Charter School Advocates Sue New York State For More Money

What Governor Cuomo did for NYC charter schools by forcing the city to either find space for charters or pony up rent for private space?

Charter advocates want that same advantage state-wide:

A lawsuit filed by a group of charter-school supporters alleges that a chronic funding gap between charter schools and traditional public schools violates the state constitution and disproportionately hurts minority students.

The suit, filed late Monday in state Supreme Court on behalf of five families in Buffalo and Rochester, says charter students in Buffalo received around $9,800 less than their district-school counterparts in the 2011-12 school year, which they said was the largest disparity in the state. In Rochester, charter students received around $6,600 less, according to the suit. 

Charter schools outside of New York City don't receive funding for facilities, which forces them to cut back on critical amenities like libraries and science labs, the lawsuit says.

"For years charter schools have had to struggle to get by," said Kyle Rosenkrans, interim president of the Northeast Charter Schools Network, a nonprofit group that represents charter schools in New York and Connecticut and that joined the suit. "That's why we see the parents from Buffalo and Rochester really rising up to say we've had enough. The state needs to find a solution."

The suit asks the court to declare that New York's approach to charter-school funding violates the state constitution and force the defendants to remedy the situation. Defendants include the state of New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state legislature, and the state education department.

I would imagine Governor Cuomo will be happy to do for charters in the rest of the state what he did for charters here in NYC - which means steal money from public schools and divert it to private schools:

"This lawsuit is simply another deceptive attempt for charter schools to divert even more money away from public schools," said Zakiyah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group for public schools.

Indeed.

Landlords Say NYC Rents Not High Enough

No, seriously:

Panicked landlords are trying to do the impossible — convince New Yorkers that the rent is too damn low.

With the Rent Guidelines Board mulling the first freeze in city history, the Rent Stabilization Association — which represents 25,000 landlords — has launched a six-figure ad campaign called, “A rent freeze hurts everyone.”

The ad blitz began over the weekend and comes just as the guidelines board is preparing to meet Thursday for the first of five public hearings to discuss a freeze, which Mayor de Blasio called for during the campaign.

Nearly 700 ads — more than 40 a day — will air on radio and TV through June 23, the day the board votes on whether to make the one-year freeze for rent-stabilized apartment leases a reality.
The 30-second TV spot opens with shots of well-cared-for city homes, and features actual landlords sprucing up their properties.

“Small-building owners put their rent increases right back into their buildings for repairs and maintenance,” the narrator says.

The homey shots of big city living then morph into grim images of urban blight, including graffiti-marred walls and broken windows. “Let’s protect affordable housing so this doesn’t happen to our neighborhoods,” the narrator says.

Last month, the board said it would consider anywhere from zero to 3% hikes on one-year leases that start Oct. 1, and 0.5% to 4.5% on two-year leases.

In other news, few people can afford to pay rent in NYC:

On May 5, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $41 billion plan to provide additional affordable housing for middle-income as well as low-income New Yorkers.

A few weeks earlier, the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy of New York University and Capital One Bank jointly issued a report titled “The Affordable Rental Housing Landscape,” showing that low-income New Yorkers are not the only city residents to be rent-burdened — that is, to pay at least 30 percent of their gross income for rent and utilities. Among middle-income households — for example, a three-person household earning between $91,000 and $152,000 annually — 14 percent or roughly 290,000 households fell into this category in 2012.

“We examined the situation because rental housing has become less affordable in the past six years,” said Max Weselcouch, the director of the Moelis Institute for Affordable Housing Policy at the Furman Center. “Between 2005 and 2008 things looked pretty good. The median income rose, and new housing construction was at a peak. But between 2009 and 2012, there was little new construction even as preliminary estimates show that up to 200,000 new residents arrived in New York.”

And a report titled “The State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods in 2013,” issued by the Furman Center on May 28, concluded that the percentage of middle-income households in the city decreased from 61 percent in 1990 to 56 percent in 2012.

I once got a 30% rent hike - my rent in Hell's Kitchen went from $2050 to $2650.

These rent stabilized landlords do everything they can to get their apartments above the rent-stabilized threshold so they can jack the rent up to market rate.

No wonder nobody can afford to leave in the city anymore without putting themselves under severe financial strain.

Except for Eva Moskowitz, of course, who gets free rent.

NYSED May Get Involved In The De Blasio/Charter Fight

Lisa Fleischer in the WSJ:

State education officials are studying how Mr. de Blasio's pledge to charge rent to charters that operate in city buildings could affect the amount of funding the city receives for facilities.

New York City gets more than $1 billion a year from the state to defray the cost of school facilities—partially paying for leases, renovations, purchases and new construction. The state Education Department distributes the building aid through formulas established in state law.

State officials said they could consider pulling back some of that funding if it appears that the city is turning a profit on the space used by charter schools—recouping more than its share of expenses. It could be complicated, though, to figure out exactly how that would be measured, state officials said.

Sounds like a bit of a threat coming from the state to back up the charter sector.

I'm sure all that campaign money they're handing to Cuomo will have no effect on any of this, however.

This is just SED looking to do the right thing for everybody.