Charter schools event a $9M success
Wall Street leaders and political power players gathered at Cipriani 42nd Street to raise over $9 million for New York’s Success Academy Charter Schools.
Hedge funders Dan Loeb, John Scully and Joel Greenblatt mingled Monday night with CongressmenKevin McCarthy, Gregory Meeks and Hakeem Jeffries, former city schools chancellor and current Amplify CEO Joel Klein and Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson.
The event, hosted by Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz and honoring Edythe and Eli Broad who gave the first investment to SA, celebrated the academic success of scholars at the city’s largest network of charter schools.But much of the talk was also about boldly standing up to opposition the charter school movement has faced from teachers unions, Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña.
SA Network board chair Loeb told the crowd of nearly 800, “The politicians and union leaders seem to rationalize that in their fight to maintain centralized power and monopoly control, there is collateral damage to actual children.”
Talking about Harlem Central Middle School, recently ranked second in math in New York State: “It was this school, and several others that the mayor and the chancellor tried to shut down last year. The schools chancellor — whose primary mission is educating children — has dismissed results like these as a statistical aberration, using excuses that are at best uneducated falsehoods.”
Loeb added to laughs, “We hope Chancellor Fariña will hop on the train to make her first [Success Academy] visit soon — hell, I will even call her an Uber.”
Addressing a recent New York Times story that discussed SA’s so-called “polarizing tactics,” co-chair Campbell Brown told staff and supporters, “What is so amazing about the Success community is that you never stop trying and you have found a better way . . . And that is why you are a threat to a lot of people, to politicians and teachers-union bosses who have shamefully protected a broken system for decades now . . . You are a threat because you are demonstrating an alternative model, you are in their face every day showing everyone what public education can look like.”
The $9.3 million raised will fund six new schools serving 3,000 children.Charter schools event a $9M success | Page Six:
