Mayor de Blasio’s lawyers claim the Bloomberg administration’s controversial charter school co-locations were thoroughly planned and proper — an amazing turnaround from de Blasio’s campaign rhetoric last year.
The city’s Law Department issued the extraordinary defense in court papers responding to a lawsuit filed by Public Advocate Letitia James and other plaintiffs to block 36 co-locations initially approved by Bloomberg and later seconded by de Blasio.
The space-sharing arrangements approved by the Bloomberg-run Panel on Educational Policy last year “were neither arbitrary nor capricious,” Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter’s office said in a 37-page brief filed with petitioners in the case.
The city lawyers said the environmental impact statements used to justify the 49 co-locations “were issued in a timely fashion” and in “full compliance with education law.”
But when he was running for mayor last September, de Blasio took a much different view.
“Bloomberg’s proposals are a cynical effort to lock communities into permanent changes while ignoring community voices…” de Blasio said at the time.
Seven months later, city lawyers are defending Bloomberg’s actions.
“Because the subject co-locations were proposed and approved in accordance with the law in all respects — and there are no facts in the petition to the contrary — the petition should be dismissed,” city lawyers Chlarens Orsland and Charles Carey argued.
Further, the city said the plaintiffs should raise their objections with the state education commissioner before turning to the courts.
And in a case of friendly fire, de Blasio’s law department suggested James, his progressive ally and successor as city public advocate, was grandstanding. They said she had no legal standing to bring the suit.
“As this court is likely aware, the Public Advocate [James] had campaigned for her current office as a strident foe of charter schools, and merely seeks to continue her political advocacy here,” the city filing said.
James defended her position. “Public Advocate James’ principled position remains consistent: forced co-locations must not move forward without parents’ input or when they result in overcrowding, students being warehoused in trailers, loss of space for special education and physical education, and elementary students being mixed with high school students,” her office said in a statement.
James and other plaintiffs initiated the lawsuit last December, but held it in abeyance until de Blasio had a chance to review them, anticipating that the new mayor would roll back many of the co-locations.
As it turned out, that didn’t happen. They refiled the suit.
Though he accused the Bloomberg administration of hastily ramming through the co-locations, de Blasio ended up approving 36 of them following a fresh review by his newly appointed Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina.
Nine co-location were withdrawn, including three of Eva Moslowitz’s Success Academy Charter schools. Four others were put on hold.
Following a backlash, Gov. Cuomo and the state Legislature approved a law that ordered the city to find space for the three charters whose co-locations were cancelled. The law also requires the city to offer new and expanded charter schools rent-free space in city buildings, or to pay for their rent in private facilities.