter advocates were stunned when the Department of Education rejected three requests for co-location by the rich and politically powerful Success Academy charter chain. The Wall Street Journal immediately published an editorial blasting Mayor Eric Adams (whose campaign was bankrolled by charter billionaires) and who put charter advocates on the city’s school board. The decision was made by Chancellor David Banks and never reached the pro-charter city board.
For Eva Moskowitz of Success Academy, this was a surprising rejection. She is accustomed to cowing politicians (she has her own PAC) and getting her way.
Charter fans and the pro-charter media blame “the unions,” their usual enemy, but this isn’t correct. Parents and educators in these communities contacted their legislators and won their support. And the legislators and local officials killed the deal.
Congressman Jamaal Bowman stepped up to oppose the co-location in a school that he knew. He wrote a thread on Twitter (@JamaalBowmanNY) that began:
The @NYCSchools proposal to open and co-locate a new @SuccessCharters school in Building X113 is absolutely outrageous. The Panel for Education Policy has to vote against this plan, and I urge my colleagues and neighbors to get loud in opposition. Here’s why: 🧵
As a former educator & principal of a middle school in the same district as X113, I’ve seen up close how the educators there have done a tremendous job serving their students & families. Our community is incredibly grateful for the love they pour into their work every day.
I’ve also seen how charter schools can harm students, educators, and traditional public schools in our communities. We can’t let that happen at X113.
Big charter networks have a history of draining students & funds from traditional public schools, and violating the rights of their students. Last year, Success Academy had to pay out $2.4 million in a federal court settlement for pushing out students with disabilities.
The plan will decrease available space for the existing schools at Building X113 – both district-run public schools – and prevent them from lowering class sizes adequately. Class size matters. We’ve got to demand schools get the resources & physical space to meet student needs.
As many charter school expansions do, this destructive plan will also disproportionately harm students with disabilities. The plan does not include sufficient analysis of what intervention rooms are necessary to provide students with IEPs with the services they need.
Another surprise: the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post got the story right. The story recognized that the pressure to block the co-locations came not from the union but from parents. The Post has been a vocal supporter of charters, and Murdoch himself has contributed to them.
Elected officials helped kill a plan to open three new charter schools in existing public schools or other city-owned buildings — after hearing fierce opposition from local parents.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson — who last week spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new DREAM Charter High School in Mott Haven — suggested Tuesday that her hand was forced against the planned Success Academy in Williamsbridge.
“Parents of School District 11 spoke to us loud & clear. The deep rooted history of disinvestment at the Richard R. Green Campus must be recognized. So much progress has been made,” she tweeted.
A City Hall insider also cited “a lot of pushback” from community members opposed to the new charter schools.
“They vote and they hold folks accountable,” the source said.
Schools Chancellor David Banks’ unexpected withdrawal of the proposal came even though Mayor Eric Adams packed the board in charge of the decision with pro-charter allies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Finally something to feel good about.
I am confused because I thought there was a charter cap in NYC. Were these charter middle schools that were denied that space (since expanding an existing school to add older grades isn’t a “new” school)? Or does SA have special license to open new elementary schools despite the cap?
Isn’t a charter cap what scholars are supposed to wear? Oy! And it’s still early.
GOOD!
If I did p.r. for them, I’d just modify the intent of the tagline: NYC Turns Down Success! Again! See how that reads if you know nothing and want to believe anything that confirms what you think?
They say that. WSJ wrote that Mayor Adams supports failure.
It really does write itself…in service of deep cynicism betting on public ignorance and apathy.
There are a number of problems with the cap. 1- Success Academy was granted additional new charter schools several years ago, before the cap was reached, in advance of actually starting these schools; indeed they used up nearly all the available slots, when approved by SUNY. 2- Each charter school is allowed to expand enrollment indefinitely, including by adding grade levels, meaning charter expansion is likely to continue into the indefinite future. A new HS in the Bronx was created under the cap, by two different charter organizations, who claimed that was just a grade level expansion; the UFT sued by lost that lawsuit in August. https://nypost.com/2022/08/16/judge-tosses-nyc-teachers-union-suit-that-tried-to-block-charter-high-school/
Some other problematic issues: Two co-locations of Success charters were already approved for next year, one an expanding MS in Queens and the other a new elementary school in Brooklyn. If these three other Success elementary schools are not granted alternative space in some other public school buildings — which is still possible — DOE will have to help cover the cost of their rent in private space. NYC is the only district in the state and indeed the country with this onerous obligation, which is costing about $150M per year in rental costs – though about 60% of that is reimbursable by the state. This is on top of the nearly $3 BILLION a year DOE pays for their operating expenses.
The district’s obligation to help pay for their rent includes charter schools whose CMOs own their own buildings, including Success which charges DOE an arm and a leg to help pay for their condominium space in Hudson Yards, with no oversight as to whether the rent they’re charging DOE is fair. In FY 2020, DOE spent over $11.6 million on lease subsidies for charter schools owned by their Charter Management Organization or affiliated organization; see our report here: https://classsizematters.org/new-report-finds-doe-overspent-by-many-millions-on-charter-school-rental-subsidies-for-charter-schools-and-owed-millions-to-co-located-public-schools-for-facility-upgrades/
In addition, this new Success Academy in the Bronx was planning on recruiting students from Yonkers and Mount Vernon, which poses additional questions about why NYC taxpayers should be paying for the education and the space for charter school students who don’t even reside in the city.
