Don't you just love to laugh at those circus acts where dozens - sometimes hundreds - of clumsy clowns exit a really tiny car? The way they fumble out the doors, onto the ground and on top of each other, you know they were hiding in some hatch underneath that small automobile. Still, the thought that they're trying to create a "magic" scene of stuffing the red-nosed entertainers into a Volkswagen Beetle is, I think, a hilarious comparison to how the general public tries to smush lots of things into considerably small physical spaces.
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| Let's see how many we can get in here!!! |
One group claims that the city has denied 79 percent of applying charter school requests to occupy space in public buildings.
Considering how many meetings I've covered for the Canarsie Courier that focused on charter schools requesting space in an already-established public school - where studies show there is "underenrollment" - I was angered at the Daily News article for being so broad in its disheartening report.
Over the years, public engagement sessions have been hosted all over the city so that parents and teachers could provide feedback on charter schools seeking to co-locate at a certain school. Charter schools seem to be the bane of the general public's existence. Parents by and large have claimed students from a new school will take away resources available to pupils who already attend the public school. Some parents have also voiced their concerns over academic competition among charter and public school students.
Let's get real! Charter school reps shouldn't blame the city in general for denying them space in a school - they should blame the yammering parents, teachers and civic leaders who fight to keep charters out of buildings they consider a second home to the community's children. It's true - if you fight hard enough against an issue and you make enough noise, you just might frighten away those who are looking to share your home!
There are more schools in the city now where multiple "academies" exist in one building. Doesn't matter how small the school building is physically - it only matters that the ratio of students to classroom space is under a certain percentage. The Department of Education (DOE) typically calls these schools "underutilized" and, of course, school officials who don't want to share their space will challenge the DOE about those figures and the space their school actually has available.
In some instances, charter schools may be turned down because public engagement has so strongly protested egregious co-locations, such as placing an elementary school inside of a high school. Concerns over the safety of younger students sharing space with teenagers is reason enough to take that co-locating idea back to the drawing board.
Personally, I refer to buildings like South Shore High School in Canarsie the Clown Campus, where more than a handful of small academies - some with long and highfalutin names to make them sound pretentious and overly successful - are jam packed into one space. Say all you want about how much space is "physically available"...Show the us the crazy "formulas" created by some intelligent agency whose engineers may or may not even have children enrolled in that public school! Every year or so the DOE manages to shove another school inside of a school building with multiple academies! Is this the DOE's way of treating our children like clowns in a circus? Just get as many of them in there as you can!!!
Even though there haven't been many complaints about charter schools that share space with public schools, as a community we have a right to protest their requests and turn them down just like any other plans brought to the table that will effect childrens' learning experience.
Hey - I'm sure if you asked all those clowns coming out of that tiny car if they wanted a separate ride to the circus instead of piggybacking off someone else's already-cramped trip, they'd gladly go where they're not packed into a place they're probably not welcomed.
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