The Predators are coming! - Keep Success Academy Out of MS 72

 

The Predators are Coming

What would you say if I told you Halsey Junior High School music program is being cut, and MELS is cutting one class from its enrollment for the next five years to make space to share their respective buildings with new locations of an existing charter school?

You would be up in arms and ready to remove the mayor and the Governor right? How can we cut well-funded, popular programs to cram an unproven and possibly unneeded alternative into those buildings?? That would be ludicrous and downright alarming. Well hold on to your seats, this particular scenario is not happening … yet, but something just as absurd is happening in the south side of District 28. 

Middle School 72 campus, the home of the Original Catherine Count Basile MS 72, Redwood Middle School MS 332, and District 75 is facing a similarly ridiculous but real scenario. 

The two named middle schools have received Magnet Grants in the 2022 – 2023 school year and have a mandate to increase population by 5 % per year over the next 5 years. Additionally, though the campus became a multiple institution campus under a prior administration due to poor performance back then, the current schools through collaborative and innovative ideas have completely turned around their outlooks. They have a rich plethora of cocurricular, and syllabus based enrichment, a rigorous curriculum well liked by their diverse populations, and very importantly, motivated, qualified and committed leadership impassioned to truly take their various cadres of scholars through a successful and memorable campus experience. Unlike the biased selection under the guise of lottery that is usually done by some charters, the MS 72 school accepts all children and has been working in a differentiated manner to lead every child to their greatest individual success.

Despite this making of a newsworthy campus turn around, the Eva Moskowitz led Success Academy, which is just as well known for its parasitic bad neighbor behavior as for its high test scores based on its skewed and biased score selection and reporting, is now trying to bully its way on to that campus to stifle the life out of its current occupants.

Now an immediate charter leaning argument whenever there is push back on a space they have their eye on is that whatever targeted group of the day wants to “deny” their children space. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Eva and her team can purchase, lease, or find all the space they want, but it must not be at the expense of other truly public students. What is true, is that in truly predatory fashion, Eva and team has been seeking to infiltrate high schools and middle schools in South East Queens with K to 4 placements. This is not a space seeking ask, this is a long term destabilizing attempt to wean students away from what Eva and team’s prior surveys must have shown as low hanging fruit in poor performing parts of the district. However, it seems Eva and team have not updated their research to see the transformation as I already outlined about. However, I digress, lets move back to the actual issue of space. Among other similar stories that debunk Eva and team’s cry of being denied space is the known fact that since 2017  the now closed Rockaway Blvd OLCA campus, less than 10 minutes away from the MS72 site, was offered with very favorable terms to Success Academy as a potential stand alone site. They did later in 2021 take up the other OLCA campus at 128^th Street for the middle school, and it is not at capacity. That Rockaway campus still stands empty.

Don’t let Eva and team pull wool over your eyes with the we need space. They do not need space. They want space that infringes on existing students to frustrate parents to rolling over to their schools.

 

There are numerous other foul motives at hand with this attempt to invade MS72 and none of them are pretty. Here are a couple, and you judge for yourself is Success Academy is indeed fighting fair or bullying themselves into a space they are not wanted.

• ·         Success Academy posted the opening of new K-4 at the MS72 location before the ask for that campus was even formalized as a proposal with Office of District Planning and forwarded for inclusion on the Panel for Education Policy agenda. This was an attempt to create false hope in unsuspecting parents, so that when the proposal is not accepted they can make them think they were being denied. This is no different that a ponzi scheme using our children instead of money claiming spaces that did not exist. This is the kind of scenario Bernie Madoff went to jail for, why would it be ok for Eva to use our children in a similar scheme and be applauded for it?
  
  
  
• ·         Success academy has been backpacking falsehoods with their parents suggesting that any opposition to the space is an attack on them. No, the attacked MS 72, MS 332 and District 75 are panicked and seriously worried about the future of their children’s education if their hard fought developments on campus would be erased by the addition of an unwanted K – 4 school
• ·         Many other charters in the area have very cohesive relationships with the community schools around, and are not protested. Growing up Green, Riverton, Merrick Academy, and more are in easy commute distance, and do not try to embattle their students against DOE students and parasitically invade their space. In fact, the current Chancellor’s own Charter initiative Eagle Academy is one of a model charter neighbor that embodied its mission to provide public education by moving to a full public model keeping it’s charter vision. Eagle has been around since 2004, and Success Academy only two years later in 2006. Yet we see a world of difference in terms of the try embedding into the communities they claim to serve. Eva’s team cares only about Eva’s team and that model will not change.
• ·         Success Academy fronted a female minority representative for its presence at the Community Education Council District 28 townhall meeting on the co-location. She was unable to answer any questions posed those that was the explicit reason their presence was welcomed. That placement falls in line with their modus operandi to play on emotion because they are deeming the area predominantly minority, and much of the vocal opposition has been from minority women. I find deliberate attempts to manipulate public opinion in this way demeaning.    
• 
  
  
• ·         There are well over 25 resolutions and petitions, as well as strong letters and presentations from Parent Teacher Associations, School Leadership Teams, Community Boards, Local Officials, Parents, Principals and individuals all specifically protesting the infiltration of Success Academy at the MS72 campus, not from anti Eva stance, but from the impractically and unavoidable collateral damage it would cause to the existing families in the building. If it is so strongly unwanted why would Eva and team feel the need to pursue it, rather than withdraw the proposal and seek another location such as the vacant Catholic school previously mentioned.
• ·         The timing of the proposals seems to suggest collusion between Office of District Planning and Eva’s team. Public opposition prior to a formal proposal was ignored and the formal matter pushed to have a Joint Public Hearing on the last week of school before break, and the PEP in person meeting on the Wednesday after New Year almost as far away in Queens as possible from the site in Question. All of these seem geared to engineer low turn out and sneak through a passage of an unwanted colocation. Success Academy and Eva are not playing fair.

I could go on for another two pages or more with all the other injustices of this situation, but time is of the essence. Rekindle that alarm and energy generated by my opening fallacy and come out to help District 28 families, schools, parents fight the attempt to be bullied into being pushed out of their own campus. Help us fight our middle school students possibly moving to a 9 am lunch time since 10 is already taken and if early childhood students are brought to campus, it is unlikely that is would be their lunch time that is modified. Come out to the Joint Public Hearing on 12/19. Come out in person to the PEP on January 5 and demand that the vote be moved to a later date, and even that Eva and team do the right thing and drop the proposal.

For me every child deserves a chance to sign and have success, even when their school’s name does not contain  the word success. Help us to keep given the Ms72 students that chance.

Respectfully,

Nathifa Lewis

Nathifa is a mother of middle and high school students, a former high school teacher, an Adjunct Faculty member, Technology professional, former DOE employee, community leader, parent leader, CEC 28 member.