The Candidate speaks out! What is your stand?

What's a Co-location?

Mayoral Candidate and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio speaks out about Co-locations. Co-locations is an approach the DOE is taking to address a number of issues in our public education system. With the fact that smaller schools are more successful, and current schools cannot be physically expanded for the most part, multiple schools are placed with their own administration/leadership in an existing building. This is seen to take place especially when current school is failing, and the principal could not improve its performance. SO WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE??? Well, for one, as taxpayers you now have additional layers of administration (more principals and assistant principals, etc.) and along with that, added cost$. Is that good or bad?? To look at this deeper, you need to look at the results of these Co-locations that have take place over years. The results have been mixed and if you are from the teachers union (UFT) which opposes Co-locations, they will see them as not successful. If you are a fan of Mayor Bloomberg's camp, you will say they are successful. Here, the issue of timing is addressed. You decide!

THE PUBLIC ADVOCATE FOR THE CITY OF NEW YORK Bill de Blasio – PUBLIC ADVOCATE

October 15, 2013

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg City Hall New York, NY 10007

Chancellor Dennis Walcott

Tweed Courthouse 52 Chambers Street New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Walcott,

I am unsettled by your Administration’s eleventh-hour efforts to push through significant changes to our City’s schools that will result in negative consequences for some of our most vulnerable students.

As has been evident time and again, the Department of Education’s co-location processes fall short of meeting the needs of parents and children. The Department has repeatedly pushed through policies that carry significant impacts on communities across the city without sound educational plans for their long-term success. Many of the proposals being discussed at tonight’s Panel for Educational Policy meeting regrettably continue that pattern, particularly in their failure to take into account overcrowding or loss of District 75 seats for our city’s most vulnerable children.

While I write today to reiterate my call for a moratorium on co-locations and closures, I would like to draw attention to two proposals that exemplify the concerns of parents from around the five boroughs. By the Department’s own calculations, the proposal to co-locate American Dream Charter School with P.S. 30 Wilton will cause the X030 building to reach 135 percent capacity when both schools are fully phased in during SY16/17. This will mean significant overcrowding for students. In a second proposal, the expansion of Success Academy Charter School (Harlem 4) with P.S. 149 Sojourner Truth and P.S. M811 Mickey Mantle School, a District 75 school will be forced to lower its enrollment.

Tonight the Panel for Educational Policy will review over 20 proposals, many of them which exemplify this type of poor educational planning. For that reason, I call on PEP members to vote against the proposals before them until we can put in place a more thorough and inclusive process.

Sincerely,

Bill de Blasio

Public