NYC Parents Deliver 3,561 Letters to Mayor de Blasio Demanding Space for Success Academy and Bronx Charter School for the Arts

NYC Parents Deliver 3,561 Letters to Mayor de Blasio Demanding Space for Success Academy and Bronx Charter School for the Arts

842 Students Will Become Educationally Homeless if Mayor Doesn’t Fulfill Charters’ Space Requests

New York, NY – In letters delivered today to Mayor de Blasio, more than 3,500 parents urged the Mayor to give Success Academy and Bronx Charter School for the Arts access to public buildings that they collectively need, thus preventing 842 rising middle school students from becoming educationally homeless next year.

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Mayor de Blasio and the DOE have until October 13th to identify public space for these schools and release relevant documents ahead of the next meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, the board responsible for approving public charter school co-locations.

Success Academy Charter Schools, a public charter network that received the 2017 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools, needs access to school buildings to accommodate 734 rising middle school students. Bronx Charter School for the Arts — a K-5 school in Hunts Point that is one of the top five public schools in its district — needs access to one school building in order to expand and educate 108 middle school students starting next year. The public charter school is currently located in private space, which requires the school to raise $50,000 each month for rent — instead of spending those funds on educating children.

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As the city’s own data shows, there are 112 chronically underutilized public school buildings in New York City, each of which has had more than 300 empty classroom seats (thus meeting the DOE’s threshold for co-location) every year since 2012. Of these 112 buildings, 68 are located in districts where charter schools – including Success Academy Charter Schools and Bronx Charter School for the Arts – are seeking access to space.

 The petition delivery comes two weeks after public charter school leaders — including Success Academy Founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz and Bronx Charter School for the Arts Executive Director Miriam Raccah — joined more than 100 parents on the steps of City Hall to demand Mayor de Blasio immediately resolve charters’ open space requests. Despite promising to collaborate with public charter schools, and despite the recent test scores that demonstrate public charter students’ high performance, the de Blasio Administration has yet to resolve any of these requests.

 “My sons couldn’t be happier at Bronx Charter School for the Arts,” said Fatoumata Traoresanogo, who has two sons that attend the school. “It breaks my heart to imagine telling them that they won’t be able to go there next year, all because Mayor de Blasio refused to fill empty buildings with kids who want to learn.”

 “We shouldn’t be forced to wait in limbo to know whether our children will have a middle school next year,” said Miriam Reyes, a Success Academy Bergen Beach parent. “Mayor de Blasio should do right by children like my sons and stop blocking schools like Success Academy from available space.”

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