Dear Secretary Duncan:
I wrote to you back in June or July of 2009 regarding New York City’s mayoral control situation and charter schools being used as a gentrification tool in New York City. I did receive a reply letter from Dean Kern, Director of Parental Options and Information. Thank you for the reply.
However, my original letter was mischaracterized as a letter about charter schools as a tool for education reform. I stated that the way New York City operates charter schools, by acquiesce, is not fair and designed to eliminate public schools in certain neighborhoods that have been refurbished and repopulate them with mainly “white” children (gentrification tool). There are a bunch of pricey condominiums in refurbished neighborhoods that aren’t being sold because prospective clients don’t have schools for their children to go to. Going to school with Black and Latino children as the majority isn’t an option for these parents.
But instead of the New York City Department of Education fixing public schools, it wants to, through the design of our mayor, eliminate many of them, mainly for the purposes stated above. I know this sounds cynical but it is true.
In Mr. Kern’s reply letter he states that President Obama has
“expressed his support for high quality charter schools…However, the President has stipulated that the administration will provide this expanded charter school funding only to States that improve accountability for charter schools, allow for interventions in struggling charter schools and have a clear process for closing down chronically underperforming charter schools.”
The DOE is quick to try to close a public school down in our city, minus following the state’s education laws in doing so, but does not have a plan that it can show our state assembly that meets the President‘s agenda. (The state senate passed a bill lifting the charter school cap without such safeguards. Thank goodness our state assembly is being responsible to its citizens.)
Furthermore, I personally heard the President say when he was in Albany recently that his administration is looking for states to be able to show their plan. He stated that they must be able to show that they can obtain and maintain qualified teachers. They also must be able to offer this education to the neediest of our children and not just to a select few by manipulation methods - avoiding the problem children. The education has to be fair.
Well, the way that New York City runs charter schools is by allowing the charters to select their enrollment. They can virtually eliminate a child from going to a charter school in the same neighborhood where the child lives. It’s one thing if a charter school is built from the ground up or occupies a property not owned by the city. It’s another thing when a charter school comes into a public school building and a child who used to attend school in that building now has to go to a school far away.
Whether this is even legal to begin with is another question. Our charter school law states that when it comes to land use regulations charter schools are considered private schools. So if a public school building is not going to be used for a public school purpose the law doesn’t allow the mayor/DOE via the Panel for Education Policy to give a city property over to a charter school. Yet this has been happening in our city.
Our state speaker gave the mayor an opportunity to fix this problem. He was willing to go along with supporting lifting the charter cap if the DOE was willing to provide safeguards consistent with our state charter school law and the President’s agenda. The mayor didn’t want to make those concessions. He just wanted the charter school cap raised. Mind you, NYC uses an overwhelming majority of the charter school allowance.
I am sure the President doesn’t support a system where one school system has the luxury of a smaller class size with easy going students and the other has to be overcrowded with all kind of hell raisers. That would be unconstitutional to support. And the President is very mindful of equal education for all, especially if it’s public education.
So please pass these sentiments to the President. Unless charter schools are going to operate fairly in New York City the majority of our citizens and state assembly are not going to support raising the cap on charter schools. We don’t care who the education reform group has paid to endorse its position. They don’t speak for the majority.
Very truly yours,
Julius Tajiddin
Parent of a New York City Public School Child
Cc: New York State Assembly, et al
