StickWithANose

One of the reasons our corporate masters were so willing to gobble up the craptastic Hoxby study on NYC charter schools is that Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s assault on public schooling has been one of the most successful in the country in terms of the number of charters. The key to the little dictators success is that he has forced public schools to house charters. The result is a dual education system operating under the same roof in which one group of students work in squalor with few resources and charter students get the newly re-modeled rooms with all of the modern amenities and resources. It was only a matter of time before this situation led to conflict. Now, parents are starting to fight back.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has made charter schools one of his third-term priorities, and that means that in New York, battles and resentment over space — already a way of life — will become even more common. He and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, have allowed nearly two-thirds of the city’s 99 charter schools to move into public school buildings, officials expect two dozen charter schools to open next fall, and the mayor has said he will push the Legislature to allow him to add 100 more in the next four years.

In Harlem, parents have chafed and picketed against an expanding charter school network, the Harlem Success Academy, which is housed in several public schools. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, a plan to close a failing elementary school and let a charter take over the building was shelved after a lawsuit. At P.S. 15, teachers and parents were furious about plans for PAVE to expand next year, after having been told the school would be gone by the end of this academic year. Several hundred parents filled a middle school auditorium in Marine Park, Brooklyn, in the spring to rail against a proposal to house the new Hebrew Language Academy there. The school eventually found a home in a yeshiva…

In New York, as in most states, charter schools receive no money for construction, forcing them to raise millions on their own — or find a willing host. In other cities, where charters are only begrudgingly accepted by public school officials, tensions between public and charter schools sharing a building would be unheard of, because the charters are forced to find their own homes.

But Mr. Bloomberg has embraced them. In his speech last week on his third-term education goals, Mr. Bloomberg called on the Legislature to lift the state’s limit on charter schools. He also called on Albany to provide money for charter school facilities, even threatening to sue the state if it did not.