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Success Academy charter school families have no place for children to go after de Blasio cut co-locations
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/charter-school-families-left-searching-article-1.1712379#ixzz2vmZHqWXd
As Hizzoner battles Gov. Cuomo over prekindergarten and charter schools, nearly 200 kids whose Harlem charter de Blasio booted don’t know where they’ll go to class in September.
The distraught families, their lives now thrown into turmoil, feel they have nowhere to turn.
“I wanted the best for my daughter,” said Rakim Smith, 40, a cable technician from Harlem whose daughter Dymond is a sixth-grader at Success Academy Harlem Central Middle School. “Now they’re trying to take it away.”
Last week, de Blasio dropped the ax on a trio of planned Success Academy charter schools run by fiery former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, his sworn political foe. The mayor said they wouldn’t be able to share space with public schools.
The charter school was set to move to a nearby public school building in July, but de Blasio revoked the offer.
Kalima Gilkes, with daughter Kayla, 10, says she’d get a second job rather than send Kayla to a struggling public school.
City officials say they don’t have another space for the school, which is one of the highest-performing in the state, and charter school officials say they were counting on the space from the city and have nowhere for the kids to go.
Education Management Organizations (EMOs).On average, however, EMOs appear to outperform the TPS local markets in a consistent fashion for students of color and for students with the specific education challenges associated with poverty, Special Education or being an English language learner. These findings suggest that EMOs both can and do provide positive education options for students.
http://www.csat-k12.org/Page/21In New York State, school districts only contribute about 66% of each charter school students’ expenses, meaning that when a student leaves, the remaining 33% of his/her funding stays with the home school district. The charter school gets 66% of the money and 100% of the student!
http://www.csat-k12.org/Page/21The law states that charter schools cannot discriminate, create admission requirements, utilize pre-admission screening procedures, or charge tuition. Charter schools are free to attend (no tuition), and either serve the same demographic characteristics that exist in their nearby public schools, or are selected by parents of students who are “not making it” in traditional schools.
http://www.csat-k12.org/Page/21Like public schools, each charter school is required by law to provide special education services in accordance with each student’s plan developed by the Committee on Special Education of his/her home school district. Further, charter schools’ smaller class sizes and flexible “best practice” approach to curriculum development is better for students with special needs.
http://www.csat-k12.org/Page/21State law requires all charter schools of a certain size to give their teachers the option to unionize. It is up to the teachers. In many cases, like CSAT, the educators joined a union (in CSAT's case, NYSUT). In others, though, the teachers did not.