At-risk NYC public high school students being evicted to make way for well-connected charter

[HiPointDem]

A high school for at-risk kids is facing eviction from its home to make room for a well-connected charter school to expand...School reformer (sic) and former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz sparked outrage last year when city officials turned over space in the newly overhauled Brandeis high school campus on the upper West Side to the Moskowitz-run Upper West Success Academy. This year, the city is planning to create more space in the Brandeis building by moving the Innovation Diploma Plus school to a Washington Heights building that lacks science labs and a gym...

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/plan-push-at-risk-kids-move-charter-article-1.1213555

Comment: You left out perhaps the most galling aspect of this (although it may be hard to top displacing unwed teen mothers)--not only will this space be unused and warehoused until UWS's kids age into it, when it IS finally occupied, due to attrition and Success's no-backfill policy the classrooms won't be filled anywhere close to their capacity. I'll put it another way: some of our most at-risk kids are being displaced so that in four or five years, UWS can have middle school class sizes of 20 or 22 kids.

Comment: Why are they moving these HS students out now? Because if they delay a year, Eva is not sure that the next mayor will be as submissive to her will. -- Leonie Haimson

I have seen some horribly destructive behavior toward our kids by the DOE over the years, but this truly is among the worst. The school targeted to be removed is 100% Black and Latino, overage, under credited, a full 50% of whom are unwed mothers. They are in an Upper West Side location, which has been their home since the DOE included them as one of the four schools to replace Brandeis. Then, Upper West Success Charter moved in. Now they are being sent to be warehoused (and likely drop out) in Washington Heights. While their space will be warehoused until such point that the charter is ready to use it .... Noah Gotbaum

Over 300 people showed up including 100 IDP students to demand to know why they are being kicked out of their state-of-the-art high school facility at Brandeis and exiled to a 90 year old leased factory site in Washington Heights. DOE plan as announced at CEC3 meeting - but found nowhere in the EIS nor discussed at the hearing - is that IDP's space would be warehoused now for an Upper West Success Middle school which won't be even enrolling students until 2015/2016. So why are they moving them now? Or at all?

At what point does the edurati actually begin to get what's going on? On the same night Eva's husband's Citizens of the World Charter was committing an outrage in Greenpoint, Eva's agents, Walcott/Bloomberg etc were engaging in actions so brazen as to practically defy description. Of note at the hearing:

- 50+ speakers, not a single one in favor of the proposal;
- DOE refused to entertain the students' question as to why they were considering moving IDP;
- Two of four mayoral candidates - de Blasio and Liu - as well as numerous other electeds against this move including Stringer, Espaillat, Duane, Farrell, Rosenthal, Rosa, Brewer, Jackson, CEC6;
- No Success Charter rep or parent in attendance (except their videographer)

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2012/12/eva-destruction-walcottbloomberg.html


Another interesting aspect: Mayoral candidate de Blasio, the most progressive of all the announced candidates, who came out against this action, and who appeared to be gaining some traction and visibility in the mayoral contest -- was recently targeted for some dirty tricks of the karl rove variety....

[burnsei sensei]

1. As I've written before,

I see passionate people everywhere, and they are ugly.
And I've noticed that people have a great passion for the success of the successful.
Not so much for the success of the impoverished, challenged or alienated.
Another day in the dialogue of the deserving and undeserving.

[HiPointDem]

3. "people have a great passion for the success of the successful" = yes.

and i'll add again: this is class/racial/ethnic discrimination every bit as pernicious as old-style jim crow & even nastier, as it's dressed up under the rubric of 'choice' & concern about 'failing minorities'.

but under cover they're sending poor minority students to a warehouse building with substandard facilities so that a private school can take over a state-of-the-art facility paid for with public money.

[HiPointDem]

4. ^

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt