In 2014, Mayor de Blasio — then fresh off his victory in the mayoral election of 2013 — revoked the co-locations of several Success Academy charter schools, leaving 194 children educationally homeless. The reaction was swift: New Yorkers decried the mayor’s politically motivated attack, and state leaders passed a sweeping law to protect public charter-school students’ access to public-school space.
Since then, instead of embracing every school’s legal right to quality public space, de Blasio has waged a silent war against the city’s public charter schools. The battle over space is fought away from the public eye, and de Blasio’s goal is to try to prevent another 100,000 students from seeing the inside of a charter-school classroom by 2020.
Under this strategy, the Department of Education ignores state law by refusing to respond to space requests on time, ultimately telling most charter schools that no space for their classrooms can be found.
But as The Post reported Monday, new data quietly published by the Department of Education last week tells a different story. The very same data that the de Blasio administration uses to justify its claim that schools are too overcrowded proves there is more than enough space to meet the demand from charter-school families.
Put another way, the city’s own numbers expose City Hall’s public-space lie.
In fact, the data tell us something important: There’s ample space available for charter schools precisely in the districts where charter schools are seeking to serve more children.
Each year, the Department of Education is required to publish a Blue Book that serves as the city’s official record of how many seats are available in local district school buildings. This year’s Blue Book reveals that the districts where charters are pursuing co-location — in which they would share space with district public schools — are vastly underutilized, with enough open space to accommodate 94 charter schools.
These district school buildings grew even more vacant than they were during the 2014-2015 school year. The share of seats filled in the school buildings of these 10 districts, which stretch from the South Bronx to Brownsville, has dropped to an alarmingly low 78 percent, with the total number of open seats climbing from 47,051 to 49,049.
The same held true citywide — schools are growing less crowded, not more. Twenty-two of New York’s 32 public-school districts have more available seats than last year, and there are now 144,036 open seats across all of the city’s public-school buildings.
The data thoroughly debunk public claims made in July by Elizabeth Rose, the deputy chancellor at the Department of Education, to defend the city’s partisan space-allocation practices. In a letter to charter-school operators, Rose suggested that the 2014-2015 Blue Book figure of 50,000 open seats was inaccurate. But as the 2015-16 data show, it’s Rose’s statement that was wrong.
There’s no longer any valid reason for the city to continue denying charter schools’ co-location applications.
Yet every time charter leaders request access to unoccupied space in district school buildings, they get dragged through a painful administrative process full of unnecessary delays — after which, they’re rejected and sent scrambling to find private space with no help from the city beyond a taxpayer-funded rental-assistance check.
This results in delayed school openings, anxious parents — and ultimately fewer students in public charters. Success Academy’s recent efforts to find a permanent home for two Brooklyn schools are but one example of this space discrimination, which has hurt large networks and independent charters alike.
New York City’s families deserve better. Parents and students should have access to great public schools whether they live in high- or low-income zip codes, and schools that want to make this vision a reality should receive support and resources from the city whether they’re traditional district schools or public charter schools.
The facts on school space have revealed the flaws in the administration’s arguments, laid bare its political motives and underscored the justice of the charter community’s call for fair access. Now, it’s up to de Blasio and his Department of Education to work with charter leaders toward a responsible space solution that benefits all public school families.
Jeremiah Kittredge is CEO of Families for Excellent Schools.