Leonie Haimson is a public school activist in New York City who fights for smaller class size, student privacy and against privatization of public funds.
She wrote on her blog:
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit DOE charter rent spending and lack of matching funds for public schools – more on this below.
ask the comptroller to audit DOE’s charter rental payments now!
Last Thursday, September 18, 2025, several large charter school networks held a protest rally in Cadman Plaza and a march across the Brooklyn Bridge to push for the continued expansion of the charter school sector. This was apparently provoked by the fact that the leading candidate for Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has said he opposes allowing more charter schools to open, especially since they have reached their legal cap in NYC under state law.
Liz Kim, reporter at Gothamist, got hold of a tape of a speech that Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the largest charter school chain, Success Academy, gave to her Charter Management Staff and 158 new teachers, exhorting them to attend this march and rally, and to make at least five “phone-to-action” calls to their elected officials.
In the speech, Moskowitz harshly reprimanded those who had not yet done so: “You did not do the phone-to-action because you thought, ‘This is not very serious,’” she said. “So I want to just reset for all of you. It is an existential threat.” And:
“We have faced threats throughout the last 20 years, we have a core competency in political threats, unfortunately. But this is one of these moments where there is heightened risk, policy risk, political risk, and so we are going to do what we’ve always done, which is to stand up for children and families in a massive way in Cadman Plaza to speak our minds and to make sure that government works for children and families. … government doesn’t naturally work for the people. It has to be forced and made to work for the people. So we’re doing two things. One is this parent mobilization, and the second is our phone to action campaign.
And our goal is to send elected officials, two million messages. Now, teachers, you’ll do a network one now and then when you get to your schools, you’ll do a local one. But I have to say that I was a little disappointed in the network, because only 25% of the network was doing the phone to action. …And you know, would be natural for you not to understand we have these nice offices, Aren’t they nice? Very nice.
You guys [work] for a not for profit, you are highly compensated. You could say, What? What? Me worry? What’s there to worry about? But there’s a lot to worry about, and this is not a theoretical worry. We lived through eight years of Bill de Blasio. The first thing he did when he became mayor is he threw out three of our schools.”
This is untrue. De Blasio did not kick out three of her schools; he rejected three Success charter co-locations that had been proposed by Bloomberg before he left office but not yet implemented. De Blasio also accepted co-locations for five other Success charter schools.
In any event, after a barrage of negative television ads, DOE officials were browbeaten into finding and renting private space for these three Success charter schools at city expense for $5.4K – $11K per student. By last year, the number of Success charter schools rented directly by DOE had risen to nine, with buildings added under both Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Adams, at a cost of $14.3 million annually. By renting these buildings directly and failing to ask Success to rent the buildings themselves, they are sacrificing 60 percent reimbursement from the state for those expenses.
At the meeting, Moskowitz was clear that she was requiring all network staff and teachers to both make phone calls and participate in the rally:
“When we ask you to do phone to action, you kind of do it. You can’t make people chase you down. … we’ve kind of gotten loosey goosey here and just know your managers are going to hold you accountable to an extraordinary standard of performance. … When your network are giving a directive, I think we’re getting a little democratic here. We are quite hierarchical.
There is a chain of command, and when your boss asks you to do something, assuming it’s not unethical or a question of conscience, you do the task. Are we clear? I do not want to have to chase people down for phone to action. Is there some argument or particular reason? Anyone live in New Jersey? Okay, that’s not an excuse. I hate to tell you, list your 120 Wall Street address and get it done. ….”
She then told her staff and teachers to take out their phones and make all five phone calls to elected officials right then and there.
According to a report in Labor Notes, Success Academy employees were also required to send emails to elected officials, and were ordered to “submit screenshots of these emails to their managers to confirm they had sent them.”
Success Academy was not the only charter chain to make participation in the rally mandatory for staff, parents and students. It was also required by the Zeta charter chain, founded by Emily Kim, former attorney for Success Academy. A document sent to staff at Zeta Charter Schools made this clear:
“100% attendance expected from all Zeta families, students, and staff. Each student must attend with a parent/guardian to ensure the safety of every child. Students cannot attend the rally without an adult family member or authorized chaperone.”
Students, their parents and staff had to arrive at Zeta at 6:30 AM to get on the bus to Cadman Plaza, according to the schedule. If parents wanted to bring their younger children, they had “to bring their own seats for the bus ride to the rally,” presumably meaning they had to pay for their own transportation to get to Cadman Plaza.
