New York Post

Spread Success

Blas won’t let my son’s stellar charter expand

- ANNDENA MCCLEARY

HUNDREDS of Queens parents have been phoning Mayor 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 percent of students are on grade level in both English and math. At Success, more than 96 percent of our children are on grade level in math, and 88 percent 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 publicscho­ol buildings, he won’t allow our children in charters to share space with their district peers.

 ??  ?? Listen to them: Success Academy parents and students, and other charter families, stand up for their schools at a 2014 rally in Albany.
Listen to them: Success Academy parents and students, and other charter families, stand up for their schools at a 2014 rally in Albany.

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