Nothing Schools Chancellor Joel Klein can say will calm the furor and sense of betrayal parents and teachers at Public School 15 in Brooklyn have felt for the past few weeks.
"There is a deliberate attempt [by Klein] to undermine and dismantle a successful public school, and we're going to fight it," Lydia Bellahcene, a leader of the Parents Association and mother of three students at the Red Hook school, vowed Tuesday.
The target here is not a failed school. Even the bureaucrats at Tweed have given PS 15 an A rating for three straight years.
Yet, parents at the school find themselves locked in a neighborhood civil war instigated by the Department of Education. Their nemesis is PAVE Academy, a charter school that shares their building but keeps demanding more space.
It is one of the main reasons Democratic lawmakers in AlbanyTuesday rebuffed intense pressure from Klein, Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Paterson - even from the Obama White House- to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.
The lawmakers did so even though they risked the state's losing hundreds of million of dollars in "Race to the Top" federal school aid.
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