Success Academy Faces Investigation By SUNY Charter Institute After Fort Greene School Scandal

Photo courtesy Del Scorcho.

Success Academy Fort Greene and its sister branches face an investigation by the state board that licenses charter schools, after a scandal last fall that saw the school and its umbrella organization face renewed scrutiny for allegedly pressuring parents — via memos, meetings, and repeated suspensions of their children — to withdraw their student’s enrollment.

The State University Charter Institute reportedly now seeks to determine whether Success Academy, as well as other charter schools in the state, have abused their disciplinary policies to force out struggling students.

The move comes after our local Community Education Council District 13 (CEC 13) voted to call on the Department of Education and SUNY to put a moratorium on co-locating SA charter schools in District 13, require full disclosure of disciplinary policies from all charters seeking to open, and performance of a quality review of all SA schools in the area.

In SUNY’s latest move, according to the New York Post,

SUNY — which licenses charter schools — plans to demand more information from the high-performing Success Academy and other charter-school operators about their disciplinary and suspension policies before signing off on new charter applications or renewals.

. . . “Our focus is on making sure that suspensions and discipline are not being used improperly to encourage students to dis-enroll,” institute Director Susan Miller Barker said in a letter to Success Academy chairman Samuel Cole.

Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz said she is confident SUNY will find that Success Academy acted “quickly and decisively” at the Fort Greene school.

One of the SA’s first steps towards repairing its reputation was maintaining that the admitted “Got To Go” list was an isolated creation by SA Fort Greene principal Candido Brown and that it was eliminated within days of SA leaders finding out about it.

Brown also fell on his sword, recently taking a leave of absence from the school. A rumor in the SA Fort Greene community that he has been reassigned to an SA Harlem branch as a teacher has not been confirmed; SA did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.