They’re hoping for limited Success.
A controversial charter-school network that has been accused of using harsh punishments to weed out difficult students must be banned from opening new outposts in and around Fort Greene until the city investigates the company’s discipline policy, a local panel of public-school parents demanded last week.
Faculty at Success Academy Charter Schools’ three-year-old Fort Greene location came under fire in October when the New York Times reported the school once kept a “got to go” list that singled out troublesome students, and used frequent suspensions and other demands on parents’ time to push them to leave. Now, some local parents say they want the city to put a wall up around the school district to keep Success out.
“We’re very upset and we think it’s only fair that these allegations are fully run down and investigated,” said David Goldsmith, president of Community Education Council 13 — a volunteer board that also advises the city on schools in Brooklyn Heights, Downtown, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, and parts of Park Slope and Bedford–Stuyvesant.
Even before that report came out, Goldsmith claims numerous parents of students at the Fort Greene institution, which is co-located with MS 265 on Park Avenue, had approached the panel claiming the institution suspended — or threatened to suspend — their offspring for minor offenses including putting their hands in their pockets or slouching in their chairs.
“I’d never heard of something like that before,” said Goldsmith. “It wasn’t just one or two people coming forward.”
A Success spokesman denies students were ever punished for such infractions.
In addition to the moratorium on new Success Academies across the district, the council is demanding the State University of New York — which is in charge of the school’s charter — investigate the Fort Greene school and close the operation if the inspection turns up anything unsavory.
The panel invited the school’s firebrand founder and former Manhattan Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz to its Dec. 8 meeting to address its concerns, but she instead wrote a letter noting the list mentioned in the article was revoked within days — and the principal reprimanded — and claimed other allegations were just “anecdotes” from a handful of families that don’t represent the thousands who are happy with her schools.
The education council says the letter didn’t address many of its concerns, which is why it is asking for the review.
The privately run, publicly funded charter school network mostly serves kids from low-income neighborhoods, and claims it offers kids who would otherwise be stuck in crummy public schools a chance at a first-rate education.
A Success spokesman said that the majority of parents in District 13 like the 204-student school and have shown their support at the educations ballot box — families of more than 800 kids in the district entered into its admissions lottery last year, he said.
“Success Academy has received overwhelming support from District 13 parents, who are demanding high-quality schools,” said Brian Whitley.
Many in the neighborhood had fought to keep the school from opening in the first place, as they were worried the charter school would take space from MS 265, said Goldsmith.
Parents in other parts of the borough have also fought to keep Success schools from securing space inside local public school buildings — critics filed unsuccessful lawsuits to stop it opening branches inside Williamsburg and Cobble Hill institutions, while some opponents defaced the company’s subway ads.
The Department of Education refused to comment on the prospect of a moratorium or investigation.
