New York Public School Battles City Over Charter
This is a pretty revealing story about New York public elementary school P.S. 9. Parents at the school were concerned that their kids weren’t going to get as good of an education after fifth grade because the local middle schools were not as high quality as P.S. 9. There solution was to use some of the space freed up by the closure of a middle school which shared the building to expand P.S. 9 up to grade eight.
The only problem? The New York City School District had other plans:
But on Dec. 20, city officials unveiled a holiday surprise. The department said it planned to move a middle-grade charter school — Brooklyn East Collegiate, a member of the Uncommon Schools charter chain — into the space opening up at P.S. 9.
In the four months since, P.S. 9 parents have fought City Hall, scoring a few upset victories. But they have also learned a hard lesson: once the mayor’s people set their sights on a location, the
