School Closures May Open Way For New Charters

What a great idea -- close chronically failing schools and turn the space over to proven highly successful charter school operators.  There's sure to be a lot of opposition, however -- awful schools provide a lot of jobs and patronage, which often (and sadly) seems to count a lot more than children who are being miseducated.  Here's hoping this time will be different!

Since 2002, only one charter school has found a home in a  building of a closed city school, Ms. Meyer said. Mayor Bloomberg's new  accountability plan, which will grade all schools beginning in September,  forcing consequences on the schools that get the lowest letter grades, could  substantially expand that number.
 
About 5% of schools will receive the lowest grade, an F,  making them susceptible to consequences ranging from leadership change to  closure. Final decisions will also take into account a report by an outside  reviewer and input from parents and school officials, the chief executive of  the department's Office of New Schools, Garth Harries, said.
 
Some closures are certain. "We are very clear that we will  close a significant number of schools," he said.
 
Closed schools could remain traditional city-run schools or  become charter schools. "Replication of a high-performing charter school would  absolutely be on the list — high on the list — of things we would want to use  as a replacement," Mr. Harries said.

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School Closures May Open Way For New Charters
BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 2, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/59672

The Department of Education is pledging to help solve a charter school space crunch, pointing to an aggressive campaign to close a slew of city-run schools in the next two years.