Charter school moves into public school..moves furniture around, takes over auditorium.

madfloridian

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Sun Aug-28-11 01:34 AM
Original message

Charter school moves into public school..moves furniture around, takes over auditorium.

Edited on Sun Aug-28-11 01:37 AM by madfloridian

Occupation of Logan Street School Rooms by a Corporate Charter Continues

A day after the Echo Parque (Park) community learned that Gabriella Charter Corporation had ended their week long occupation of Logan Street Elementary School's auditorium, evidence that Gabriella had merely taken over another room and moved their furniture into that room once they had emptied it of its existing contents came to light.

From the album:
Logan Street ES occupied by Gabriella Charter Corporation Photos by Robert. Gabriella Charter Corporation dumped the contents Logan Street Public Elementary School's room 32 into room 31 without asking or notifying anyone.

Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council's (GEPENC) CIO Lisa Baca-Sigala took photographs and notified the Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Office of the General Counsel that Gabriella Charter Corporation had not only seized Logan Street School's Room 32, but had moved the contents of that room into Room 31 without permission or even the courtesy of notifying Logan's principal, Mr. Luis Ochoa. Moreover, the impromptu move damaged the rooms in question and some of the items that were moved.

Even more:

From the album:
Logan Street ES occupied by Gabriella Charter Corporation Photos by Robert.
Gabriella Charter Corporation occupying Logan Street Public Elementary School's auditorium

This has been going on for a while. This is from 2009 in the NYT:

City�s Schools Share Their Space, and Bitterness

Suzanne Tecza had spent a year redesigning the library at Middle School 126 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, including colorful new furniture and elaborate murals of leafy trees. So when her principal decided this year to give the space to the charter high schools that share the building, Ms. Tecza was furious.

�It�s not fair to our students,� she said of the decision, which gives the charter students access to the room for most of the day. �It�s depriving them of a fully functioning library, something they deserve.�

..."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.

Charter schools, privately run but publicly financed, are generally nonunion, freeing them from labor restrictions. They have gained traction with their promise of innovative teaching methods and more flexible work rules for teachers. Arne Duncan, President Obama�s education secretary, has told states that they must remove impediments to charter schools as a condition of winning so-called Race to the Top grants.

Here are some problems with another public school which is having to accommodate a charter in their building.

A City School�s Uphill Fight Over Sharing Space With a Charter

There is a middle school in the P.S. 9 building, M.S. 571, but it is low-performing, and on Dec. 6, the Department of Education announced plans to phase it out. That got P.S. 9 parents thinking. Why not use the soon-to-be-vacant space in their building to expand to eighth grade? �I talked to several people about the idea,� said Christina LaBrie, a lawyer who has two children at P.S. 9.

But on Dec. 20, city officials unveiled a holiday surprise. The department said it planned to move a middle-grade charter school � Brooklyn East Collegiate, a member of the Uncommon Schools charter chain � into the space opening up at P.S. 9.

In the four months since, P.S. 9 parents have fought City Hall, scoring a few upset victories. But they have also learned a hard lesson: once the mayor�s people set their sights on a location, the chances of successfully challenging a charter are slim. Supporters of district schools fear that once a charter moves in, it will take over the building. They resent being compared academically, when on average, charters in New York City have fewer poor, immigrant and special-education students.

Even before the P.S. 9 parents got started, they were too late. To add a middle school, department regulations required P.S. 9 to have filed a letter of intent by April 13, 2010; the final application was supposed to have been filed by July 15, 2010.

There are other examples of this, it is going on all over. It is causing divisiveness between the public and charter schools. The charters usually win out.

KIPP charter school invades NY public school with "A" grade....read the views of both sides.

There are several important reasons why charter schools not only harm public school children, but are a direct threat to public education as we know it. The harm is not ideological in nature, it is direct. I just attended the expansion hearing of KIPP into PS 195 in Harlen this Monday - and it is heartbreaking to hear that PS 195 students have class in the cafeteria. The teacher must ask the other students who are having lunch to quiet down, so instruction can happen. And if this isn't unbelievable enough, KIPP is expanding from its current grades of 5-8, to K-8.

More than a few PS 195 teachers got up to demand that KIPP teachers stop threatening charter school students with the admonishment,"Do you want to be like them?" The lesson hammered into these children every single day in that partitioned environment is one of segregation. The public school students are made to feel less, and the charter school children learn that personal advantage gained by harm to others is not only an entitlement of their talent, but a necessity.

And there is a very good question at the link:

The actions of these NYC charters however tell a much different tale than the benevolent words they speak. They are invading spaces of A rated schools (examples, ps. 15 in Redhook Brooklyn, ps 123, and ps. 195 in Harlem, etc.) If the claim is to want to help the neediest children, then why are they choosing buildings with A rated public schools that are successfully helping their communities. And when you see the comparisons between the two co-located schools in the same building, why is it, that the charter school has significant lower special ed and ELL students than it's counterpart - when they both seemingly draw from the same community?

Good question. Pretty clear that charters might have been a good idea in the beginning, but once it became more like corporatizing and privatizing....it was not a good idea at all.