SUNY/Noguera Cave to Eva: Overturn Reco of Subcommitte

I've updated this constantly so I am reposting.
NOTE, Jan. 26, 12:30AM --- see special historical note on Noguera below

I'll be at feb 9 and march 1 puppets for educational policy meetings!  Would LOVE more brochures. I spent $50 printing out the old black and white GEM flyer and circulating around Williamsburg.  I'd like to use the nicer color ones to sneak into the condo developments where success has done their ad blitz and slip them under doors...  Parent activist in Willamsburg, activated by Eva invasion

I guess the only good news for today is that inside the Bedford L, someone spray painted "don't let corporations privatize education" in huge letters over a giant success ad: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150628474739180&l=caee1f7b48

I've told you Eva is the best organizer we have. GEM movie as antidote to charter invasion beginning to go viral in the neighborhood --- screening at PS 84 at 6PM Thurs. Jan. 26 -- I'll be there.

I'm consolidating reports coming on re Eva invasion of Williamsburg (with more to come later). By the way, her husband is doing his own charter invasion of the area -- but details another time. Also details of last night's Success info meeting at a resident's home in Greenpoint at a location far away from MS 50 later.

The original hearing was on Jan. 17 at MS 50 with a massive outpouring of opposition to the Success invasion from the community. Eva is so sure of herself she no longer brings her shock troops from Harlem, which I think is also a strategy to keep them from identifying with the feelings of the local communities.

Here is a video of that meeting made by GEM's Darren Marelli with some historical background.



Here is the direct link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_wMV5-Zm4o&list=UUh8pphdD7ocfQ7sED6OBL3g&index=1&feature=plcp


But Tweed screwed up something on the EIS and now another meeting will be scheduled the week of Feb. 12.


SUNY Charter authorizing meeting this morning at 8:30AM:
Today was the SUNY charter authorizing committee chaired by Pedro Noguera who likes to play both sides of the field.

Here is our first report at around 10AM: SUNY subcommitte votes to table Success co-loco in Cobble Hill and Wllmsbg.

A bunch of parents from District 14 were there. The committee went into Exec session. Hard to believe Noguera won't cave to Eva. At last night's Success info session Jenny Sedlis Eva's 2nd in command said there was no Plan B to occupying MS 50. 

Below is one quick report from Cynthia:

The education subcommittee of trustees is advising the SUNY trustees to table the approval of co-locations for success in cobble hill AND Williamsburg, on the basis of the strength, and material facts provided by opposition from communities of Williamsburg and cobble hill. This means that the success co-locations could be blocked at the SUNY level.

I was amazed--they actually agreed to advise the trustees to table the co-locations, on the strength of community opposition from cobble hill and Williamsburg.  Some guy named o'brien was the standout. (but he didn't have voting power on the subcommittee?). Noguera was decent about the whole thing--insisted that Millman and Luis Garden Acosta get to speak, etc

C

Well as I reported, too good to be true. These newly active parents are getting quite a lesson in "democracy." I reported at around 1PM.

Ahhhh, we predicted this in last post. Going against recos of own committee. Look for increasing outrage and blowback at SUNY as a charter authorizing agent. And by the way when the UFT charters come up  at SUNY we should call for them to be shut down. I don't want my union in the charter business.

Here is Leonie's report:

http://pointers.audiovideoweb.com/stcasx/va92winlive2386/play.asx

after discussions w/ legal staff in executive session of the board of trustees,

Noguera says the location of the charters are not in our purview, and we will remove the table from the co-locations

Motion to remove the table. Voted yes.

We will be sharing public feedback w/ Dept of Education.

Noguera: we need leadership elsewhere in the state.  (passing the buck)  But we are not charged with figuring out space and location.  We will  adjourn.

Leonie Haimson

Leonie followed up with:

Some people are confused about the meaning of what I wrote about the SUNY board deliberations.  I am not an attorney but what seems to have occurred is this:

Despite considerable opposition from some of the committee members about these co-locations, or at least their expressed desire to delay their decision, after Noguera came back from private “executive sessions” he said he had had discussions w/ counsel and the board, and removed the tabling of the decision about whether to allow the co-location to go forward.

In other words, these co-locations can go forward and neither the committee nor the board will try to stop them.

Noguera claimed that the committee had no authority to stop the co-locations, (though Rossi, the SUNY Institute counsel, had appeared to say during the committee meeting earlier that the committee could propose to the full board to disapprove the co-locations, and the full board had that authority.  Actually the committee doesn’t have the authority to approve anything without the full board, including authorizing charters…it just makes recommendations to the full board, so why this is any different I have no idea.)