Teachers at Zeta were told it was their responsibility to get parents to attend:
“All teachers must ensure 100% completion through family follow-up calls Mon., Sept. 8th- Wed., Sept. 10th. Your Principal and Operations Director will share a school-wide tracker to follow up and log all family calls accordingly.”
There is a real question about whether mandatory attendance at a political event or forcing teachers to make political phone calls is legal. The day after the rally, on Friday, John Liu, Chair of the Senate NYC Education Committee and Shelley B. Mayer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Education sent a letter to NY State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and John King, Chancellor of State University of New York, whose agencies authorize and oversee charter schools.
Senators Liu and Mayer expressed “great concern that many charter schools in New York City cancelled classes and pressured students, families, and staff to participate in a political “March for Excellence” on September 18, 2025. We urge the state to conduct a thorough investigation into potential violations of state law.”
They also pointed out how“canceling classes during a school day and forcing families and students to engage in a political rally is an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds. We urge SUNY and the State Education Department to exercise their oversight authority and fully investigate this matter to determine any possible violations of state law, and if such violations are found, to claw back a portion of state per capita funding from each school administration that engaged in this event, and to take steps to ensure future misuse of student’s precious school time does not continue.”
Though they didn’t specify any laws that might have been broken, in 2023 Governor Hochul signed into law Senate Bill 4982, which prohibits employers from coercing employees into attending or participating in meetings where the primary purpose is to communicate the employer’s opinions on religious or political matters. The law also holds that the courts may impose monetary penalties on employers who do this, and that employees can seek “equitable relief and damages” in court if they do.
In any case, this is not the first time that Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy have been found guilty of breaking laws. Repeatedly, her charter schools have been shown to deny students their legal rights, violating their privacy, and pushing out those who do not make the grade either in terms of behavior or test scores. A sample of these documented violations are listed at the end of this blog post.
Evidence of inflated charter rental payments and missing matching funds
Another issue of great concern is how charter schools now drain more than $3 billion dollars annually from the DOE budget, plus charge more than a hundred million dollars per year to DOE in rental subsidies. NYC is the only district in the nation that is obligated to either co-locate charters in public schools or help pay for their rent in private buildings. This applies to all new and expanding charter schools since 2014, after they go through a perfunctory appeal process, according to a law pushed through by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and the charter lobby. The amount spent on their rental expenses by DOE has risen sharply over time –though 60% of these expenditures are supposed to be reimbursed by the state.
In 2019 and 2021, Class Size Matters issued two reports that provided evidence that DOE had overspent on rental assistance to charter schools by $21 million. We also revealed suspicious charges for rental subsidies paid by DOE to several charter schools, including those run by Success, that owned or subleased their own buildings.
In one case, the rent for two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million in one year – more than quadrupling , causing DOE to pay $3 million in rental subsidies for those two schools alone in 2020.
We also found that public schools co-located with charter schools were owed millions of dollars in matching funds for facility enhancements, compared to the amounts required by state law. From 2014 to 2019, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million.
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit these programs
Shortly after the release of our second report, in March 2022, Senator John Liu, Senator Robert Jackson, and Rita Joseph, chair of the Council Education Committee, sent a letter to Comptroller Brad Lander, urging him to audit this spending, based upon our troubling findings. I recently learned that no such audit has been conducted. An analysisalso shows that Lander has audited fewer DOE programs than any other NYC Comptroller since 2003 at this point in office.
We are now engaged in examining DOE own reports of their spending on charter school rent, which continues to rise sharply higher each year, as well as their continuing failure to provide sufficient matching funds to public schools for facility upgrades and repairs.
Please email the Comptroller now and urge him to launch an audit on these programs before he leaves office in January, by filling out the form here.
Where it says, “Your Suggestion,”please write:
“I urge you to audit DOE spending on charter rent, especially charter schools that own or sublease their own buildings, as well as charters whose buildings DOE rents directly and thus is unable to receive 60% reimbursement from the state. Also please audit the lack of public school matching funds, as there is evidence that they continue to be owed millions for facility upgrades.”
Feel free to rephrase this in any way you like.
On my blog, at the end of this post, is a list revealing the documented pattern of Success Academy violations, including failing to provide students with their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them for minor infractions, violating their privacy, and pushing them out when they do not conform to rigid behavioral expectations or do not score high enough on standardized exams.
2. If you haven’t already, please also fill out this brief survey on class sizes at your school this year. So far, from the unscientific sample of teachers and parents who have responded, class sizes have increased in as many schools as have decreased, despite the fact that more than 700 schools received funds to lower class size. If DOE is simply pushing up class sizes in the schools that did not receive this funding, that would be a matter of great concern.
