Students in a single embattled Harlem district have left their public schools in droves – and a few who remain are begging for a way out.
Two-thirds of District 5’s elementary and middle schoolers, and 57% of scholars there overall, have spurned failing and dangerous Department of Education-run schools, making the district the one considered one of 32 in Recent York City where a majority of kids attend a publicly funded, privately run charter school.
“We’re so miserable,” Mariama, a junior on the DOE’s Frederick Douglass Academy in East Harlem told The Post. “Please help us!”
However the stark enrollment imbalance has now made District 5 the goal of a poison-pill rule in the brand new state budget barring recent charters in any such district.
Under Gov. Hochul’s April budget deal, no recent charter schools will be placed in any district that already enrolls greater than 55% of its students in the choice learning institutions.
District 5 appears to be the one school district within the state hitting that limit.
“This penalizes parents by not giving them the most effective strategy of getting their children an education – and more importantly, it penalizes the kids,” fumed state Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krasny (R-Brooklyn).
A Failing District
Students in District 5 DOE schools scored abysmally on last yr’s state tests for grades 3 through 8. Only 19% of their students tested proficient in math, with 31% deemed proficient in English.
That compares to the 51% math proficiency and 56% English proficiency scored by the district’s charter school kids, records show.
“I used to be mortified to see the state testing results” for local DOE schools, Harlem mom Marsha Taylor told The Post. “I said, ‘I’m not sending my kids here, that is crazy.’”
She enrolled her two children in Global Community Charter School on fifth Avenue and 141st Street as a substitute.
Disorder is rampant in most of the district’s DOE schools, kids and fogeys say, with lax discipline, chronic bullying, and near-daily fights.
District 5, which covers much of Central Harlem and parts of East and West Harlem, suffered the DOE’s lowest attendance rate last yr: just 83%, in comparison with 88% citywide.
Parents and students at a number of the neighborhood’s most troubled DOE schools complained of a bunch of problems, including disinterested staff, low academic standards, and frequent violence.
Frederick Douglass Academy, a combined middle and highschool for grades 6-12 at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and 149th Street, tallied 24 weapons busts in 2019, probably the most citywide.
“You see lots of fighting. It’s almost daily,” one 14-year-old FDA freshman complained.
“There’s not even a handful of teachers at this whole school that truly care about their jobs,” charged a junior who has attended Frederick Douglass since seventh grade, when her family immigrated from Jamaica. “I expected way significantly better in America.”
“That is purported to be a school preparatory school – this school doesn’t prepare you for nothing in any respect,” one other Eleventh-grader said. “We don’t learn nothing about going to school.”
At PS/MS 46 on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, parents say pint-sized gangbangers run amok – and each single Eighth-grader who sat for the state’s math exam 2019 flunked it.
“I’m not joyful with the education here,” said Joshelle Ellerbe, whose three kids attend the East Harlem school.
“I’ve heard that students falling through the cracks won’t do well on the state tests, and the teachers … sort of vouch for them” to pass their classes anyway, she said.. “That’s not good in any respect.”
Nine-year-old gang members bullied her son relentlessly when he was a third-grader at PS 46, Jinet Dickerson recalled.
“A boy desired to fight him in the toilet on the second day he was there… and it kept on, kept on and kept on,” the mother of seven said.
“It’s not concerning the teachers,” she said. “It’s more concerning the schools, the DOE … the dearth of accountability.”
When her youngest child was ready for kindergarten, Dickerson had had enough. Dorothy, age 9, attends Harlem Success Academy, a charter school on West one hundred and fortieth Street.
“This one, I got out quick,” Dickerson said. “If I could have put all my kids in charter school from the start, I’d have.”
When The Post visited the DOE’s Thurgood Marshall Academy on W. one hundred and thirty fifth St. at a recent dismissal, a heated verbal dispute between two groups of boys drew about 75 student spectators. Eight NYPD officers were needed to interrupt things up.
“Don’t be surprised should you see one other fight. There are all the time fights,” said Kay, an 18-year-old senior on the W. one hundred and thirty fifth Street school. “Kids disrupt class, they’ll be skipping [class], smoking, dice-playing.”
Kay attended nearby Democracy Prep Charter Middle School, also on W. one hundred and thirty fifth Street, as a teenager.
“I wish I’d’ve stayed in charter school,” she said. “You truly got in trouble for doing stuff. Like, there have been consequences.”
At Thurgood Marshall, “There’s no structure here – people get to do whatever they need,” Kay said. “The kids will win at the top of the day.”
A Different World
Just 12 blocks away, on Madison Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the state-of-the-art constructing that houses the K-12 Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy II offers a bunch of services and an orderly environment for a number of the city’s neediest kids.
“My belief is, given an actual opportunity, our youngsters can be just as successful as any kid, anywhere on this country,” visionary educator Geoffrey Canada, who founded the primary of Harlem’s two Promise Academy schools in 2004, told The Post.
“In traditional public schools, it’s sort of like one-size-fits-all,” said Canada, who retired as HCZ’s CEO in 2014 but stays president of the board. “We desired to customize some schools so it met the needs of those students.”
