NYC Mayor De Blasio, The People's Candidate, Begins His War on Charter Schools

Three charter schools had been granted "co-location" permits by Bloomberg -- permitting them to set up shop in the unused parts of already-existing public schools.

De Blasio, "The People's Candidate," is suddenly canceling that permission, giving the three charter schools little time at all to find new places to teach. It's already March, and these schools thought they had classrooms for September. But now they don't, because De Blasio says he doesn't want to "rush" these decisions.

Gee, I wonder why he'd do something like this.

Andrew Malone, principal of Success Academy Harlem Central, which is no longer approved to co-locate next year, told me he doesn’t know what his school is going to do. “It’s terrifying,” he says. “For the families, it is already nearly March. To be given no warning that the school is closing makes it impossible for them to find another option, and for the majority, unfortunately, their zone schools are failing.”

...

Considering New York City’s sky-high rent process, [a charter school called] Success will most likely close — a shame, given that it’s lived up to its moniker.

“We are a very high-performing school,” Malone says, noting that last year his sixth graders had the highest pass rate in the entire state of New York on the state math tests and that both sixth and fifth grades had the No. 1 academic achievement ranking in the borough of Manhattan in 2012.

The Harlem-based school also serves traditionally underprivileged communities — the students come from either upper Manhattan or the Bronx. Ninety percent are black, 10 percent Hispanic; 80 percent receive either a free or reduced-priced lunch.

“Just in the last 48 hours it is has been extremely challenging just seeing the children’s faces,” Malone says. “To tell them we won’t exist next year even when we are extremely successful is hard to swallow.”

Fapoumata Kebe, the mother of three children currently attending Success charter schools, would rather homeschool her children then send them to a traditional district school.

“They want my children to go to a school that is not performing well,” she says. “If they do that, I want to homeschool my children, because I want them to have a chance to succeed.”

Indignant at the surprise decision, Kebe thinks de Blasio is the cause of her children’s uncertain future. “What de Blasio wants to do is to take the children who are succeeding and take them from that school that is performing perfectly to send them to a school that is not good at all,” she says.

If these schools were failing, De Blasio and his union stooges wouldn't see them as a threat. In fact, they'd probably offer them tax subsidies, were they failing.

posted by Ace at 04:39 PM

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