Nearly three years after the Success Academy first requested public school space for a new middle school in Southeast Queens, the Department of Education finally gave an official answer: Go rent some inadequate private space.
The DOE is “offering” Success an old Catholic school building — though a half-dozen city-owned buildings have more room and more convenient locations.
Success needs a site that can handle 700 kids by 2022. This one can only seat at most 500.
Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark claims the DOE can’t do better thanks to “overcrowding in Queens.” Never mind that two of the six buildings have had at least 700 available seats for years, and the DOE doesn’t even have actual plans to use it for other schools.
This is no sincere effort to do right by the kids — it’s a test to see how little the DOE can get away with. Heck, it hasn’t yet even given the charter’s staff a tour of the site. And it knows Success will need to find the cash to front the lease and to renovate the site — only to have to move in two years.
Under state law, the city must provide free space for charters in existing schools or pay to lease a private space. But here the DOE is using the “fallback” as a way to escape offering better space. It’s a new low in the mayor’s war on charter-school children.