PS 123 & Harlem Success Academy: More Equal than Others

"PS 123 has gone from an F-rated school to a B-rated school, and you’d think that would merit some encouragement from the Department of Education. You’d be mistaken. Rather than expand upon the progress they’ve made, the building that houses PS 123 has become a civics lesson for all who teach and study there—a newly designed two-tier education system. 55 years ago, Brown v. Board of Education stated, “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” At PS 123, separate educational facilities can be found within the same school building."

Arthur Goldstein at Gotham Schools

Read this superb piece: More Equal than Others

Today at PS 123: The Resistance Grows in Harlem, 12:30

UPDATE 2: ACORN JUST CALLED TO SAY THEIR NAME SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ON THIS LEAFLET!!

UPDATE 1:

Monday, July 20th

- Demonstration at PS 123

Time: Gather at 12:30pm / Start at 1:00pm

Location: 301 West 140th Street ( 8th ave) NY, NY 10030

Until recently, BloomKlein claimed the high ground of civil rights. They spent enormous amounts of time going to black churches selling their program. And they did get support. The early resisters to BloomKlein seemed to come from the whiter, more affluent areas of the city, areas that seemed to be doing fairly well in pre-mayoral control days when activist parents were able to have a role but now feel totally shut out.

Parents in Harlem and other areas with struggling schools were not as worried about the role they played as much as the state of the schools. The BloomKlein appeal worked – for a while, at least.

But in recent months, the black community seems to be rising up. The old community control struggles of the 60's seem to be re-emerging where black activists are asking the same questions about dictatorial control of the schools as the white activists. The heavy hand of the Moskowitz invasion of Harlem schools has not helped BloomKlein. I bet they are rethinking things a bit and HSA might even look to lower her profile and put in more blacks as figureheads. But can Eva's ego handle that?

GEM has been serving a role in trying to bring teachers. parents and community activists together in a black/white/Hispanic united front. We have been taking a firm stand against mayoral control (NO TWEAKS) and against charter schools in any form.

Here is the latest

UPDATE FROM SENATOR BILL PERKINS OFFICE based on a meeting that was held on Weds (07/15).

The following is a reminder concerning the meeting times and locations for this upcoming week.

Monday, July 20th

- Demonstration at PS 123

Time: Gather at 12:30pm / Start at 1:00pm

Location: 301 West 140th Street ( 8th ave) NY, NY 10030

CANCELLED:
Tuesday, July 21st

- Demonstration at PS 375

Time: Gather at 12:30pm / Start at 1:00pm

Location: 141 East 111 Street ( Between Lexington and Madison) NY, NY 10029

DOUBLE CHECK OF UPDATES

Wednesday, July 22nd

- Demonstration at PS 197

Time: Gather at 12:30pm / Start at 1:00pm

Location: 2230 5th Avenue (136th Street) NY, NY 10037

DOUBLE CHECK contact Cordell Cleare in our office at 212-222-7315

- Meeting at Senator Bill Perkins Office

Time: Starts at 5:30 pm

Location: 163 West 125th Street (9th Floor) NY, NY 10025

STILL ON AS OF NOW

Thursday, July 23rd

- Demonstration at Tweed Courthouse

Time: Gather at 1:00pm/ Start at 2:00pm

Location: 52 Chambers Street NY, NY 10007

Thank you for meeting yesterday and we look forward to seeing you next week.

If you have any questions feel free to contact Cordell Cleare in our office at 212-222-7315 or respond to this email.

Angel Gonzalez and George Schmidt at PS 123 Protest of Harlem Success Takeover Take 2 - July 10, 2009

Gem began receiving calls on Thursday evening from PS 123 parents and teachers that the DOE had ruled in favor of Eva Moskowtiz and the movers and painters were coming Friday morning. They asked us to be there and we were. That all press reports ignored our strong presence is not surprising. We'll comment more on this in a follow-up as we post more video of Scott Stringer and Tony Avella. See our earlier video of the protest on July 7 as teachers and parents tried to stop Harlem Success from squeezing them out of their space. Here are a powerful six minutes of Angel and George making the case against charter schools.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e_2vwEn_zQ

Rally Fri July 10 as DOE Rules In Favor of Harlem Success Academy Charter School taking over more space at PS 123!

