By Vanesa Vennard

Success Academy Charter Schools are looking to add another elementary school on the Upper West Side in District 3 for the 2014-2015 school year.

A representative from Success spoke at a recent Community Board 7 meeting to get preliminary feedback on the idea. Members of the board, Community Education Council District 3 reps, and a few parents expressed a unified opinion at the meeting: they weren’t interested.

Bruce Markens, a grandfather and Upper West Side resident for most of his life, was at the meeting when Upper West Success was being considered to co-locate in Brandeis High School in 2011, a decision that was very unpopular and led to a lawsuit against the Department of Education by a group of parents, elected officials, and other organizations to stop the construction. This time around, Markens said he had déjà vu.

“I’m very frustrated,” Markens said during the meeting. His grandchild goes to a District 3 school and so did both of his kids. “The political reality is that you guys are going to go to the authorizing agency, and since they don’t require that you give them a site, or give very many specifics about the program, you’re going to get approval. It’s a con game.”

The charters are approved by SUNY Trustees and are presented to give options to children and parents in an overcrowded community. According to Helen Rosenthal, a member of the community board, there is a major disconnect between Success Academy and the Upper West Side community.

Rosenthal said she feels the charters should go into an open, underutilized parochial school such as Holy Name, instead of co-locating in an overcrowded public school. According to Success Academy Charter, the DOE has the say as to where the charter goes.

“By bringing in a charter that brings in kids from other districts, they are taking away seats from the public school kids right in that zoned area,” Rosenthal said.
During the meeting, Rosenthal asked if Success Academy has thought of opening a charter in an independent, vacant building.

“Our model is we operate in underutilized public schools,” Suchanek said. “Our model is not to seek out other spaces.”

Rosenthal also asked if the Success Academy has yet identified an underutilized public school in the area they plan on using. Suchanek said they have not.

Kerri Lyon, spokesperson for Success Academy Charter Schools, said the reason for co-locating is to fill excess seats, or the controversial underutilized space, in public schools.

“Across New York City there are school buildings with hundreds and hundreds of excess seats,” she said. “And we should be maximizing the existing space we have to make sure children and families have access to as many high-quality options as possible.”
PTA President for P.S. 191 Eric Shuffler also reiterated that co-location wasn’t a popular choice with him and the attendees at the meeting.

“This is District 3, our seats are precious,” he said during the meeting. “You’ll probably find that it’ll be much easier to embrace a proposal if you’re not cannibalizing or digging into space that other people need and want. And then we’ll all get along.”

According to a December study on NYC charter schools provided by Lyon, 58 percent of NYC public schools share buildings and only 8 percent of co-located public schools are co-located with charter schools. The study also found that co-located schools are considered the least crowded schools in the city.

But according to Community Education Council District 3 President Christine Annechino, co-locating negatively affects public school children.

“When you walk into the school, it’s just so sad to see,” she said, using P.S. 149 in Harlem as an example. There, the charter students’ classrooms are freshly painted and they use better technology than the public school kids in the same building, she said.
In 2010, Albany raised a cap on charters so that capital improvements the charter makes have to be matched by the City for the public school side.

Lyon said Success Academy Charter is trying to meet the overwhelming demand for the charters in District 3. For September, Upper West Success has 130 available seats and already has received 1,800 applications, according to Lyon. The application deadline is April 1.

“All the schools we share space with share the same mission, to give our students the best education possible,” she said.

The meeting ended with a resolution asking Success Academy Charter to consider opening a charter in its own location.

“The resolution basically says, if you’re serious about our community, and helping our community, we ask you to locate in a space other than an established public school,” Rosenthal said.

New York Family has several wonderful resources to help city parents address their children’s educational needs as they grow up.

New York Family publishes the Ultimate Guide to Education in October; not only the season of transitions and adjustments in schools, it’s also the time for admissions applications. The Ultimate Guide covers all of it, helping parents understand local admissions in all of the sectors while offering stories about news and trends in learning and development and a parent’s role in their child’s education. You can find the digital edition of the latest Ultimate Guide to Education at newyorkfamily.com.

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Nursery School and Pre-K

The Parents League of New York, parentsleague.org
The Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York, isaagny.org
The New York City Department of Education, schools.nyc.gov
Victoria Goldman’s The Manhattan Directory of Private Nursery Schools, victoriagoldman.net
Also note: Many “preschool alternative” programs are offered by neighborhood education and enrichment centers. See our classes directory.