If I may, I’d like to observe the fact that this is a good time to support the excellent work Leonie and her (miniscule) team do at Class Size Matters. You might also consider attending the Skinny Awards in June.
Mamdani would make a great spokesperson for the pro-public education voices. I hope he stands strong and doesn’t give in to what is an absolutely false narrative pushed by right wing anti-public school billionaires and the NYC media who dutifully legitimize and amplifies those false narratives for them.
Can anyone who knows Pedro Noguera reach out and ask if he is brave enough to speak out to support Mamdani and tell the truth about what is and is not an “existential threat”?
The definition of “existential threat” for Eva Moskowitz seems to be whether or not the funding she receives directly harms public schools. Obviously a rich charter chain like Success Academy, subsidized by untold millions of dollars from right wing billionaires faces no existential threat. But her funders whose largesse subsidizes her very generous compensation and hate Mamdani might.
This is Mamdani’s position which Moskowitz believes is an existential threat to her: “charter schools should be subject to more stringent oversight on enrollment, spending and discipline.”
Pedro Noguera stepped down as one of the trustees at the SUNY Charter Schools Institute in 2012. From a WNYC article back then: “His resignation came a few days after the committee voted to allow Success Academy, which has a number of charter schools, to open one in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, an affluent neighborhood where it would share a building with two public schools.
“That was kind of the last straw for me,” Dr. Noguera said.
He said he had become troubled both by the types of charter schools SUNY was approving, as well as the committee’s powerlessness to decide where they should open.
In recent months, the trustees have approved a charter school for homeless youth, as well as one overseen by the Children’s Aid Society, but they were rare examples of charter applicants’ bending over backward to reach low-income students with few other school choices.
More often, he said, the trustees have approved schools for which the aim is simply to keep expanding, in part for political purposes.
“The whole idea behind charters was they would be model schools that public schools could learn from, but there’s no collaboration right now, there’s competition,” Dr. Noguera said. “The charters have more resources in many cases — you can see it in the salaries of the people running the schools — their kids have more resources, and in many cases they’re more privileged than the kids in the public schools. I don’t see anybody in the state raising any concerns about that.”
It is 13 years later and the SUNY Charter Institute – under the reign of Joseph Belluck who I was surprised to see is STILL serving as chair and rubber stamping Moskowitz’ requests – is even worse than it ever was.
Success Academy – at least back when Belluck first took over – had schools where 20% of the kindergarten and first grade students were receiving out of school suspensions, some of them multiple times. John Merrow even did a report on it. The Charter Schools Institute seemed to accept Moskowitz word that all those 5 and 6 year old students were acting out so violently that she had no choice but to suspend them. After all, Moskowitz ignored privacy laws to release her own staff’s records of a young child they wanted to destroy publicly for telling the truth. That apparently was good enough for Belluck and his cronies (mostly lawyers at the time).
Anyone who cared about oversight would be concerned about extraordinarily high attrition rates for a school that parents jumped through hoops to have their child attend that bragged of turning their students into scholars with the best academic results in the state.
But not Joseph Belluck and his gang of crony lawyers. Not one concern about why so many parents would pull their kids. They would cite attrition rates for underfunded failing schools to justify their lack of concern, intentionally ignoring that attrition rates for comparable good public schools – especially ones with millions of dollars to give their students lots of extras – were far lower.
Moskowitz bought a building in midtown Manhattan – one of the most expensive places in the world! Did the trustees ever ask her why? Express concern for all the public school students who had to directly subsidize that expensive piece of real estate?
Eva Moskowitz shares a lot of characteristics with Donald Trump. What’s the definition of narcissist?
Like Trump, she has always demonstrated a willingness to deceive or throw anyone under a bus (including a young child who she improperly tried to paint as irredeemably violent because he told the truth) if the truth might make people question her greatness and perfection.
Mamdani is not an existential threat to charters. He is an existential threat to Eva Moskowitz’ self-image! So she incites her parents to rally the way Donald Trump incited his followers to rally to keep him in office despite losing the election. Only Moskowitz doesn’t trust her parents to rally just for her — that’s why she didn’t hold the rally on a Saturday and required students and their parents (!!) to be there on a school day!
Here is why Mamdani is an existential threat to Eva Moskowitz – his position is that “charter schools should be subject to more stringent oversight on enrollment, spending and discipline.”
Here is something the NYC education media doesn’t mention in their news articles:
In the rest of NY state, charters don’t get their rent subsidized.
Until Moskowitz had a hissy fit because de Blasio wanted to treat her like all other charters, NYC public schools didn’t have to use their scarce resources to subsidize charter school rents.