URGENT!

Dictatorship - DOE Rules In Favor of Harlem Success Academy Charter School taking over more space at PS 123!

On the morning of July 10 movers, sent by the $370K - Eva Moskowitz, will arrive again to remove materials from PS 123 Teachers' classrooms as she invades more Public School Space for her charter school!

Emergency Protest

Friday, July 10

8:30 AM

PS 123

301 West 140th St.

(bet. Edgecombe & Frederick Douglas)

Stop this drive to privatize!

Defend our Public School Space!

Be there! Spread the word.

Angel Gonzalez

UPDATE: Man borough Pres Scott Stringer is expected and this "rally" may turn into a press conf.

UPDATE: PS 123 Harlem Parents Make Their Case Against Harlem Success

7/10/09
Two days after this rally, the DOE ruled Harlem Success could go in and take over a swath of PS 123. Another event was held this morning that drew Man. boro pres Scott Stringer and mayoral candidate Tony Avella.

Harlem parents make a powerful statement defending their public school against the invasion of public schools by charters, in this case Eva Moskowitz' Harlem Success. They talk about the space their kids are denied, the favoritism shown to charters by the NYCDOE, the creaming, where even in the same family, only the higher scoring kids get recruited. And it's happening all over the city. They go beyond to talk about how they feel about public education in general. One of the most eloquent statements parents have yet made as they refute the charge that only white upper class parents oppose Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein.

Members of GEM and ICE were there to support them, as were reps from PS 15 in Red Hook who are undergoing a similar experience.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_aGF9n8sE8

Tweed Undermines Law Suit "Win" on Zoned Schools

The epicenter of the battle over public and charter schools is Harlem, where public schools, long denied resources have been forced into unfair competition with charter schools with sleek advertising, supported by corporations making short-term investments with a long view of profits to be made off the privatizing of public schools. Most egregious is that the DOE, the very agency that has run these public schools under attack for the past 7 years, is lining up on the side of the charters.

No sooner did I write this in my previous post-

We've reached the bizarro stage where Eva Moskowitz, miffed that her real estate grab for publicly funded NYC school buildings went temporarily awry, incites parents in Harlem to demand the DOE close the local zoned school when the DOE rescinded its plan to close PS 241 after the NYCLU and UFT filed suit.

I am all for the suit, but ultimately the DOE will figure out a way to force the "saved" schools into closing. This is all about real estate for charters, man. How about starving them of resources? Or putting in a lunatic Leadership Academy principal? A law suit has to be backed up by action. While the UFT might support individual school protests, it refuses to organize all the threatened schools into a force to demand the kinds of resources they need. When faced with yet another moratorium on school closings resolution, the UFT leadership removed the call for a meeting of all schools threatened with closing.

--than we received communications from teachers at PS 241. I thought it would take Tweed a few days to strike back. Yesterday, Moskowitz' gang struck organizing parents to demand PS 241 be closed. Today came the move by Klein to divert parents from enrolling in PS 241, the equivalency of police commissioner Raymond Kelly urging people in high crime districts to replace the NYPD with a private police force.

Before you read the letter from PS 241 and the letter Klein sent to parents, I wanted to mention the story a teacher from PS 242 in Harlem told at our conference to save public ed on Saturday. She talked about the horrors of 3 schools sharing her building, especially when PS 242 is playing the role of the unfavored step child of the DOE, forced to accept every child tossed from the charter schools in the building.


From teachers at PS 241 in Harlem:

Good Morning All-

As some off you may have heard- DOE will not be closing the school down- they have been put off by the lawsuit! This is not a true victory however.

Please read the letter being sent to the parents carefully.

Parents are still being bullied to send their students to other schools.

Harlem Success Academy will still be placed in our building.

Middle school will be phased out.

