D6 Success is mobilizing for a big rally in support of her type of education on October 2: Over 1 billion spent on Charters in NYC with no accountability or oversight. SCI not doing its job by approving and then no review of the charters or visits to the schools for 5 years! SUNY should not approve any more Success charters unless and until the following takes place: - Current Public School Overcrowding Must Be Dealt With: Half of our elementary schools are over capacity according to a faulty blue book. Estimates of 50,000 seats short. Most schools without working libraries, adequate cluster space, gym time, counseling and special ed service rooms. Meanwhile, public school class sizes at the highest levels in decades while charters given equivalent space for lower needs kids and able to determine/limit their class sizes. - The DOE Blue Book Capacity Calculation and Instructional Footprint Must Be Revised: Chancellor admits that the Current Blue Book overestimates capacity packing more students in than even building code allows, and fail to include adquate space in the Instructional Footprint for each schools special ed students and services, counseling and adminstration, art/music and other clusters, labs, libraries, gynasiums and lunchrooms. Plus a full investigation must be undertaken of the following aspects of Success Charter schools that currently are in operation: - Charter Finances and Operations Must be Audited by the Comptroller and the City Council - Success taking in hundreds of millions in taxpayer money without oversight or accounting ore review of conflicts of interest. A non-profits tax return is not sufficient reporting. Segregated and Biased Marketing - Spend millions in public dollars on marketing but dont reach out to all kids, only those they want in the wealthiest areas. Few if any brochures in Spanish. Skip poorest zip codes when marketing. Racially segregated marketing and brochures. Applications/Lottery/Wait List/ - Investigate overstatement conduct of the lottery, and creaming at lottery and waitlist level. Currently theres no oversight of numbers and process of the Success lottery. No accountability as to which and how students actually apply and then numberss on who enter the lottery win the lottery. And then which students actually are accepted via the lottery and enroll versus those who dont - why the fall off? Why do they take kids off the waitlist if demand via the lottery so high? How do they determine who gets in off the waitlist? Questionable Local and Total Demand for Success - How are application and waitlist numbers determined? They claim major waitlists in the thousands but then cant fill their seats as in the case of Upper West Success. If they have major waitlists why do they continue to market and seek new students into the new year? Also, Success is seeking new charters in our districts, yet the majority of students in existing Success charters invariably come from outside the district. Why has there been no transparency as to where the current Success students come from and whether local demand actually exists - especially for new Success Charters? Much lower levels of Special Needs, Poor student and ELL Enrollment - Need transparency as to why they arent complying with the law in terms of comparable numbers of ELLs and Special Needs students as public schools. Also should be investigating what level their ELLs are at when enrolled (much higher than the public schools), what level of special needs students accepted (they have almost no students with higher needs IEPs), comparing free and reduced lunch students and not just lumping them all together (they take fewer poor kids), homeless numbers (they take almost none). Discipline - Why is the suspension rate at Success schools 3-5x higher than public schools? Are they reporting suspensions as per the law? Are they treating students properly and in compliance with state and federal laws on suspensions? High Student Attrition - Student attrition rates at Success are astronomical with fewer than a third of the students remaining at Success Charter 1, and over half having already left HSA 2, 3 and 4. Why are the real attrition numbers, which students are leaving, and why are they leaving Success Charter? High Teacher Attrition - Teacher attrition rates at Success are far in excess of public schools yet reporting is lagging. What are the real numbers and why is this happening? Lack of Cooperation with Co-located Public Schools - Every Success charter colocation is plagued with poor cooperation with local public schools. Success doesnt collaborate and adhere to Chancellors Regulations on building cooperation. Routinely poor relationship with public schools and dangerous actions including calling their own fire drills, not cooperating with building evactuation plans, and not reporting sick children to building health officials. #Saveourschools
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 21:33:52 +0000
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