Public School

Clara Hemphill’s various guides to New York City public schools, clarahemphill.net
Class Size Matters, classsizematters.org
The New York City Department of Education, schools.nyc.gov
Gotham Schools, gothamschools.org
Insideschools, insideschools.org
NYC Public School Parents, nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com

Private School (Independent)

The Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York, isaagny.org
NYC Private Schools Blog, nycprivateschoolsblog.com
The NYC Private School Admissions Handbook nypeas.com
The Parents League of New York, parentsleague.org
Victoria Goldman’s The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools and Selective Public Schools, victoriagoldman.net

Charter Schools

The New York City Department of Education, schools.nyc.gov
New York City Charter School Center, nyccharterschools.org

Parochial Schools

Archdiocese of New York, archny.org
Also note: For other faith-based schools in the New York City area, we recommend contacting local organizations affiliated with your religion. They should be able to direct you to schools of interest.

New Schools

For new public schools, check the DOE website and Inside Schools and call your local school district’s office, which you can find on the DOE website. For new charter schools, check with the New York City Charter School Center. Here are a few new (and new-ish) and noteworthy nursery and private schools.

Avenues, avenues.org
École Internationale de New York, einy.org
Fusion Academy, fusionacademy.com (search for New York City)
The Goddard School, goddardschool.com
Grace Church School, gcschool.org
The Lang School, thelangschool.org
The Learning Experience, thelearningexperience.com (search for Manhattan)
Léman Prep (formerly Claremont Prep), lemanmanhattan.org
Queens Paideia School, queenspaideiaschool.org
Upper West Side Playgroup, upperwestsideplaygroup.org
World Class Learning Academy, wclacademy.org

By Gavin Aronsen

Harlem native Eva Moskowitz has spent most of her life with the New York education system, including a stint on the City Council advocating for its reform.

She’s currently in charge of the Harlem Success Academies, a group of charter schools that have received praise in Waiting for “Superman” and from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and The New York Times.

Eva Moskowitz, a former councilmember who oversees seven charter schools, said she is concentrating on education now, but she might someday return to politics.

She founded the first academy in August 2006. Today, there are five charter schools in Harlem and two in the South Bronx. They are all part of the Success Charter Network, which she serves as CEO.

“I love kids and I love schooling,” Moskowitz said. “We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make school the most interesting, compelling place imaginable, and it’s really gratifying when kids love school.”

Moskowitz, 46, lives in New York with husband Eric Grannis, a former public school teacher whom she met while the two attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. The couple’s three children, like their parents, are growing up in the city’s public school system.

“We’re both pretty busy, working parents, so managing all that is a challenge, but we wouldn’t raise them anywhere else,” Moskowitz said. “I’m deeply engaged in their education and bedtime stories and all of the craziness of raising a family in New York.”

After she graduated high school, Moskowitz studied history at the University of Pennsylvania before going on to receive a PhD in American history at Johns Hopkins University.

She later become a professor of history and also taught at Prep for Prep, which provides preparatory coursework for minority students.

In the mid-1990s, Moskowitz shifted her focus to politics, and in 1999 she was elected to the New York City Council.

She was chosen to lead the Education Committee at the beginning of 2002 and held more than 100 oversight meetings during her time there, earning herself a reputation as a fierce fighter for school reform.

Then in 2005, she lost a bid to become Manhattan borough president and decided to return to education.

Moskowitz’s charter schools have generated their share of controversy—much of it from the United Federation of Teachers—largely over resource competition with other schools. But she said she simply wants an alternative to a bureaucracy-laden system and chalks disagreements up to politics.

“Charter schools have been somewhat controversial,” she said. “I’m not sure exactly why, because they’re public schools—they’re free from the bureaucracy of the district and free from the labor union contracts, so they are able to organize themselves around teaching and learning.”

More than 2,500 students receive their education at Moskowitz’s seven schools now, and the Success Charter Network has ambitious plans to open more than 30 more schools over the next 10 years.

“There are lots of challenges,” Moskowitz said. “Obviously we work very, very hard to find phenomenal teachers and school principals. That’s incredibly important to us.”

She stressed the importance of several trademarks of early education to children’s learning, including recess—“It’s really, really important for kids to get that release no matter what the weather is, unless it’s pouring rain”—and field trips, which her own children helped her learn.

