This is AMAZING news!  Both Eva and the financial backers/founders are AWESOME people and I have no doubt that this school will be a huge success -- and lead to many other successful schools.

 

Gotta love Randi Weingarten's usual ridiculous comment:

"Her school will be under the same kind of microscope as the U.F.T. school," said Ms. Weingarten, who had sparred with Ms. Moskowitz over the city's contract with teachers. "Will she do what she does now, which is blame others, vilify everybody else? Or will she take responsibility for what goes wrong?"

Is she implying that Eva, as chair of the City Council's Education Committee, should have been taking responsibility for the disastrous condition of far too many NYC public schools?  What nonsense!  Instead, Eva deserves a standing ovation for raising a HUGE stink about this situation, which has been a contibutor (along with good work by Bloomberg and Klein) to significant changes and, most importantly, real results (relative to other big cities, NYC was at or near the top based on the recently released NAEP scores).

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December 11, 2005

Moskowitz, Critic of Education Department and Union, Will Head a Charter School

By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/nyregion/11eva.html

As chairwoman of the City Council's Education Committee, Eva S. Moskowitz held exhaustive hearings and lobbed frequent criticisms, becoming the scourge of both the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers.

Now, Ms. Moskowitz is moving from her comfortable perch in the Council to a new post on the front lines of education. Next month she will become executive director of the Harlem Success Charter School, one of six charter schools that the State Board of Regents approved on Friday. Ms. Moskowitz said the Harlem school could serve as a model for as many as 40 others she hopes to open over the next five to seven years.

Ms. Moskowitz, 41, is returning to her roots: she taught for several years and earned a doctorate in history before being elected to the Council for the first time in 1999. Still, Ms. Moskowitz, who was defeated in September in the Democratic primary for Manhattan borough president, does not plan to leave politics behind. She said she intended to re-enter politics at some point and harbored hopes of being mayor.

"I plan to run again," she said in an interview. "But I also feel an incredible sense of urgency that our children are not getting what they need and are entitled to. They can't wait another 10 years for the grown-ups to get it right."

Opening a school is a risky thing for an aspiring politician; in doing so, Ms. Moskowitz is laying her mayoral ambitions at the tiny feet of 5-year-olds. Even the best-run schools are full of potential surprises - the troublemaking student, the errant teacher, the irate parent - and Ms. Moskowitz, a mother of three who has visited hundreds of schools throughout the five boroughs, knows as well as anyone how hard it is to get it right....