Harlem Success Academy Marketing: $1.3 Million Over Two Years

You know the drill ed deformers throw at us. It's all about children, not adults. 

 

The Daily News reporter Juan Gonzalez shows just how much it is all about adults at the leading charter school vulture capitalist, Eva Moskowitz, who generates those huge waiting lists through good old marketing. Note the comment from HSA's Jenny Sedlis, my favorite PR flack (since David Cantor left Tweed). I read somewhere that Jenny makes around 90K a year to do PR. How much does your local public school pay its PR person? Jenny won't apologize for taking public money away from public schools while spending 1.3 mil on glossy brochures. Adults first anyone?

Here are some excerpts from Gonzalez' piece today:

Local charter schools like Harlem Success is big business as millions are poured into marketing

a Daily News review of Harlem Success financial reports suggests the network's huge backlog of applicants is the result of a carefully crafted Madison Ave.-style promotional campaign. In the two-year period between July 2007 and June 2009, Harlem Success spent $1.3 million to market itself to the Harlem community, the group's most recent financial filings show. Of that total, more than $1 million was spent directly on student recruitment.

"We won't apologize for recruiting students for Success Academy charter schools," said Jenny Sedlis, the network's director of external relations.

When she launched Harlem Success four years ago with the backing of a group of hedge fund millionaires, Moskowitz vowed to expand to more than 20 schools in a few years. By generating a huge waiting list, she has been able to pressure state officials to let her open more schools.

That's why Moskowitz chose to be the marketing juggernaut of the charter school movement.
It's worked. This week, her network got multimillion grants in federal and private money.
The selling of charter schools has indeed become big business.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10/01/2010-10-01_behind_parents_desperation_to_get_kids_in_charter_school_the_news_uncovers__harl.html#ixzz1195rpl16