“New York is a great place to raise kids because there’s so much to do,” she said. “At our schools we do three or more field trips a month. When you’re living in the greatest city on earth, if I may be so bold, with great ranges of cultural institutions and parks and just a lot to do, it’s important to get kids out and about. That’s something I’ve done as a mother and as a family.”

Of course, building students’ minds is the most important part of the academies’ mission. One novel program to accomplish that which Moskowitz highlighted was the teaching of chess to all their students, beginning in kindergarten.

“It’s a way to think strategically without language, and that is a very important part of thinking,” she explained.

Although she said she might think about a return to elected office later in life, for now Moskowitz said she intends to stay put at her current job.

“Right now, I am committed to ensuring that the schools are running at a high level,” she said, “and as you can imagine, it’s quite an undertaking to create a school and create many of them, all with extraordinary quality.”

The Upper West Side charter school shuffle continues.

The plan to open a Success Academy charter school in P.S. 145, 150 W. 105th St., between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, seems to be scuttled, according to Noah Gotbaum, head of the local Community Education Council.

Now, West Prep Academy—a middle school on West 77th Street and Columbus Avenue—may move into P.S. 145’s building to open up space in the heavily overcrowded schools in the southern part of the Upper West Side.

“This new proposed plan is better news for P.S. 145,” Gotbaum wrote in a letter he emailed to the Upper West Side school district community.

Moving West Prep would open up needed room for the new school—P.S. 425—created to relieve overcrowding at other Upper West Side public schools.

“Where [West Prep is] located now is very crowded,” said Council Member Gale Brewer. “P.S. 145 is a perfect place to go.”

As the Department of Education undertakes the rezoning of Upper West Side schools, there was a plan to keep the boundaries for P.S. 145—currently under capacity—intact. Though the Department of Education and Success Academy—run by former East Side Council Member Eva Moskowitz—had yet to devise a firm proposal, P.S. 145 was considered a prime spot for the first Upper West Side charter school.

Gotbaum wrote in the letter that P.S. 145’s zones are expected to grow, allowing more students to enroll. But he suspects that the new location for Upper West Success will be P.S. 165 on 234 W. 109th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

The issue is likely to be brought up at a Nov. 17 meeting of the Community Education Council—the parent group for the Upper West Side and West Harlem school district.

The Department of Education and Success Academy are mum on the location for the charter school, and are ruling nothing out.

“We think Success Academy charter schools are doing great work in New York City—we support their expansion and are committed to finding this new school a home,” said Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, a spokesperson for the Department of Education. “While no decision has been made yet, we’re currently considering a few ideas and will propose one soon.”

A spokesperson for Success Academy, in a statement, is leaving the location up to the Department of Education.

“There’s overwhelming parent demand for this school and for more options on the Upper West Side,” said Jenny Sedlis, a Success Academy spokesperson. “It’s up to the DOE to decide what siting will meet that demand.”

The Upper West Side is on track to getting a new charter school after the State University of New York’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved Success Academy’s application Oct. 27.

Upper West Success—part of the Success Academy chain of charter schools—already has a website running and is taking applications. The Success Academy’s CEO Eva Moskowitz pitched parents in an Oct. 24 New York Post­ op-ed.

The early campaign for an Upper West Side charter school will be fighting against opposition: Success Academy is seeking co-location in P.S. 145, a school on 150 W. 105th St., between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, that the city considers underutilized.

The Department of Education intends to keep the school under capacity as it rezones Upper West Side schools, maintaining P.S. 145’s building as a possible spot for a Success Academy charter school. P.S. 145, however, wants to expand its boundaries to grow and accept more students.

Local elected officials, P.S. 145’s principal and the parent group for the West Side school district are leading the opposition to the controversial co-location.

Council Member Gale Brewer is worried that the charter would sap students from good schools in her district.

“To put a charter school in the middle of a neighborhood and pull from schools already doing well is wrong,” Brewer said. “That’s just destroying good schools and that’s not the purpose of public education.”

Moskowitz believes West Side parents are clamoring for another school option. The good schools in the southern part of the Upper West Side are overcrowded and the private schools or gifted and talented programs may be out of reach for some students.

“A lot of parents feel they work hard, they pay their taxes. It’s supposed to be the case that you can send your kid to get a great, free public education,” Moskowitz told the West Side Spirit in October.

Now that the State University of New York gave the OK to Upper West Success, the Department of Education must create a proposal to locate the school. While a Department of Education spokesperson said that a formal proposal for co-locating Upper West Success has yet to be made, P.S. 145 is a possibility.