Where will there be room for HSA? We would only lose our grade 6 students. We will be attempting to get back all of our parents who were forced to apply elsewhere- but how will they all be housed? Sharing facilities with 3 schools- how? We already do not have use of our gym- and struggle to share the other common areas with another charter school in the building. We will lose classrooms, we will lose our art room, we will have to figure out lunch and breakfast times and children will be eating at all kinds of hours.

PS 242- has shown that three buildings cannot live peacefully and successfully in one facility without children suffering. Also- DOE says that if students come back to the school- and if 241 progresses well (by what standards and whose say so) we will stay open- otherwise we will still be closed. That means with HSA already in the building- they can take over. They will still have a way to rezone illegally in the future.

This must stop. This is not a victory- they have only shifted that battle.

We must come together to rethink how we will move forward.

Send this out to everyone- elected officials, the press, community organizations and let them know that this is not a victory. We are being swindled! I am sure DOE's press release will sound very different!


The letter from Klein to parents has been deciphered by Ed Notes code breakers. Here it is with annotations from our code breakers:

April 3, 2009

Dear parents of P.S. 241:

The most important thing I can do as Chancellor is to make sure that you have excellent school choices for your child [as long as they’re in schools I don’t have to run]. As you know, several months ago, the Department of Education (DOE) said that P.S. 241 had not proven [see, we don’t have to prove nuthin’] that it was preparing enough of its students for middle school, high school, and beyond. The school received a Progress Report grade of D, and only11 students are enrolled in its kindergarten class [heh, heh, heh- we made sure of that]. The DOE thus announced that P.S. 241 would phase out, not accepting kindergarten, first grade, second grade, or sixth grade students next year.

As you also know, after meetings with parents and community officials, the DOE issued a plan to provide a choice of six schools for parents whose children would be in kindergarten, first, and second grades next year. Five options were nearby DOE schools, [which we’ll get to closing down one by one in our version of dominoes] and one was Harlem Success Academy Charter School 4, which would relocate into the P.S. 241 building and would give students attending and zoned to P.S. 241 priority to attend [but only if their parents commit to attending every Harlem Success pep rally].

Already, 50 families residing in the P.S. 241 zone have signed up for Harlem Success Academy 4 and the surrounding DOE schools [after loads of slick advertising.]

Since that time, the teachers union and other parties have attempted to take legal action against the DOE for this plan. I think it’s important that we not confuse the already difficult process of choosing a school. So I’m writing to inform you of two decisions we have made that will impact your school choices for next school year:

1. Harlem Success Academy Charter School 4 will be located in the P.S. 241 building next year and will continue to give an admissions priority to families attending P.S. 241 or living in the P.S. 241 zone.

Children going into kindergarten, first grade, and second grade will also still have the opportunity to apply to P.S. 76, P.S. 149, P.S. 165, P.S. 180, and P.S. 185.

I think you should seriously consider joining the 50 other P.S. 241 zone parents who have already applied to one of these options [so we can claim no one wants to go to PS 241.]

If you do not have an application to Harlem Success Academy 4 or to the other DOE schools you are entitled to attend, you can obtain one from your guidance counselor or parent coordinator; [who are like prisoners in war camps who are made to dig the graves of their fellow prisoners] or you can find a Harlem Success application online at http://www.harlemsuccess.org/apply-to-learn.

As you know from the letters and calls you have already received, as well as the bulletins passed out around the school, the application deadline is Monday, April 6.

2. The P.S. 241 elementary school will not be phasing out starting this fall. The school will be open with all elementary school grades this fall. Rather than waiting to let the courts decide, we think you, the parents, will make the right elementary school choice for your child [meaning, no way choose PS 241, which we guarantee will be starved of resources so we can give the entire building to Eva, who has dirty pictures of me.] You can choose Harlem Success Academy 4, you can choose one of the other five DOE elementary schools, or you can choose P.S. 241. We will continue to support the school [ha, ha, ha] and will review its performance in the year to come [you know what to do Jimmy Leibman]. If zoned parents enroll in the school, and if the school serves children well, it will remain open [but watch out for the fire traps and asbestos that may be spread all over the place]. If it continues to perform at a low level [and don’t worry, we’ll make sure it does], it will not. Please also note that the P.S. 241 middle school will continue to phase out; all current 5th grade students have already applied to a District 3 middle school.