Charters – especially ones with lots of billionaire donations – could easily exist.
There is no “existential threat” to charters except the ones using untoward means to teach only the students whose CEOs have gotten rich by bragging about their success.
Mamdani might be an existential threat to the billionaires to hate public education and the people who do their bidding in the name of “helping kids”.
You left out one interesting detail about Success Academy charters. It purchased a building in pricey midtown Manhattan, and it rents space to its own schools! At the taxpayers’ expense.
I meant to include that! I think I drafted a long reply that did and then posted a shorter version. Didn’t they spend $68 million even before all the renovations?
Not only that, but Moskowitz bought that expensive midtown Manhattan property in 2016, during Mayor de Blasio’s administration. So it was stomach-turning to hear her in the video whining about how Success Academy had spent 8 years dealing with an existential threat because Bill de Blasio wouldn’t let her evict the severely handicapped children whose presence were inconveniencing her desire to expand into their space for a school that didn’t exist yet.
I wonder if Andy Malone loved hearing Eva Moskowitz telling her staff how hard he cried when he learned that the severely handicapped children weren’t going to be thrown into the street just because Mayor Bloomberg wanted to give Eva Moskowitz whatever space she wanted. Why did he cry? Because some kids – the ones who give Eva Moskowitz bragging rights – count more than others?
By the way, one of the most shocking parts is hearing Moskowitz, at one minute into the recording, informing the brand new teachers exactly what their job was:
“Teaching is not what it once was. It really is data analytics. It’s public speaking. It’s people management. The only difference between the kind of people management that is done in a company or by an executive and the kind of people management you do, is the children are shorter. But it’s all the same.”
Five year old children are “managed” just like executives in a company manage their employees. That explains why the cult who work at Success Academy believe the children who can’t shape up should be fired. Put on the “got to go” list. Children – even the young ones – publicly demonized if they dare to hurt the “corporate brand” by speaking out.
It seems that Moskowitz believes young children learning to read or learning math should be managed just like “taller” people are managed by corporate executives. If they can’t do what is expected, you simply get rid of them. And recruit someone “better” to fill their seat.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If I may, I’d like to observe the fact that this is a good time to support the excellent work Leonie and her (miniscule) team do at Class Size Matters. You might also consider attending the Skinny Awards in June.
LikeLike
I serve on Leonie’s board at Class Size Matters. She runs it on less than a shoestring.
LikeLike
Mamdani would make a great spokesperson for the pro-public education voices. I hope he stands strong and doesn’t give in to what is an absolutely false narrative pushed by right wing anti-public school billionaires and the NYC media who dutifully legitimize and amplifies those false narratives for them.
Can anyone who knows Pedro Noguera reach out and ask if he is brave enough to speak out to support Mamdani and tell the truth about what is and is not an “existential threat”?
The definition of “existential threat” for Eva Moskowitz seems to be whether or not the funding she receives directly harms public schools. Obviously a rich charter chain like Success Academy, subsidized by untold millions of dollars from right wing billionaires faces no existential threat. But her funders whose largesse subsidizes her very generous compensation and hate Mamdani might.
This is Mamdani’s position which Moskowitz believes is an existential threat to her: “charter schools should be subject to more stringent oversight on enrollment, spending and discipline.”
Pedro Noguera stepped down as one of the trustees at the SUNY Charter Schools Institute in 2012. From a WNYC article back then: “His resignation came a few days after the committee voted to allow Success Academy, which has a number of charter schools, to open one in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, an affluent neighborhood where it would share a building with two public schools.
“That was kind of the last straw for me,” Dr. Noguera said.
He said he had become troubled both by the types of charter schools SUNY was approving, as well as the committee’s powerlessness to decide where they should open.
In recent months, the trustees have approved a charter school for homeless youth, as well as one overseen by the Children’s Aid Society, but they were rare examples of charter applicants’ bending over backward to reach low-income students with few other school choices.
More often, he said, the trustees have approved schools for which the aim is simply to keep expanding, in part for political purposes.
“The whole idea behind charters was they would be model schools that public schools could learn from, but there’s no collaboration right now, there’s competition,” Dr. Noguera said. “The charters have more resources in many cases — you can see it in the salaries of the people running the schools — their kids have more resources, and in many cases they’re more privileged than the kids in the public schools. I don’t see anybody in the state raising any concerns about that.”
It is 13 years later and the SUNY Charter Institute – under the reign of Joseph Belluck who I was surprised to see is STILL serving as chair and rubber stamping Moskowitz’ requests – is even worse than it ever was.
