Charter School Supporters Convene On Prospect Park — We Talk With A Parent

[This story was updated at 1:25pm, 9/29/16.]

Yesterday, thousands of children, parents, teachers and school administrators gathered in Prospect Park calling on the De Blasio administration to allow for the creation of more charter schools in New York City.

Students from all five boroughs came to Prospect Park yesterday — event organizers said 25,000 people were at the rally.

Yesterday’s event was part of a campaign for charter school expansion, Path to Possible, which seeks to double the number of New York City students in charter schools from 100,000 to 200,000 by 2020. Path to Possible is spearheaded by Families for Excellent Schools, a non-profit with offices in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Charter schools are a hugely contentious topic in New York City, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has clearly stated that his number one priority is to improve the City’s public school system, which serves about 1.1 million students in 1,800 schools.

Strictly speaking, charter schools are also considered “public” as they receive public funding, but they operate outside of the City’s Department of Education.

Charter school advocates at the rally yesterday argued that the City’s traditional public schools are failing low-income students of color all too often, and those students need better options now as the City struggles to turn schools around.

Opponents of charter schools maintain that the charter school movement is an effort to privatize education, and diminish the power of the Teachers’ Union. WNYC reported in 2014 that four of the five founding board members of Families for Excellent Schools are major players on Wall Street. The Walton Family Foundation, of Walmart, has also been a major donator to the organization.

Beyond the debates, of course, are the tens of thousands of students and their families who have made the decision to leave the public school system. We talked to one Brooklyn dad at the rally, who explained why he placed his daughter in one of New York City’s Success Academies, located in Bergen Beach.

Calvin Brown told us that his daughter Jamaica attended a pre-K in a local public school last year after pre-K was expanded throughout the city by the de Blasio administration. But the school building did not seem adequately prepared for the new program, Brown told us. “I’m not sure if they had the resources to welcome younger kids,” he said.

Jamaica was accidentally locked in a bathroom one day, Brown said, which frightened the four-year-old greatly.

Brown argued that because charter schools are often located within public schools, they bring access to additional resources that can be used to improve the overall school’s infrastructure, benefitting charter school and public school students alike.

“Sometimes co-location is a good idea,” Brown said, noting a state law which requires that if a charter school makes physical improvements to its space in a NYC Department of Education-owned building, the City must “match” this investment. Under the law, the DOE must make comparable improvements to any public school in the building. The law applies to improvements over $5,000.

“I’m here to support the movement for equity in terms of space for charter schools in local neighborhood schools,” Brown stated.

Another concern for Brown has been access to teachers. It was hard to get through to staff at Jamaica’s public school pre-K program, he said. At Success Academy, teachers are required to respond to parents within twenty-four hours, Brown explained, and he has her kindergarten teacher’s email address.

“It speaks volumes that her principal knows her name,” Brown pointed out. He also felt that Jamaica’s new school offers “much better structure” for students. Three-hundred-fifty students attend the Bergen Beach Success Academy.

We spoke about the argument that the public policy focus should be on getting more resources to all public schools, not creating a parallel system.

“I do agree with investment in public schools,” Brown said, adding that he has witnessed first-hand the lack of sufficient resources for neighborhood public schools.

“I hope that public schools can get the same resources that charter schools have….In my dream world every school will have the same resources.”

But the dilemma, Brown said, was what to do for his daughter now as she is beginning her education — “in reality, parents have to do what’s best for their kids.”