A Teacher Tells Why She is Going to Today's Anti Charter School Rally in Co-op City

A teacher responds to Angel Gonzalez' call to rally today at PS 160 in Co-op City.

Angel:

I will definitely be there because this is happening right in the middle of our Bronx backyard. In fact, this is happening right in the midst of the NYCDOE district in which I work, District 11.

A friend, who is a teacher at an elementary school within the district, told me about this charter school a couple of months ago. She told about how she was given flyers and applications to send home with her students so that they and their families could apply to this school. [Ed Note - how Klein supports the undermining of the schools he is in charge of, a little known aspect of the charter school ad blitz.]

She also told me about how none of her students applied to this school and about how the students themselves were offended and not impressed by the fact that applicants were expected to send their applications to someone's apartment address instead of a P.O. Box or an actual school address.

Please note that I mention the situation with my friend's students not having any desire to apply to this charter school because I want to show how wrongheaded and unprofessional this particular charter school operation is. I also wanted to highlight the fact that District 11 is and has always been a pretty successful district academically.

In fact, District 11 has traditionally been the number 1 district in the Bronx in terms of standardized test scores. Thus, families in this district don't feel the need for a charter school, especially not in Co-op City since it already has gifted and talented programs that are far more rigorous and prestigious than anything that could be offered by some new, unproven, no name charter school.

Also, this district has some pretty prestigious and successful parochial schools, which the parents absolutely love, within its borders: Saint Francis of Assisi, Mount Saint Michael's ( the alma mater of Sean John (P Diddy) Combs, and Cardinal Spellman ( The alma mater of Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor) just to name a few and all of which beg the question:

Why is the DOE trying to push this school on CO-OP city ? My theory is that despite the lovely private homes and the successes of District 11, there are several housing projects within this district as well as several "rough hood" sections of this district (some a mere 3-5 minutes away from the suburban Westchester county border) that the operators of this particular charter school don't want to have to handle within their school community.

So,when all of that is taken into consideration, there isn't any place that they would rather be than Co-op city because Co-op city will allow this charter school to practice the ultimate skimming off the top in order to create their school's population.

Bronx parents in Coop city fight charter. Rally today.

http://www.bxnews.net/http%3A__www.bxnews.net/Co-op_City.html