Success Academy – at least back when Belluck first took over – had schools where 20% of the kindergarten and first grade students were receiving out of school suspensions, some of them multiple times. John Merrow even did a report on it. The Charter Schools Institute seemed to accept Moskowitz word that all those 5 and 6 year old students were acting out so violently that she had no choice but to suspend them. After all, Moskowitz ignored privacy laws to release her own staff’s records of a young child they wanted to destroy publicly for telling the truth. That apparently was good enough for Belluck and his cronies (mostly lawyers at the time).
Anyone who cared about oversight would be concerned about extraordinarily high attrition rates for a school that parents jumped through hoops to have their child attend that bragged of turning their students into scholars with the best academic results in the state.
But not Joseph Belluck and his gang of crony lawyers. Not one concern about why so many parents would pull their kids. They would cite attrition rates for underfunded failing schools to justify their lack of concern, intentionally ignoring that attrition rates for comparable good public schools – especially ones with millions of dollars to give their students lots of extras – were far lower.
Moskowitz bought a building in midtown Manhattan – one of the most expensive places in the world! Did the trustees ever ask her why? Express concern for all the public school students who had to directly subsidize that expensive piece of real estate?
Eva Moskowitz shares a lot of characteristics with Donald Trump. What’s the definition of narcissist?
Like Trump, she has always demonstrated a willingness to deceive or throw anyone under a bus (including a young child who she improperly tried to paint as irredeemably violent because he told the truth) if the truth might make people question her greatness and perfection.
Mamdani is not an existential threat to charters. He is an existential threat to Eva Moskowitz’ self-image! So she incites her parents to rally the way Donald Trump incited his followers to rally to keep him in office despite losing the election. Only Moskowitz doesn’t trust her parents to rally just for her — that’s why she didn’t hold the rally on a Saturday and required students and their parents (!!) to be there on a school day!
Here is why Mamdani is an existential threat to Eva Moskowitz – his position is that “charter schools should be subject to more stringent oversight on enrollment, spending and discipline.”
Here is something the NYC education media doesn’t mention in their news articles:
In the rest of NY state, charters don’t get their rent subsidized.
Until Moskowitz had a hissy fit because de Blasio wanted to treat her like all other charters, NYC public schools didn’t have to use their scarce resources to subsidize charter school rents.
Charters – especially ones with lots of billionaire donations – could easily exist.
There is no “existential threat” to charters except the ones using untoward means to teach only the students whose CEOs have gotten rich by bragging about their success.
Mamdani might be an existential threat to the billionaires to hate public education and the people who do their bidding in the name of “helping kids”.
LikeLike
NYCPSP,
You left out one interesting detail about Success Academy charters. It purchased a building in pricey midtown Manhattan, and it rents space to its own schools! At the taxpayers’ expense.
LikeLike
I meant to include that! I think I drafted a long reply that did and then posted a shorter version. Didn’t they spend $68 million even before all the renovations?
Not only that, but Moskowitz bought that expensive midtown Manhattan property in 2016, during Mayor de Blasio’s administration. So it was stomach-turning to hear her in the video whining about how Success Academy had spent 8 years dealing with an existential threat because Bill de Blasio wouldn’t let her evict the severely handicapped children whose presence were inconveniencing her desire to expand into their space for a school that didn’t exist yet.
I wonder if Andy Malone loved hearing Eva Moskowitz telling her staff how hard he cried when he learned that the severely handicapped children weren’t going to be thrown into the street just because Mayor Bloomberg wanted to give Eva Moskowitz whatever space she wanted. Why did he cry? Because some kids – the ones who give Eva Moskowitz bragging rights – count more than others?
By the way, one of the most shocking parts is hearing Moskowitz, at one minute into the recording, informing the brand new teachers exactly what their job was:
“Teaching is not what it once was. It really is data analytics. It’s public speaking. It’s people management. The only difference between the kind of people management that is done in a company or by an executive and the kind of people management you do, is the children are shorter. But it’s all the same.”
Five year old children are “managed” just like executives in a company manage their employees. That explains why the cult who work at Success Academy believe the children who can’t shape up should be fired. Put on the “got to go” list. Children – even the young ones – publicly demonized if they dare to hurt the “corporate brand” by speaking out.
It seems that Moskowitz believes young children learning to read or learning math should be managed just like “taller” people are managed by corporate executives. If they can’t do what is expected, you simply get rid of them. And recruit someone “better” to fill their seat.
Worth listening to that part!
LikeLike
If I recall correctly, Success Academy has an extraordinary turnover rate for teachers. About half leave every year.
LikeLike