What do you know? Mayor de Blasio passed on the coal for Christmas and gave Eva Moskowitz classroom space for her Success Academy charter schools.
Good for him. Good for these kids.
So what about the next time? Remember, this is the second crisis over space for Moskowitz’s charters in de Blasio’s first year in office alone. A cynic might get the idea the mayor has intentionally sought to make life difficult for charters, even if it means punishing kids who need them.
Certainly it’s not for any lack of space. According to Department of Education figures, 400 public-school buildings across the city are “underutilized” — meaning they house at least 150 empty seats. Of those, 212 have at least 300 available seats, and another 75 have at least 500.
True, allocating the right amount of space for each public school, including charters, is no easy logistical feat — particularly given that school staffs and students’ families will always try to horde what they can.
But that’s an argument for loophole-free laws requiring free space to be given to schools that need them, and for a mechanism, perhaps a technological device like the Uber app, that can make the most of existing seats. Why not ask Google or Apple or Uber to see what they can devise?
It boils down to this: Charter-school students are public-school students. The only way there would be a space crisis is if the total public-school population were to suddenly grow beyond the number of seats. And that’s not happening.
We’d like to change the goal from just finding seats for kids to one that seeks to put them in seats where they will learn.