Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Washington Irving Campus Continues Anti-Moskowitz Protests

In case you missed our post:

Washington Irving Campus Acts Up Against Eva Moskowitz Invasion

here is a follow-up:


Press Release Subject: Opposition to Eva Moskowitz’ Elementary School Co-Location at Washington Irving High School Campus, 40 Irving Place, Manhattan, Union Square.

Parent & Teacher Rally &
Press Conference

Thursday, Oct. 25th, 2012
5pm, Main Entrance Stairs
(before the start of Parent Teacher Conferences)


I am the Chapter Leader of "International High School at Union Square" one of currently six proud public high schools inside the Washington Irving Campus. My Name is Thomas Hasler. (hattom@mac.com)

I am a founding member of the movement to stop Eva Moskowitz from being given three floors of our school for another of one of her K-8 elementary schools.
We had 72 people from all 6 schools at our Thursday morning rally last week. You can see the fired up and determined crowd in the Rally movie. A link (https://vimeo.com/51866144) and photos including content is featured on ednotesonline.com under the title “Washington Irving Acts Up Against Moskowitz Invasion”

This is such an injustice. Above all this is the handover of prime real estate to a private operator of schools. On her Harlem Success website http://www.successacademies.org/page.cfm?p=710 she already writes as if she owns 40 Irving Place. There is a small disclaimer on the page that says that the government still needs to approve it, but if you read it, it becomes clear that she considers our school building hers already. Such arrogance and disrespect to our democratic processes! The public hearing is not until November 1st and the PEP will not vote on it until Nov. 8th. At least they could wait until their proposal has been rubberstamped.

You are very much invited to report about this disgusting handover of our public school to this woman. Our goal is to keep this woman out of our historic campus.
(All the while they starve our schools to death so they can claim that we are failing and offer her even more space once she is inside. We have not had a librarian on staff for 3 years)

Our announced agenda is: Fighting for a quality education for ALL of our students
We oppose the setting up of separate and unequal schools within schools.
We worry that our students will be made into 2nd class members of our campus. We worry that Harlem Success will squeeze out our schools in the coming years as the DOE letter to parents already states that only “CURRENT” students will not be impacted by the co-location.
We know that our schools will have no room to grow.
We are outraged that Success Academy is allocated 27 full size classrooms when none of our schools has more than 16 or 18.
We have one big message for Bloomberg and Moskowitz: This is OUR school, you NEVER asked us about this which is why WE DON’T APPROVE!

We find it outrageous that the vast majority of parents and students are completely held in the dark about this proposal.
Non English speaking parents have no way to get information about the public hearing as the DOE only hands out English versions that need lawyers to be understood.

We are appalled by the undemocratic manner of how the DOE tries to push this proposal through. Our voices should count more than the private connection between Bloomberg and Moskowitz!

We don’t approve that they try to take out the PUBLIC from public education.
We don’t approve that they make parents play lottery for school seats.
We don’t approve that our schools are being denied a chance to ever grow.
We don’t “counsel out” problem student who might bring down our test scores.
We work with ALL the students and we are proud of it!


The community of teachers, parents, and students is enraged that the DOE intends to put an elementary charter school, led by Eva Moskowitz, into the Washington Irving High School campus. 
We know that it is a bad fit for a school that is predominantly filled with high school students and fear that the loss of 3 floors, 27 full sized classrooms, and numerous support rooms will take away resources, space and opportunities from our students. 
We also fear that some of the famous Barry Faulkner Murals will fall victim to the construction of a new cafeteria and that some of the scenes that feature tasteful nudity, and scenes of historic battles, might be censored to make them “1st grade friendly”. 
We will speak out in strong opposition to the DOE proposal at the rally and press conference.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Eva thinks she owns all the schools she plans to invade before she is given 'official" permission because ahe has been promised them by the DOE. The backdoor deal is already done. The hearings and PEP vote are a formality. She has done this with every building, She has NOT been turned away yet. Park Slope, The Upper West Side and the Southside of Brooklyn had strong resistnce against her and she "won" because the DOE gives OUR public School buildings away to her and others for free. We need to continue to fight against these evil takeovers. But we also need to make sure that all of Bloonberg's tentacles are voted out of office in the next election. Hopefully this will put a stop to more invasions. Also we need to encourage the courts to legislate and start making these charters pay for the space. Watch how fast they will run away or disappear when they hafe to fork out money to pay their way.

She is going to destroy that beautiful, historic building. If the DOE has money to give her for renovations, they should put it into the building as it exists and do the needed repairs. They should give money to the schools that are there for their needs and for their students.

I hope that not only parents and teachers turn out on Thursday, but also students. They will be the losers in the end. They have to engage in the war as well. They have to realize that their spaces will be taken away by Success Academy. Those who are able should help any school they are able as they fight this ogre. She is going into schools all over our city.