“The fact is local parents are choosing other options over P.S. 145, which is why the building has more than 300 empty seats,” the Department of Education said in a statement. “We must work hard to make this school successful and better utilize this space.”

P.S. 145 is, according to the Department of Education and Principal Ivelisse Alvarez, a good school.

The city gave P.S. 145, located on 150 W. 105th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, a B in this year’s progress report card. Though the school did receive some poor marks for school environment and student performance, it also achieved an A in student progress.

Yet a charter school—often viewed as an alternative in areas with failing public schools—is being planned to open up in P.S. 145’s building.

Success Academy, a charter school network with locations in Harlem and the South Bronx, is seeking a spot in the Upper West Side and recently, the city deemed P.S. 145 “underutilized”.

Student enrollment at the school—currently at 59 percent capacity—declined to 431 this school year, from 524 in 2006.

Alvarez, the school’s principal, sees the situation inside P.S. 145 differently.

“You can say it’s underutilized, but on the basis of what?” Alvarez said. “The classes are being used, the rooms are being used.”

The principal at P.S. 145 believes that a charter school occupying the school building will hamper future expansion plans. She wants to grow the school so that it includes K through 8th grade.

This year, the school received part of an $11 million, three-year federal grant awarded to eight Upper West Side schools in late September. The funding, $3.7 million for the district this year, is meant to help these “magnet” schools attract a diverse set of students. P.S. 145’s student body is mostly black and Latino.

“It’s not a failing school and there shouldn’t be a charter school in the building,” Alvarez said.

The city, however, seems intent on keeping student enrollment at P.S. 145 low.

The Department of Education presented a draft redrawing of school zones in the neighborhood’s school district Oct. 14. P.S. 145 was the only school to keep its boundaries in the draft rezoning.

“P.S.145 has been identified as an underutilized building. It is the only one on the Upper West Side,” Elizabeth Rose, a Department of Education official, told a crowd of parents and educators at a recent Community Education Council meeting. “Underutilized buildings are very rare.”

School zones are being changed to ease overcrowding in the southern part of the Upper West Side school district where there are waitlists. Crowded schools like P.S. 199 and 87 in the West 60s and 70s saw their zones shrink, while the catchment area for P.S. 75 on West 96th Street grew.

Alvarez wants P.S. 145’s catchment area expanded to attract new students.

“We don’t have that many blocks in the school zone to register children from,” Alvarez said.

Eva Moskowitz, the former East Side Council member who is the CEO of the Success Academy charter schools, said that Upper West Side parents need a choice now and cannot wait years to see if P.S. 145’s enrollment increases.

“Parents need options now. Their 5-year-old can’t wait five years,” Moskowitz said. “What are we going to tell parents on the Upper West Side, ‘Well this school might expand so we’re not going to use the 300 seats’?”

In New York City, charter schools have proliferated in economically disadvantaged areas. But Moskowitz believes parents in the Upper West Side should be able to send their children to a charter school as well.

“Even parents of means have a very anxiety-producing challenge and I didn’t think that should be the case,” Moskowitz said. “There’s nothing in the charter law that says you’re only supposed to serve the most disadvantaged.”

The State University of New York’s Board of Trustees, which can approve charter schools in the state, scheduled a vote on Success Academy’s new Upper West Side location Oct. 27.

Noah Gotbaum heads the parent body that holds meetings on education policy, known as a Community Education Council. The council has to vote on the new rezoning map for the 2011 school year.

Gotbaum, a critic of Success Academy charter schools in Harlem, is supporting Alvarez, the P.S. 145 principal.

“They also want to be able to grow their school, which is a terrific school, and use this federal money to really draw in students,” Gotbaum said. “Harlem Success will stop this in its tracks.”

Since charter schools became the new battleground for New York education reform, State Sen. Bill Perkins has become public enemy number one for advocates of these publicly-funded, privately-operated schools.

Perkins, who represents a Harlem district that covers parts of the Upper West Side, has criticized the way charter schools operate and occupy existing public school buildings. Those views have earned him derision from pro-charter school organizations and editorial boards. The group Education Reform Now cut a harsh ad targeting Perkins that aired on cable television, and a Daily News editorial said the State Senator is in the “pouch of the teachers union.”

