Charter School Supporters Protest Policy Proposals
Charter school supporters joined together on Tuesday to protest proposals by NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. De Blasio has said charter schools should pay rent and called for a moratorium on charter schools.
NY 1 spoke to some of the charter supporters among the 17,000 participants:
The first marchers began crossing before 9 a.m. More than three hours later, they were still coming.
While students placed self-portraits in front of the Department of Education, their message was aimed at the next administration.
"Parents who feel like they've benefited from Mayor Bloomberg's policies would like to see them continued," said Sharhonda Bossier of Families for Excellent Schools.
Their specific concern is with mayoral front-runner Bill de Blasio, who has said he'll be less friendly toward the publicly funded, privately managed charter schools.
"The next mayor has a choice," said one parent at the march.
de Blasio Stands By Policies That Will Hurt Charter Schools
In their march across the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday, charter school supporters demanded the next mayor of New York City keep Mayor Bloomberg's education policies in place that have helped charters thrive. These include allowing charters to co-locate inside public school buildings rent-free.
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor, has pledged to reverse these two policies, according to GothamSchools:
De Blasio doubled down on those pledges on Tuesday, saying through a spokesman that "believes that well-resourced charter networks should pay for the use of school space, as charter schools do across the country." He'd also stop co-locations, an arrangement that has afforded schools free space inside city-owned school buildings, "until we can better assess their impact."
Both changes would affect a majority of the city's charter school sector. Over 60 percent of the city's 183 charter schools are housed in city-owned buildings, and more than half of the city's 50 proposals for new schools and co-locations involve charter schools.
Charter School Operators Prepare for Life Under de Blasio
Bill de Blasio, the leading candiate for New York City mayor, has clearly stated his positions on charter schools. He wants to charge rent for charter schools and stop the co-location of charter schools in public school buildings.
Charter school leaders, who marched across the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday to raise awareness of their plight, are quietly preparing for life under a possible Mayor de Blasio. According to The New York Times, some concerns from the charter school community have been addressed with de Blasio, but many others are still outstanding:
Many charter school leaders remain uneasy about Mr. de Blasio's plans. Some have started preparing for a City Hall that is resistant to their efforts. They are seeking donations in case they are forced to pay rent, freezing hiring plans and prodding teachers and students to speak out.
Lhota Embraces Charter Schools at Brooklyn Bridge March
On Tuesday, NYC's charter school supporters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to garner attention in the mayoral election. Bill de Blasio, the leading candidate for mayor, supports policies that takes funds away from the publicly-funded charter schools across the city.
The march garnered the attention of de Blasio's opponent Joe Lhota, a supporter of charter schools. But according to the New York Daily News, de Blasio was nowhere to be found:
Families there were more interested in sending a message to frontrunner Bill de Blasio, who has vowed if elected to reverse the city's policy of giving charters free space.
"We won't vote for de Blasio if he doesn't support charters," said Manhattan fashion worker Mohamed Ba, 47, whose daughter attends Harlem Success Academy 1. "If he crosses charter schools, he's making a big mistake."
NYC Forced to Spend $29 Million Paying Educators Unfit for the Classroom
A system that makes it difficult to fire teachers is costing NYC a significant amount of money in 2013. As reported by the Daily News, NYC will spend $29 million on salaries and benefits for educators who have already been pulled from jobs in public school classrooms but cannot yet be fired.
According to the Daily News:
As of Friday, there were 326 city educators who have been reassigned away from the classroom yet were still collecting pay, a sharp rise from 2012, when 218 ousted teachers drained $22 million from city coffers, Education Department records show.
The teachers and school administrators are accused of abusing kids, breaking rules or just being lousy educators. But they're still collecting salaries because of a controversial firing process that makes it too difficult to terminate bad employees, education officials charge.
Parents Transparency Project Founder Discusses the Importance of Protecting Students
Campbell Brown, a former journalist and CNN host, started the Parents Transparency Project to help expose sexual misconduct in NYC schools and those who tolerate it.
In an interview with Crain’s New York Business, Campbell describes what led her to found the organization:
It was about a year and a half ago, and the tabloids were going crazy with stories about teacher sex abuse and kids. The Daily News had done a huge feature about teachers who engaged in sexual misconduct with kids and then gotten a suspension or fine. And it had example after example after example. I thought, this can't be true. It was such an egregious thing. So I did all the research and got my own example of teachers and tracked down some of the parents of some of these kids that had been victimized. Talked to them—that'll kill you. Your heart breaks for what they're going through. And the degree that they feel the system has failed them. And I talked to a lot of teachers who were embarrassed that the union was taking the position it was.
Brown goes on to advocate for giving the City schools chancellor the power to fire teachers who engaged in sexualize misconduct. She says that in the past seven years, the NYC Department of Education has unsuccessfully attempted to fire teachers 128 times over sexual misconduct.
Charter Schools Advocates Are Ready to March
On Tuesday, an estimated 10,000 charter school teachers, students and parents will march across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan to demand an end to the war against the City's charter school networks.
With the general election less than a month away, Democrat Bill de Blasio and Republican Joe Lhota are at odds over how to improve NYC's public schools. de Blasio wants to end charter school co-location, which would effectively stop charter school growth and force a number of charter schools to close. Lhota wants to double the number of charter schools in NYC.
In an editorial, the New York Post says it is not surprising that charter school advocates are marching. New Yorkers support the schools, but de Blasio, the leading candidate for mayor, is threatening to halt their growth:
No wonder a new Siena/New York Times poll shows New Yorkers want more charters by a margin of 56 percent to 34 percent — and an even wider edge among African-Americans and the poor. The human faces behind this poll are the 50,000 kids on charter wait-lists.
Why One Charter School Parent Will Be Marching
Regina Dowdell is a charter school parent. She will march across the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday to support Girls Prep Brox, the school her daughter attends.
Dowdell likes Democrat Bill de Blasio, but she feels that he could not be more wrong when it comes to improving NYC's public school system. de Blasio's message about two New Yorks is accurate, she feels, but his education policies, and especially those affecting charter schools, will only bring these two New Yorks further apart on education.
In the New York Daily News, Dowdell writes:
All students deserve a school with high-quality teachers, one that graduates its students on time and prepares them to go on to college and careers. Until every public school in New York City provides that kind of quality education, we cannot afford to limit choices.
UFT Reportedly Broke Campaign Finance Rules
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) most recent campaign finance filings appear to indicate that that the union broke campaign finance laws. The filings show that the union's super PAC paid $370,000 to consultants that are working directly with a number of UFT-endorsed candidates.
According to the New York Daily News:
Independent super PACs can advocate all they wish, but candidates who receive public financing are not supposed to coordinate with a PAC. The rule is intended to bar candidates from pretending to live under spending limits while having a fake outside group spend wildly on their behalf. The UFT surely looks to have done that, while also failing to report robocalls on behalf of Councilman Robert Jackson.
Teachers Support New Common Core Standards
A survey of more than 20,000 teachers shows teachers across the country believe the new Common Core standards will help raise the bar for students.
USA Today reports on the positive reaction from educators so far:
A large majority of K-12 teachers say that new learning standards now being implemented in most states will improve students' thinking skills, a new survey suggests.
A poll of more than 20,000 teachers, out today from the children's publisher Scholastic Inc., finds that about three-fourths of teachers think the standards known as Common Core will improve students' abilities to reason and think critically. Only 8% say Common Core will have a negative impact on the classroom as schools retool to comply with the new standards.
