School turf war in between public schools and charter schools gets ugly
The latest salvo in Harlem‘s space wars between charter schools and public schools is a stencilled poster comparing a charter school to the Nazis.
A misspelled sign on the wall of Public School/Middle School 149 in Harlem reads, “Charter schools are like Hitler, tyrents trying to take what’s not thiers!”
Photos of that poster and others critical of Harlem Success Academy, provided to the Daily News by charter school officials, were hung up in advance of a hearing on the schools’ space-sharing arrangement this week.
“It’s shameful that 631 children who have done nothing wrong…have to be subjugated to bigoted language from those so committed to the status quo, that they will lie, intimidate and slander to try to get their way,” said the charter school founder Eva Moskowitz.
Moskowitz noted her school is one of the city’s best elementary schools, scoring in the top 10 on state English exams last year after the state raised the standards for passing the test.
PS/MS 149 PTA president Sonia Hampton said the stencilling was the work of a student and was removed from the walls when a Harlem Success official notified the principal.
“I don’t want the children to see this,” she said. “When Harlem Success brought it to our attention, we took it down.”
Hampton acknowledged, however, that there are hard feelings in the building about the charter school’s expansion into space previously dedicated to the public school.
“[Moskowitz] is pitting parents against each another,” she said.
Moskowitz has been a lightning rod for criticism of the charter school movement, particularly in Harlem. She has a network of seven schools, all located in public school buildings across Harlem and in the Bronx.
Most recently, the city Education Department was panned for its attempts to find a place for Moskowitz’s newest school, Upper West Success Academy.
The agency named at least three possible locations before settling on a formal proposal to locate the school in the Brandeis High School building. The proposal has not yet been formally approved by the Panel for Educational Policy.
Moskowitz’s first charter school in Brooklyn is also slated to open next year in Bedford-Stuyvesant.