Too Bad Chumps: Red Hook, Gowanus Parents Won't Be Able to Attend DOE's Ed Panel Vote On Success Academy Charter School

After Brooklyn parents loudly protested (here and here)  about the "co-location" of a charter school owned by ex-Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz into a Cobble Hill building already housing three public schools, DOE changed the location of the December 14 PEP vote to Newtown Creek High School in Queens.

Newtown Creek High School was chosen because you can't get there from here. (DOE says the Manhattan site where the meeting was originally scheduled suddenly became unavailable.)

With the closing of the G station at Smith and 9th (until sometime in 2012) Success Academy Charter School's target audience in Red Hook and Gowanus won't be able to attend the meeting at all unless they take the bus routes shown above, which take over an hour from Cobble Hill (if they're running on time) and won't be able to carry the hundreds of interested parents and advocates.

Add 35 minutes and another bus if traveling from Red Hook.

Subway time from other sections of District 15 add up to more than an hour.

Moskowitz has been spending literally millions of dollars pushing her Success Academy Cobble Hill charter schools plans. Buses for her Manhattan supporters will magically appear -- maybe even city buses. (Mayor Bloomberg's "private bus company.")

According to the NY Daily News, the Success Charter Network spent $1.6 million in the 2009-2010 school year just for publicity and recruitment of new students, the group's financial reports show. The money comes from private hedge fund executives and conservative foundations.

BP Markowitz Weighs In

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sent a letter to Schools Chancellor Walcott yesterday saying that he has received hundreds of emails requesting that the December 14 PEP meeting be switched to Brooklyn Tech.

His letter reads in part: "I believe that if the lower Manhattan space suddenly became unavailable, it should have been moved to Brooklyn in the first place. Considering that so many of the proposals on the agenda for this meeting directly affect school communities and proposed co-locations in Brooklyn – I would like to strongly urge you to change the location to Brooklyn Technical High School."

"The placement of Success Academy has many in the community concerned about why their needs are not being heard. Perhaps a meeting at Brooklyn Tech could be an opportunity to ask the community for their suggestions going forward."

DOE's kowtowing to wealthy hedge fund managers is becoming more and more obvious in this fiasco.

184 Baltic Street (near Court), where Moskowitz wants to put her Success Academy Cobble Hill, currently houses three schools: Brooklyn School for Global Studies, School for International Studies and P.S. 368 for special ed children.

Map courtesy of Google Maps

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