Noguera then ended by saying it is not in their purview as to approve or disapprove locations for charters and bumped it up to the State.

Perhaps Jim or another attorney can better explain.  We should definitely ask for a transcript.

Look for the new alliances built between parents to have a snowball impact.

ED Note:
Gutless Noguera. Sure screw the Southside.
Isn't community impact in their purview? Resign Noguera. I'd rather see an open ed deformer than a wolf in sheep's clothing.

SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE PAST:  dropped in by email:

from a friend who knew Pedro at UC Berkeley  "When Noguera was student body President at Cal during the South Africa divestment movement, his MO was to oppose and undermine direct actions and then take credit for them when they were successful. He was completely unprincipled, really someone who could not be trusted.

At that time he was an unacknowledged supporter of the League of Revolutionary Struggle, the most insidious M-L sect I have ever come across. LRS' line was a combination of "nationalist"-style identity politics and shut-up-and-vote-for-the-

Democrats reformism, expressed with a thin overlay of irrelevant Maoist terminology. Noguera managed to dupe Todd Gitlin into writing some grossly ill-informed articles in The Nation giving credit for the movement to LRS-controled ethnic student groups. That was a pretty impressive feat of shysterism, since Gitlin was obviously not naive about such matters and also would have completely opposed LRS' line if he had even known about it.
 

Pedro was still doing the same kind of stuff when we were back in Berkeley in the mid-90s during the uproar over CCRI, the affirmative action ban. I would bet he has outgrown LRS-style politics, but it doesn't sound as if he has come across any principles. Stay away from him if you can."

SUNY Charter Authorizers

The background to this is that SUNY Charter shills who granted Success Academy's application for a school in Brooklyn's District 13 or 14 must now rule whether it is legal for Eva to change her mind and move it to more gentrified Cobble Hill where parents are rising in protest.

Before I go on I want to remind everyone that Pedro Noguera chairs the SUNY charter authorizing committee. He's probably ducking under a desk to avoid this hot cake.

This came across from Leonie:
Rossi of SUNY saying no issues in Success moving location of charter within Brooklyn. letter attached and here

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1_VhrOGX7IfYWVhYTI0MmUtZmEwMi00ODgwLWE5N2ItOTllMmJkOTc0YzU5

Then, amen, this came from Noah Gotbaum:

Let’s make sure that we are clear:  “SUNY” hasn’t Ok’d the move of Success Charter from Bed Stuy to Cobble Hill, a Vice President at the SUNY Charter Institute, whom the SUNY Trustees and the law recognize as “staff”, wrote a tortured opinion saying that he believes that Success is “not required” to get a charter amendment.  That SUNY CSI staff members -  whose explicit role is to promote charter schools, rather than to improve education in the state - have usurped the SUNY Trustees’ decision making, approval and oversight powers and turned them into nothing more than a rubber stamp, is an outrage.

Would suggest that rather than accepting Ralph Rossi and the SUNY CSI Charter Lobby as the law of the land, we instead ask/demand that Noguera, McCall and the other Trustees (as well as our legislators) come out of the closet and exercise their legal authority and responsibilities regarding charter schools in our communities.  Will they let stand CSI’s interpretation that a name change is material but a huge community/demographic change is not? (Noguera already said he would not).   Are the Trustees ok when they authorize charter schools explicitly to recruit, prioritize and educate ELL and “at risk” kids with the fewest educational options, and instead these schools end up ignoring those kids in order to cream skim the most involved parents and kids from our minority communities?  Or, as in the case of Upper West Success and now Success Academy Cobble Hill, when the SUNY authorized schools simply mock their charter guidelines and the law altogether, and instead proudly announce – with the DOE’s complicity - their new mission to provide middle class white communities with additional options and more “choice.”   

I live in hope that the SUNY Trustees – and the press – will investigate why the SUNY authorized Upper West Success Academy still hasn’t been able to fill almost 15% of its seats halfway into the new school year, or why the number of ELL’s test takers at all the Success Academy schools combined is fewer than the fingers on one of my hands, or why our co-located public schools have 10x the number of homeless students,  double the number of kids requiring free lunch, and an infinite number more of self contained special needs kids (Success Charter has zero).   What happened to claims in Success Charter’s applications touting increased options and prioritization of our most vulnerable kids, the world famous “transparent” and leveling lottery  system, the tens of thousands of applications and the “massive waiting lists” all driven by “huge demand” for “choice”?   

noah