Basil Smikle, campaign consultant and State Senate candidate. Photo by Dan Rivoli

Now, Perkins has a primary challenger in the form of charter school supporter Basil Smikle, a Columbia-educated campaign consultant.

To Smikle, charter schools are the alternative to a public school system that has failed students. Reflecting on his childhood as a Catholic school student in the Bronx, Smikle recounts how he had to avoid walking in front of the public school because of violence from other students.

“What’s happening in Harlem is that a lot of the students and parents have no choice,” Smikle said. “And what the charter schools have done is actually just give them a choice.”

But Smikle, a former campaign aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also acknowledged the validity of complaints over charters: that they purport to accept students based on a lottery but in fact pick the more talented kids, and that they occupy space in public school buildings. He said that although public schools have underutilized space that can be shared with charters, he understands that students would be affected by seeing other children in the same building wearing uniforms, using new computers and participating in a different education program.

“I think, psychologically, it’s going to have an impact. I don’t deny that,” Smikle said. “But I don’t think the answer is to get rid of the charter. The answer is to find a way to improve the institution.”

Perkins, elected to Gov. David Paterson’s Senate Seat in 2006, did not return calls for an interview about his re-election campaign. But he is rallying support, scoring endorsements from Borough President Scott Stringer and the Upper West Side and Harlem Democratic clubs. His campaign announced the collection of 1,890 signatures, nearly double what is needed by the July 15 petition deadline. And he eventually did vote to raise the cap on charter schools in the state to 460 from 200, a bill that was tied to billions of federal dollars known as Race to the Top funds. But the legislation also addressed charter school critics’ concerns, such as blocking for-profit companies from running these schools and increasing regulations for charters that operate in buildings housing public schools.

With 20 charter schools in the area, a fair amount of Harlem parents and voters have first-hand experience of these organizations, and there are strong opinions on both sides of the issue. But for Upper West Side voters, charter schools are more theoretical. Families in that neighborhood are more familiar with the frustrations of waitlists at high-performing public schools and gifted programs. The closest charter school is Opportunity Charter School, on West 113th Street.

Still, Noah Gotbaum, head of District 3’s community education council, which covers the West Side from Columbus Circle to West Harlem, believes that politically-attuned Upper West Side parents have opinions about charters. The families who attend parent council meetings, Gotbaum said, have heard about crowding in Harlem schools due to charters.

“Half of our members are from lower portion are from the district,” Gotbaum said, referring to the Upper West Side. “Yet we are staunchly critical of the way they’ve managed to do this co-location in charter schools.”

But Smikle wants to be known to voters as more than a pro-charter school candidate, a position that “gets a lot of media attention,” he said. He rails against a dysfunctional Albany that has failed to address the district’s needs, from empty storefronts to the high unemployment rate among black males.

“I feel that there are times when the elected officials should be taking the lead when trying to solve problems,” Smikle said. “I don’t see that happening in Albany.”

There are two issues I want to address. First, the success of charter schools is still in debate and all mayoral candidates, except Tony Avella, support them. I am concerned about where the candidates plan to open new charter schools. There is severe overcrowding in many parts of the city. About a week ago, a decision was decided to eliminate Pre-K classes in P.S. 3 and P.S. 41 on the Lower East Side to make room for roughly 100 kindergarten students on a waiting list. There are not enough student seats on the Upper East and West sides for the growing student population and many elementary schools in Queens have huge enrollments. When charter schools are opened, it is not uncommon to share space with a Department of Education school. This takes valuable space from an underutilized school or crowds a school already at or above capacity. It was nearly three years ago that NEST+M, a citywide gifted school, won a long battle to keep Ross Global Academy Charter School out of its building. Although I agree that parents should have options of where to send their kids, I wonder where the mayoral candidates plan to open new charter schools in the future.
Second, the issue of increasing parental involvement in the school and in children’s lives is echoed by all mayoral candidates, with each suggesting different methods on how to approach it. I would recommend increasing the percentage that the school environment survey plays in the overall scoring of a school’s progress report. Currently, the survey is worth 15 percent of the progress report, where a poor grade for a few years may close a public school. The school environment survey asks focused questions from parents, teachers and secondary students about how their school is meeting the academic and emotional needs of young learners. By increasing the percentage of the school environment to 20 to 25 percent of the total progress report, it would send a clear message to parents that their responses are valuable and that their voices may be heard by those who want a high grade on Department of Education progress reports.

Daniel M. Wolkenfeld
East 82nd Street

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.