The Parent Coordinator at P.S. 241, the District 3 Family Advocate, and the Borough Enrollment Office have information about all of the schools you are entitled to attend, including Harlem Success Academy 4 and P.S. 241.

Joel I. Klein


RELATED: Report from ISO's Jeremy Sawyer on the March 28 conference
Defending public schools in NYC

Make sure to check the side panel for updates and other important information.

Why We Need to Defend Public Education? The Harlem Success Pro-Charter School Rally

This ad produced by Education Notes for the March 28 conference to save public schools at John Jay College in NYC, is a prime example of the manipulation of the community by charter school advocates. The Harlem Success Schools led by Eva Moskowitz has pushed its way into public school spaces with the support of the NYC Department of Education. The push by Bloomberg and Klein to support charter schools is an admission of their failure to solve the problems that exist in public schools.

You Can't Work in a charter school if you're older or have a family....

....a group of Harlem Success Teachers after the March 18 rally for charter schools, mayoral control, and the demolishment of the public school system.

Poor gals, they clearly were at the event of their free will- and I mean free. But when I asked these mostly first and 2nd year Teach for America teachers how things were going, they said, "Fine, but you can't work in a charter school if you are not young or have a family." I asked what would happen with the bad economy shutting off the exit strategy so many TFA's have employed? They shrugged, wearily.

There were many suits there and many people from LearnNY or whatever it's called. Buttons, baloons, free bags and everyone urged to send a post card to the governor and fill out a "we support mayoral control" petition. And lots of hip hop and preaching from the stage. How many people really came for the free stuff?

These pictures were taken by Angel Gonzalez of ICE and are posted at Facebook.

Angel and I spent a surreal afternoon/evening going from the Brownsville "Save Our Public Schools from the Evil Charter Schools" to a massive and enormously expensive rally at the 141st Armory in Harlem, with Bloomberg as the keynote spender - er - speaker. Uncle Joel was there of course too. We were looking to meet up with some pro public school Harlem teacher and parent gate crashers whose schools are being squeezed by the charters but if anyone had protested it would have been Gitmo/AbuGrav and Devil's Island for them.

The event sort of reminded me of rallies held in a certain European country in the 1930's.



Why wouldn't you be smiling at $370, 000 a year. Join the AIG execs and give back that bonus Eva!

And make sure to use kids for political reasons.























Better get the message out on both sides and in 2 languages. What happened to Creole version? Are you listening Martine Guerrier?








Jeez, he is short.
















Joel, I have a list of 1o more schools I demand you give me!













Oh, those shark's choppers!

Civil War in Harlem Over Charter Schools

Sometimes you just have to let Tweed do all the work to organize parents and teachers against their policies. Look at it as letting the game come to you.

While teacher opposition voices have been more than simmering for years, albeit with the dampening effect of the UFT collaborationists, parent voices have mostly been coming from white middle class parents. The BloomKlein appeal to Black parents that their reforms were addressing the civil rights issue of the times seemed to be working.

But as we reported the other day in this post Parents, Teachers at Ocean-Hill Brownsville's PS 150K Lied to by Tweed about PS 150 in Ocean-Hill Brownsville and PS 241 in Harlem (also see our reports on the protests in Chicago) parents who are not being guaranteed entry into the charters are beginning to push back. In our post we talked about the ads being run by charter school interests to undermine public schools - the meeting to be held last night at PS 194 was a prime example.

Well, it was some meeting as Elizabeth Green captures the scene in one of her best ever reports at Gotham Schools. Leonie Haimson tipped her hat at the NYC Public School Parent blog:

Civil war in Harlem over charter schools: shame on DOE!

