Once again, Mayor Bill de Blasio is messing with Success Academy families, this time by rejecting the network’s attempt to open a new high school in Brooklyn – in a place already used by Success.
The request is very basic and has been granted by: Let the network use classrooms from Ditmas Park Middle School, a pre-approved co-location of more than 1,000 students, to open a new high school to serve 15 Brooklyn schools Schools: SA Liberal Arts High School – Brooklyn.
That’s it. No harm, no harm. The plan does not require additional seating and will not affect the traditional public school located in the building.
However, City Hall has postponed approval of the site proposal, which must be approved by the Education Policy Committee at its meeting on October 29 so that the change can be made in time.
De Blasio’s Department of Education wants Success to use a different, independent site for the new high school and says the deadline for approval won’t come until March.
Energy Department spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon called Friday’s date “arbitrary.” Well, sort of: the entire approval process is ridiculously complex — filled with arbitrary deadlines intended to make opening a new charter space more difficult. And the enemies of the charter who wrote those rules will not hesitate to apply them.
Successful officials say the proposed DOE site is clearly substandard; The slowdown is about what the Department of Education says it doesn’t want to do — keeping the 360 eighth-graders and their families on the alert about whether they can attend the high school of their choice next year.
Everything else smells of Blasio’s passive-aggressive middle finger for kids who just want an excellent education.
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