“this new Success Academy in the Bronx was planning on recruiting students from Yonkers and Mount Vernon…”
It also poses the question of why SA is spurning the “thousands” of NYC students on the waitlists and recruiting students from Westchester instead?
Thank you for this very informative comment.
The SA waitlist may be a myth. SA advertises for students, at least in Brooklyn.
I have suspected for a long while that Success Academy is unable to fill its seats. I saw city buses in Brooklyn with huge ads for SA. Why advertise if you have a waiting list?
True Success spends a fortune on ads and PR. Moreover, this year they kept recruiting students into October of the current school year, showing a lack of demand. Finally, reports show that half of those students who are accepted via the lottery don’t even choose to attend.
It’s likely because they are trying to cherry pick the kids that have a better chance of getting a 3 on the state exam. The waitlist (if it exists) might include kids who are ESOL, special ed, or otherwise unable to obtain the coveted 3 score. A couple of years back, SA fought to get address lists for marketing purposes that they would not need if they really had a waitlist. Perhaps their goal was to parse that data by zip code to target desirable children. When they say they don’t accept kids past 4th grade, it’s probably because they don’t want to risk an influx of kids who can’t perform for them. As they say on The Wire, SA is all about juking the stats.
The New York public pays the leases of private charter management organizations, not schools, to the tune of well over eight digits? Rueful. Dreadful.
Pardon, to the tune of well over eight digits every year.Awful. Disgraceful.
Not only does the school system pay the leases of those private charter management organizations, but as Leonie pointed out, they pay to lease space for Success Academy in buildings owned by Success Academy. SA sets the price wherever they want.
The Success Academy management company – which already overcharges per child that attends Success (this exorbitant fee has caused many Success Academy schools to actually operate at a loss – is now bilking the city with overpriced rentals? Beyond disgusting. I look forward to the day the Success enterprise, with its butchered data based on cherry-picked students, is shut down for the abuses it inflicts on its poor students, and for its highly questionable financial practices.
Parents are the best allies public education can have. They need to be vigilant and actively watching all the dealings and compromises. When public school programs and students take a backseat to the interests of charter schools, they need to protest and make life uncomfortable for elected officials. Otherwise, what is best for public education will be easily ignored as politicians generally respond the interests of the wealthy and politically well connected. Concerned or irate parents are harder to ignore.
Thank you Leonie Haimson (founder of classsizematters.org) for your incredible advocacy and efforts to make this happen!
Yes. Congressman Bowman as well.
thanks Lisa- but many many other people worked much harder than I did on this, including parents, teachers, the members of the local Community Education Councils, Presidents Councils, etc. who urged their elected officials to stop these damaging co-locations. Let’s hope the DOE doesn’t now shift these co-locations to a less organized district or part of the city.
To answer another point made above, Success still uses the NYC DOE mailing lists of public school students to recruit students — which DOE makes accessible to them, via their mailing house free of charge. They only pay the mailing house. Even parents who explicitly opt out of these mailings get them anyway. I believe NYC is the only district in the nation which voluntarily makes this info available to charter schools to help them recruit students. A few years ago, in response to parent protests, Chancellor Carranza was intent on stopping this practice but Mayor de Blasio overruled him. Guess which elected official was most adamant the practice should continue? Then Brooklyn BP Eric Adams.
Apologies for going off-topic. But as a critic of the NYT’s lousy reporting, I remain a subscriber because they do sometimes get things so right.
I highly recommend the lovely story about the Baruch College volleyball team that came out today in the NYT: “How George Santos Made Baruch Volleyball Famous”.
Baruch College is part of the city college (CUNY) system, and many years ago I attended their graduation ceremony. It really represents what is best about this country — the chance for so many first generation students from all over to get a college degree without putting themselves in huge debt. I recall Benno Schmidt talking about how many languages the students spoke at home, the high percentage of them who were the first in their family to attend college.
It was good to read a NYT article that recognized Baruch’s strengths as those types of students are so often invisible to the reporters educated at so-called elite colleges. The Baruch college students don’t have right wing billionaires paying a few of their parents to head a parent organization that supposedly represents all the millions of parents in the US who just happen to fully embrace the entire right wing Republican agenda. If so, no doubt the NYT would include them in every article they write that touches on any education issue.
I also learned where Santos got that particular lie. Turns out that one of the best players ever at Baruch College was the chief executive at LinkBridge Investors, that questionable financial firm that “employed” Santos. Santos seems to borrow parts of other people’s lives to “embellish” his own life.
I strongly believe that David Letterman’s retired writers from the highly amusing segment “Brush with Greatness” have secretly been writing scripts for Santos for the last decade or so. (If you haven’t seen a segment, you can watch them on youtube.) Letterman would have an audience member tell a story about an encounter with a celebrity. The encounters were generally what you expect and rather dull. But that Letterman would explain that the audience member would now add the “writers’ embellishments” to the story, and the audience member would add a far more entertaining and self-serving addition to the reality.
Of course no one believed it. Little did we imagine there would be a time when Republicans could add as many “embellishments” as they wanted and the media would be too lazy to question it.