Charters an appealing option

Charters set their own path

by Sean Okula

Associate Editor

As city students get ready to go back to school, some may notice that their peers have staggered start times compared to their traditional-school counterparts. Some may spend more time in the music room, or on the athletics field, or in the science lab, all part of their curriculum.

While New York City district school students return to the classroom on Sept. 8, city charter school students will get back into their routines at various points over the course of the next few weeks.

Charters operate independently from the city Department of Education. Sixty percent of the academic anomalies, all of which are public schools open to enrollment for any city student through an application process, will open their doors for the year in the month of August, with 80 percent opening before the regular schools’ Sept. 8 starting date.

Despite their deviation from public school standards, the city Charter School Center has a phrase plastered throughout its website, and even in CEO James Merriman’s email sign-off: It’s about great public schools. To Merriman, this is a testament to the charter system’s status as a public school system with high, incentivized standards; if a charter performs poorly, applications will decline and it faces risk of closure.

On the by and large, though, charters perform. In the 2018-19 school year, the final full year before the pandemic, 63 percent of city charter students, grades three through eight, passed their state math exam, compared to 46 percent of traditional public school students, and 57 percent of charter students passed their English language arts state exam, compared to 47 percent in district schools, according to NY1.

But more than that, and aside from the fact that charter schools are founded on charters received from the state or city Department of Education or the State University of New York and operate independently from the standards of the regular city schooling system, the underlying purpose is to provide better public school education. Whether that’s from charters or from the inplace district school system is of less import to Merriman than one may think.

“If the district were providing the great education for every student, or even for, let’s say, many more students than [city Schools] Chancellor [David] Banks himself would say they are doing now ... we wouldn’t care,” he said. “I mean, I think choice for families is important, and even if the districts were doing well, there might be room for some school that parents choose into.

“But the phrase was meant to capture the notion, it’s not just about having a different set of schools,” he added. “It’s about having a great set of public schools that are getting kids educated.”

In that respect, the aims of charters and traditional schools are aligned. Merriman says he has spoken to superintendents of district schools not intent on pushing back against charters, but instead asking why it is that parents are so attracted to the schools and how some of their methods could be implemented in the city’s regular school system.

The primary resistance to the creation of more charter schools, according to Merriman, comes from the city’s teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers. With more than 140,000 students enrolled in charters, that means more than 140,000 fewer students are enrolled in the regular school system, which means fewer teachers are required. If more students were to transfer over to newly sprouted charters, fewer traditional school teachers would be required to carry the load.

“We’ve talked with enough politicians to know we’d have much more support if the UFT didn’t tend to call them as soon as they showed any kind of support [for charters],” Merriman said.

“We get it. It’s a direct threat to the number of members,” he added. According to UFT President Michael Mulgrew, the union’s opposition to charters stems from the propensity to enroll fewer students of need, like English-language learners and students with disabilities, than their district school counterparts. While Merriman shared an anecdote of a former UFT lobbyist citing the passage of 1998 legislation authorizing the state to grant charters as her greatest failure on the job, components of the legislation are keeping in check a potential charter school boom. A stipulation of the law is that no more than 460 charters can open in New York state, with a smaller sub-cap in place for city charters. As things stand, there are currently no charters left to be issued in the city.

Charters that close or are otherwise surrendered or terminated do not go back into the count of charters to be allotted. In 2015, amendments to the 1998 legislation made it such that some of these so-called “zombie” charters could be re-issued.

In March, the city Charter School Center held a rally outside City Hall calling for the revival of more zombie charters. Mayor Adams has previously expressed support for such repurposed uses.

“We have a large number of charters that are not being used,” he said. “Let’s get those ‘zombie’ charters back online, so we can get the best system in support of that. I am in support of scaling up excellence.”

Also in favor of reissuing previously revoked charters, and lifting the cap on the schools entirely, is the Success Academy network.

Success operates four elementary schools and three middle schools in Queens. Locations include a middle school in Ozone Park, elementary schools in Rosedale and South Jamaica and an elementary and middle school in Springfield Gardens.

The institution places an emphasis on the importance of thinking skills. It doesn’t want students to merely regurgitate facts as told to them by their teachers, Success Academy chief public affairs officer Ann Powell said; it wants students to take what they’ve learned and be able to apply it to other problems and, eventually, into their lives.

It’s a method of teaching that’s much more process-based than results-based. Success wants students to have the tools they need to succeed in a range of fields, not to just give them the right answers and hope they spit them out at the right time.

“There’s very little teacher talk and more class participation,” Powell said.

In some instances, students will take a deep dive into a highly specific topic, breaking down its process into segments and learning its ins and outs. One example cited by Powell was a bread unit: students will spend time baking bread, learn the science behind baking, read stories about baking and even visit a bakery for themselves.

She emphasized, however, that all charters are different. While Success Academy may focus on student achievement, another charter may specialize in music or athletics. Powell says this is a feature of the charter school system, not a bug: that parents are afforded the option of picking which school works best for their child.

“One school is not necessarily going to work even for the same family,” Powell said. “Kids are different, and so having more choices is really a great thing for parents.

“Schools that are working the best will receive the most applications, and if not, they close.” While Merriman sees choice as one of the system’s virtues, a more central appeal, he thinks, is the assurance of safety. “In my middle class community, in D-26, [safety is] kind of a given,” he said. “School is going to be safe, there are going to be calm environments, orderly learning. That is not true across New York and across all community school districts.” “When a school promises a safe, orderly, calm learning environment, and delivers on Nontraditional options that, for the parents who don’t, can’t expect [safety] as a given, because in fact, it often isn’t given to them? That, for them, is what they’re looking for,” he added. “They want the kids to learn and they expect the kids to learn, but they also know they’re safe, and that they’re cared for, and that bullying isn’t allowed in the school, and that their kid will be taken care of.” When schools are established, according to Merriman, they are started in areas where they may stick out above the rest. If a charter were to open in an area that is already saturated with high-quality, safe learning environments, it may get lost in the shuffle and the application numbers may be diluted, leading to its failure. “Charters are going where there is a need for the alternative,” Merriman said. “Those are mostly and sadly, but predictably, low income communities, and in New York, lowincome too often is Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.” According to the city Charter School Center, 27 of New York’s 275 charters operate in Queens. The borough’s newest, Our World Neighborhood Charter School 3 in Corona, is slated to open its doors for the first day of school on Sept. 6. Q

The Success Academy middle school in Springfield Gardens, co-located with JHS 59, is one of the institution’s seven charter schools in Queens and one of 27 charters in the borough. PHOTO BY SEAN OKULA

James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center. NYC CHARTER CENTER PHOTO