An excellent description in Gotham Schools of the bitter hearings that took place yesterday about the DOE's plan to eliminate PS 194, a zoned neighborhood school in District 5, and move another branch of Harlem Success Charter School into the building: A divided house spars over charter schools’ growth in Harlem.

As we have pointed out previously in relation to the intention to close PS 294 in District 3, this unilateral decision is illegal according to state law -- one cannot eliminate school zones, according to Section 2590-e of NY State education law, without the approval of the Community Education Council. It is also immoral.

I have witnessed these charter school hearings before. They are the worst experiences one can imagine. Shame on the DOE for creating this situation by throwing crumbs before starving parents.

I'll leave you with just a crumb from Green, but make sure to read the entire thing.

Many of those opposed to housing the charter school at 194 said they are concerned that charter schools — public schools that operate outside the regular district bureaucracy — are part of a larger gentrification of the neighborhood. “Tarzan and Jane are back again, swinging through Harlem: Not with vines, but with charter schools,” said a community activist who offered her name as Dr. K. Samuels. Samuels explained that by Tarzan she meant John White, the thin, long-faced DOE official who ran the hearing, and that by Jane she meant Moskowitz, the politician-turned-school operator who sat a few feet away from her and held her Blackberry in her lap. Samuels added, “Like Tarzan and Jane, coming right through the black community, and they were making everything better because the natives couldn’t do it.”

The colonial metaphor caused some Moskowitz supporters to shake their heads, but Samuels defended it as apt. Though not all of the staff members at Harlem Success Academy 2, the charter school proposed to move into P.S. 194, are white, many are, including the principal. Moskowitz and White are also white. The principal of P.S. 194, meanwhile, is black. Her staff includes a mix of races.

Photoshopped by David B. I still think Eva wears the loin cloth in this family.

Eva Moskowitz is Not Running a Lean Organization

Reprinted from the comments section at Gotham Schools

1. Eva Moskowitz is not running a lean organization. The proportion of “back office” educrats to teachers in her “network” is far far higher than she would let you believe. The proportion of non-instructional people in her network is also far higher than in the DOE. There are PR people and personal assistants for Eva.

2. The people hired by Eva Moskowitz have very little experience in education, unless you count attending school as a student. Find out the background of her “Directors of Curriculum” etc. Virtually no teaching experience.

3. The Harlem Success network does not spend money wisely. All employees get laptops but there are no computers for the students to use. Yes, they may have SmartBoards in the classrooms, but there are not desktops or laptops for student use.

4. Despite their claim to “hire the best” turnover has been very high. The principal of HSA 1 was fired the week before the 3rd grade ELA test.

5. The network is focused on PR stunts rather than their students. The NY Times piece on their Snow Day schedule is indicative. PR trumps student and teacher safety.

Eva Moskowitz Succeeds at "Harlem Success"

...In Raking in the Big Bucks.

Thus spawneth the market-based ed reform movement.

A must read if you want to see what the evils of the ed "reform" movement bring forth. Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News reports on one of the more disgusting people in NYC education/politics. Charter schools have license to steal from the public coffers while private interests fuel a gravy train. What next, a Harlem Success corporate jet?

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/02/26/2009-02-26_former_city_council_member_eva_moskowitz.html
"Moskowitz, who makes no secret of her desire to create 40 charter schools across the city and run for mayor some day, raked in $371,000 in salaries in the 2006-2007 school year from organizations connected to her four schools," Gonzalez writes. "Charter schools are free to use the money they raise from outside sources any way they see fit - even if that means huge salaries for the chief executive. Given that Moskowitz routinely complains that the Department of Education has failed to provide a fair share of funding for her students, it's fair to ask why she's paying herself so much for educating so few. Charters get about 90% of what it costs to teach each child and raise funds for additional money."

That's all for about 1000 kids from grades K-3 who attend Harlem Success.

Let's see now. At this rate, if Moskowitz was the chancellor, this would come to around $1,200,000,000 based on the per child rate. Hey Joel, you're underpaid.

Photo credit: Costanza for Daily News