New Race to the Top charter school application rules ensnare Queens Phoenix Academy Charter School
Monday, September 20th 2010, 4:00 AM
Queens will have one less charter school next fall - and the culprit could be the same law designed to increase the number of the controversial institutions statewide.
Organizers of the Phoenix Academy Charter School submitted a 450-page proposal in July to the city to create a K-12 school in western Queens, school officials said. The facility was for foreign-born students struggling to learn English.
But last month, new state regulations kicked in. Suddenly, the city could no longer approve charter schools. And the state, which took over the city's applications, had a different set of guidelines.
Ellenmorris Tiegerman, who was to have been the school's executive director, discovered this the hard way when her application was rejected on Sept. 1.
"If the rules changed, then these applications should have been grandfathered [in]," she
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2010/09/20/2010-09-20_hard_lesson_for_school_new_requirements_may_have_kept_charter_from_approval.html?r=ny_local/education#ixzz104YF9s10