Justice for Success

Success Academy students, parents and staff will fill the steps of City Hall on Monday with a rally to demand justice from Team de Blasio — specifically, longpromised space for a new middle school in Southeast Queens.

The formal request for space went in nearly three years ago, yet the Department of Education still won’t identify a specific building. And the DOE process for finalizing such sitings is so prolonged that it has to come soon or the school can’t open next fall.

Chancellor Richard Carranza said last month, “You’re going to have your middle school,” but his minions aren’t delivering. This, when at least seven school buildings in the right areas have from 450 to 1,000 available seats — more than enough room.

Families need to know what’s going to happen next fall. Their kids are thriving at Success, but if the DOE doesn’t name a site soon, it will be too late for 227 Success fourth-graders. For fifth grade, they’ll have to look at regular public middle schools in Southeast Queens — most of them already badly overcrowded.

This isn’t the only game the de Blasio DOE is playing with Success. After losing a lawsuit last year over its effort to block Success from offering pre-K, it this year delayed releasing applications for pre-K funding so long that the network has had to cancel pre-K enrollment for next fall.

The closest thing to a defense the DOE can offer in all this is to plead incompetence — but the pattern suggests a concerted effort to deny hope to innocent children, out of sheer political spite.