The loudly pushed Jan 5 PEP Special meeting has been postponed ...silently

 After 2 contentious Joint Public Hearings for the proposed co-locations of Success Academy at MS 72 and Springfield Garden Highschool campuses on Monday December 19 and Tuesday December 20 respectively, the heavily bulldozed onto the calendar PEP Special meeting for January 5, 2022 was silently postponed in the wee hours of the morning of Wednesday December 21. 

No matter the "official" rationale given for the postponement of what at the end of the November just seemed like it couldn't wait, is taken as a small win for opponents of the proposals. It is an indication that while ODP and Success Academy thought they could sneakily push through an unwanted proposal while the community was distracted by preparation for and recovery after "the holidays", the reality was different. 

On Monday, the Joint Public Hearing for MS72 included well over 400 attendees and around 150 speakers giving public comments. The community advocated with specifics to the location as to all the reasons this co-location was a bad idea ranging from Magnet Grant expansion, to Special Ed School configuration needs, to shared space over subscription, to transportation and school bussing nightmares. Voices were raised from students, elected Parent and Community bodies all in agreement that there is no space. On the other hand, Success Academy advocates for the proposal gave many generic our curriculum is great, it works in Brooklyn and Manhattan arguments that quite frankly fell short of the issue at hand. The meeting lasted five and a half hours from 6 pm to 11:30 pm.

On Tuesday a similar number of attendees over 400 were present. However, there were over 300 speakers giving public comment. The students from the 4 schools at the Springfield campus represented themselves well with well thought out reasoning based on their current experience as to why a new elementary school on their campus is a bad idea. Elected officials, community bodies, parents and successful past pupils of the high schools also raised their voices in opposition. In contrast, we saw the same Success academy students and parents with the same generic messaging as the night before: our curriculum is great, it works in Brooklyn and Manhattan etc. This really hammered home that Success Academy did not do their homework. They did not seem to understand the location logistics of the space and were simply regurgitating canned responses that they keep stored for these hearings. 

In fact one illogical rant that woke up some of the attendees that may have fallen asleep made while references to Hillary and Trump, like we were in the midst of a 2016 election campaign. in fact it might have been just a poor recycling of a canned response from another 2016 success co-location hearing that the speaker just forgot to pull out of his arsenal. The bottom line, it had nothing to do with the space at hand, the arguments at hand or even Southeast Queens. That meeting lasted seven hours from 6 pm Tuesday to 1 am Wednesday. 

 Either way, the community is taking a short sigh of relief that this is not being shoved down its throat for a vote on January 5. While we await the rescheduling, we continue to urge PEP members, Success Academy, ODP and any other officials to take a school tour before the vote. We are also urging the meeting to be scheduled in person in the community, right in South East Queens. If these locations are not logistically convenient for a PEP meeting, how can their even be brought up as new school space options?

Community, take a breath, but do not lose sight of the goal. This issue is far from over.