Hundreds of Queens parents have been phoning Mayor Bill de Blasio, asking him to provide classroom space for a Success Academy middle school — because without it, our kids won’t be able to continue the high-quality charter school education we chose for them.
Hizzoner doesn’t take our calls, and neither does anyone on his staff. They transfer us to 311 as soon as they learn why we are calling. They don’t even take down our information. It’s pretty clear that we aren’t a priority. The message City Hall and Gracie Mansion is telegraphing to us: Your voices don’t matter.
Success Academy first made a request for a middle school location in January 2017. The charter network provided a list of underutilized buildings — five different buildings with 475 to 700 empty seats — and showed future enrollment projections. With four Success elementary schools feeding into the one existing Success middle school in Queens, it was clear there wouldn’t be space for all our kids as more graduated from elementary school.
At first, the city told us there was space, but we would have to wait a year, until 2019. But now it’s 2019, there’s been no response on a location and the mayor is stonewalling. That isn’t a solution — it is an insult.
As a community that includes working-class families from Far Rockaway, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens and South Jamaica, we want what is best for our kids. Most of us have experience with the traditional schools in our neighborhoods, and it hasn’t been positive.
There are only two middle schools out of 55 in southeast Queens, where at least 80% of students are on grade level in both English and math. At Success, more than 96% of our children
are on grade level in math, and 88% in reading. We want to build on their achievements — not watch them leave Success and regress.
The mayor and chancellor have campaigned for months to lower admission requirements for eight specialized high schools, because, they believe, it
will allow more black and Latino students to reach for “excellence and equity for all.”
But when almost 2,000 children of color in southeast Queens — who are excelling in math and science and reading, who are on a path to a better future and the very excellence and equity the mayor extols — when those kids need a few hundred seats, a couple dozen classrooms, to continue their education, then de Blasio can’t be bothered to even have a staffer take our calls.
The mayor’s attitude is particularly disturbing in light of his recent intervention on behalf of PS 150. The mayor valiantly came to the rescue of this small school of mostly white students in TriBeCa this past December. Through his benevolent arbitration, the 200 children at PS 150 were allowed to stay in their building, rather than having to temporarily co-locate in a different building until construction of their new school was complete.
While our Queens families have to contemplate sending their children to underperforming district schools, the families in TriBeCa were going to be burdened with an additional 20 minutes added to their commute. But the mayor stepped in and saved PS 150 families — something he refuses to do for Queens working-class families of color.
By his own account, as soon as the mayor heard about PS 150’s problem, he met with Chancellor Richard Carranza and said, “We’ve got to figure this out, there’s got to be a way to save this school.” Within a few weeks, the mayor solved the problem and held a celebratory news conference, proclaiming “when there’s accountability, it makes a difference.”
If only the mayor felt accountable to working-class families in Queens.
The mayor has the power to help change the fate of these Queens students, but he is
putting anti-charter politics ahead of kids. No schools have to be closed, no miracles have to be worked. It is simply a matter of sharing space, something that New York school children have done for more than a century.
“Sharing” — it is a concept most parents teach our children. The mayor has proposed that America’s wealthiest individuals share their wealth, but as the landlord of NYC’s public-school buildings, he won’t allow our children in charters to share space with their district peers.
AnnDena McCleary is a Success Academy parent. She lives in South Jamaica, Queens, with her son.
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