Another year, another charter school to fight over. With the local public elementary schools improving greatly, and a host of charter schools already online or approved, at what point do we actually assess the need for yet another elementary school?
Locals Blast Charter School’s Proposed Co-Location in Williamsburg
Huge Turnout Over New Williamsburg Charter School
I started to write a quick link to this Times SchoolBook article last Friday, but got distracted. Since then, there have been 26 comments posted, almost all of them thoughtful and passionate on the subject of co-locating a Success Charter school at JHS 50 on South 3rd Street. And almost of all of them opposed to the idea. What’s interesting about the comments is that they run about 10 to 1 against the co-location, which, as I started to write on Friday, is about the ratio of locals against and for the co-location at last Thursday’s DOE hearing on the issue.
The problem is, you wouldn’t know that from reading the article – and you particularly wouldn’t know it from looking at the photo accompanying the article, which shows a group of Success supporters bedecked in orange T-shirts. Nowhere does the article mention that most of the supporters were brought in by bus from Harlem and the Upper East Side1. Nowhere does the article mention the ratio of supporters to opposition (3 or 4 to 1; an order of magnitude or two higher if you just count local residents). Nowhere does the article mention that the opposition included many parents from the Northside, Greenpoint and elsewhere in the broader community (who, if they took a bus to get there, paid the MTA for the ride).
As I started to write on Friday – and as the comments to the article since then make abundantly clear – there are good arguments on both sides of this issue. But you wouldn’t know that from reading this article.
1. In the comments, a Times editor says that the paper asked a Success spokesperson about the busing in of supporters – the spokesperson “could not say how many buses Success used”. Sorry, NYT, but that is just lame.↩
Three Williamsburg Charters to Close
Three charter high schools run by the Believe Network, which has had numerous problems over the years. As one state official put it:
Over the last few months, both the State Education Department and the Department of Education have laid out a very troubling pattern of what is, at best, financial irregularities by the school’s management and perhaps much worse
This “troubling pattern” will likely leave as many as 1,500 local high school students without a school come June.
Williamsburg Charter High School on Probation
09/19/2011 |
Comment
NY1 [via Brownstoner] is reporting that the Williamsburg Charter High School has been put on probation by the Department of Education “for a string of violations”, including “illicit spending” and “misallocating funds”, all of which has left the school with $4 million in debt. According to the Times’ SchoolBook site, which originally broke the story (and whose post includes the DOE probation letter in full), the school was already under investigation by State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The financial problems seem to be a combination of overspending and under enrollment. WCHS – which has been in operation for seven years – is part of the Believe High Schools Network, which also operates the Southside Charter High School and the Northside Charter High School (both of which are located in on the Ericsson J.H.S. Campus in Greenpoint). According to Gotham Schools, all three schools spent about 30% more per student than they brought in through state funding, a gap that was not covered by private fundraising. In the case of WCHS, the school needed an enrollment of 1,000 students in order to cover its $2.3 million annual rent, but was only able to enroll 850 students. Another big issue in the DOE review is the relationship between the Believe network – which received $2.34 million in management fees from WCHS last year – and the school. Half of the school’s 6-member board is employed by Believe or other schools in its network.
To compensate for the missed rent and loan payments, the school has apparently cut back on the number of teachers.
WCHS is located on Varet Street in East Williamsburg. The school’s landlord received a number of variances in order to allow the conversion of a former factory building for a school use. After the school fell behind on rent, the landlord put the property on the market for $30 million. (That price tag seems a bit steep, given that the property is zoned for manufacturing and subject to a variance [Word document] that specifically allows Williamsburg Charter to occupy the building, but requires BSA approval for any change in school operator.)
For its part, the school says that the DOE charges contain “many inaccuracies and misstatements of fact” that the school has “challenged time and time again”. WCHS doesn’t have any specific response to the DOE allegations, but promises to post “links to a series of documents that outline the concerns that the City and State have addressed us on and our responses to them. In addition, [we will post] relevant timelines and information regarding the school’s attempt to set the record of facts straight over the course of time”.