Upper West Side parents and elected officials are suing the city and incoming Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott to stop an elementary charter school from moving into a neighborhood high school building.
The Brandeis Educational Complex already houses four high schools, but parents want to block a plan by the Department of Education to move the Charter Success Academy into the building that currently houses four small high schools on West 84th Street.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Friday, alleges that the DOE violated its own procedures and used inaccurate high school enrollment figures in its proposal.
Supporters of the suit say the plan will lead to overcrowding and a loss of space for science labs, classrooms and arts programs.
Others said it made little sense to put younger students together with high schoolers.
"It doesn't make sense to put five- and six-year-olds in a high school with teenagers, some as old as 20. It doesn't make sense to spend $500,000 to make a new cafeteria, a separate cafeteria, for these students," said Lisa Speglich, a parent of a high school student. "And it doesn't make sense to take away high school seats and put an elementary school in this building, when there's great demand for high school seats in District 3."
No, it doesn't make sense, unless you're trying to put a cancer into the building that eventually kills off the other four high schools and gives the whole building over to Eva's charter network, which is of course the actual strategy.
Mistress Eva, for her part, replied with some jive buzzwords:
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Success Charter Network says in part, "This is a frivolous lawsuit that seeks to deny the 700 Upper West Side families who applied to Upper West Success Academy access to another great public school in their neighborhood."
Clearly Eva has tested phrases like frivolous lawsuit and great public school and discovered that they work in swaying people over to her side.
But this is not a frivolous lawsuit in the least.
Rather, it is a necessity given Mistress Eva's continued grabbing of more and more public school space for her hedge fundie-favored charter network.
And of course, the larger the network gets, the more Mistress Eva pays herself.
Good, take it to court, and lets hope the charter success network WILL NOT expand to the UWS.
ReplyDeleteI am crossing my fingers and hoping it will not happen.
Any individual who 'runs a school district' and calls special needs students 'SPEDs' should not be working or administering an educational institution. As a teacher and as an individual who has a disability, I find it extremely offensive for a school administrator to call students 'SPED Kids'.
Lawsuits, and MORE lawsuits should be our order of the day . . . By the way...whatever happenned to the UFT's lawsuit againt NYC for ageism...Was that dropped?
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