Harlem Success Academy turns away parent of child with special needs, while battle over HSA invasion of upper West Side heats up

She "won" the lottery for Harlem Success Academy but when they found her child had an IEP and needed 12-1-1, they lost interest.
I interviewed this parent at the parent protest press conference at Rockefeller Center over the biased Education Nation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHwZj8Y9Q7M




Here is more from Leonie on the HSA battle in District 3 on the upper West Side.

Weird!!!!  Could that be an act of God?

The SUNY Trustee meeting that was scheduled for today to vote on the Success Charter Application has been postponed.  New date TBA

From the SUNY website:

10-20-10: Important Note: A power failure involving SUNY's technology hub in Albany has caused today's meeting of the Trustees' Executive Committee to be postponed. A new date will be announced shortly.

Good piece by Juan G. below, but these assurances from DOE that they haven’t yet decided to put charter in PS 145 are BS; they’ve already told the school that there’s a 95% chance that the charter will be sited in the building.

 

Citing $11M grant to expand, PS 145 advocates fear growing problem, slam charter school

Juan Gonzalez - News
Wednesday, October 20th 2010, 4:00 AM
Tina Crockett, head of the Parents Association at Public School 145 on W. 105th St., stood in a crowd of angry parents and civic leaders Tuesday and vowed to resist a new charter school in their building.
"Our district just got an $11 million federal grant to bring magnet school enrichment programs to our school," Crockett told me. "If they bring in this charter school, how can we grow our enrollment and fulfill the grant's requirements?"
As is their usual practice, Chancellor Joel Klein and his aides have yet to consult with the PS 145 parents and teachers about plans for a new school in their building.
"No proposal has been made yet, and there will be time for dialogue with the community if a proposal is made," Department of Education spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said.
When the state Legislature passed a new law lifting the charter school cap this spring, lawmakers required a more transparent process and clear plans for sharing space.
The simple fact is that the SUNY Charter School Institute will vote today on a new charter school application on the upper West Side for the Success Charter Network run by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.
That application mentions no site for the school, but Moskowitz already knows the site she expects to get.
She has been advertising her new West Side school on bus stop posters and on a website and has said PS 145 is her desired site.
Tweed educrats notified the PS 145 School Leadership Team earlier this month that their school is one of the few in the neighborhood that is "underutilized," with nearly 320 empty seats.
Local community school district leaders claim the empty seats are a result of the Education Department deliberately keeping PS 145's recruitment zone smaller than those of nearby schools.
Still, under Principal Ivelisse Alvarez, PS 145 has blossomed in recent years. Not only have test scores improved, but the building has become a focus of community activities and even Saturday enrichment classes.
The new federal magnet school grant for the the most segregated schools on the West Side requires that those schools expand by actively recruiting a more racially mixed student population.
"We will not take action that would jeopardize this grant," Zarin-Rosenfeld said.
If you only do the math, said Noah Gotbaum, president of the District 3 Community Education Council, you'll realize that's impossible.
The current PS 145 has only 800 seats. The school has 500 students and expects to grow under the new federal grant. The proposed charter school, on the other hand, plans to grow to nearly 700 kids within five years.
There's simply no way the two schools can both grow in the same space, and Ed Department officials know that.
"Co-location of charters is the new form of public school eviction," said State Sen. Bill Perkins, who spoke at the rally, along with City Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) and state Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell (D-Manhattan).
The fight on this one has just begun, they said. Let's see how long it takes Klein's people to publicly announce the plan they've already hatched for PS 145.
jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10/20/2010-10-20_citing_11m_grant_to_expand_ps_145_advocates_fear_growing_problem_slam_charter_pl.html#ixzz12uAUSyvP