Promise Academy’s highschool graduation rate is 99.4%, in comparison with 74% for District 5 as an entire.
The charter school’s students aced the state’s Regents exams last yr, scoring 93% proficient on the English Regents, in comparison with 76% in District 5 DOE schools, and 81% passed Algebra 1, in comparison with 46% within the neighborhood’s DOE schools.
Most striking: 83% of Promise Academy’s black students scored proficient on the Algebra 1 Regents last yr, in comparison with 28% in District 5 DOE schools. In ELA, 92% passed the Regents English test, in comparison with 63% in DOE schools.
“I feel you discover, with any set of education options, parents will vote with their feet,” Canada said.
Charter schools are publicly funded, but privately run by non-profit groups. Most are non-union, so have more flexibility in who they hire and the way they operate. Some offer an extended school day and yr, or impose harsh student discipline. Admission is solely by lottery.
The state grants five-year “performance contracts” – charters – that deal with teaching, enrollment, and other benchmarks. Low performing schools will be closed in the event that they don’t live as much as their pledge.
About 141,000 city students now attend charter schools, making up 15% of the coed body citywide. Most of them, 80%, are from economically disadvantaged families, in line with the Recent York City Charter School Center.
City charter schools get $17,626 of taxpayer dollars per student every year, plus space in city buildings or partial rent support, in comparison with the $35,941 for each student in a DOE school, in line with the Recent York City Charter Center and Residents Budget Commission.
But many charters get government and company grants that may total within the tens of millions annually, so their actual per-student spending can add as much as rather more. Canada’s two Harlem Promise Academies, for example, took in $123 million in private donations and nearly $10 million value of city, state, and federal grants in 2019, in line with its most up-to-date filings.
Despite the success of many charter schools, Albany Democrats, in lockstep with the powerful United Federation of Teachers, proceed to stymie their growth.
The state budget’s recent charter-cap law could block the K-5 Minisink Charter School at Malcolm X Boulevard and 142nd Street, which the Harlem-based Mission Society planned to open in 2025.
The non-profit, which offers after-school and summer programs for kids in peril of dropping out, had hoped to serve the neediest students by limiting class sizes to 12, said CEO Elsie McCabe Thompson.
“It’s unjust,” Thompson said of the 55% cap. “Which means 45% of oldsters are precluded from having a alternative.”
The Mission Society will proceed to lobby for a change or exemption within the law to squeeze in its charter.
“Nonetheless they do it, I don’t care,” she said. “I just wish to have the option to open our faculty.”
CASE STUDIES
Marsha Taylor
Marsha Taylor’s now 10-year-old son, Philip Robertson, was set to go to Thurgood Marshall Lower School for kindergarten when she heard from a friend about Global Community Charter School.
“I said ‘Let me test it out,’” Taylor recalled.
On the time, Taylor “still wasn’t 100% sold” on public schools — partly due to the poor state testing scores the DOE schools in her neighborhood produced, she said.
“I used to be not pleased in any respect, as a parent, to see the underperforming scores” of DOE schools, Taylor explained.
When she visited Global Community, “I used to be completely sold on the varsity itself: The presentation, the staff, the nice and cozy welcome, the offering of the IB curriculum and languages and humanities,” Taylor said.
The mother of two noted that the charter school’s higher state test scores were “the deciding factor.”
“I made the switch and I’m glad that I did. I actually have not regretted my decision,” she said.
Taylor’s 8-year-old daughter, Mariah Robertson, also attends Global Community as a second grader.
Joshelle Ellerbe
Joshelle Ellerbe, 31, is “not joyful with the education here,” at PS 46 — a DOE school she graduated from herself in 2002.
Her third-grade son Abdul-Maleek is a “really intelligent kid,” Ellerbe said, but she was shocked recently when she asked if he knew the meaning of the word “additional” — and located he didn’t.
“Should you have a look at the vocabulary list he’s given, a number of the words are usually not as much as par,” the mother of three said. “Should you go browsing and look up third grade vocabulary words – grade-level, appropriate words that he should know – I’ve given him those words, and he’s like ‘What?’
“Same thing after I’ve reviewed a few of their work and ask to see their notebook. Kids must have goals and notes – my kids, they’ve none.
“[My] kids are at this school they usually don’t really have much to point out for it. What’s happening?” she asked.
Ellerbe also isn’t a fan of the varsity’s recent principal.
“The present principal has gotten into some verbal altercations with parents … And I’m similar to, ‘That’s not cool,’” she said.
Assiatou D.
“I’m definitely proud,” said Assiatou, 17. “I’m going to be a first-generation college student.”
The senior, who has attended the K-12 Harlem Children’s Zone’s Promise Academy II because the early grades, is headed for the Ivy League. She plans to major in nursing on the University of Pennsylvania this fall.
“Throughout each stage of my school profession – elementary school, middle school and highschool – I’ve had specific teachers who’ve helped me get here,” Assiatou said, citing a string of mentors who “really spoke to us being on top of ourselves, pursuing our goals.”
Last summer, she spent two weeks at Harvard University, where she took an ethics course, a part of a program offered to all juniors.
“That have definitely shaped lots of my interests,” Assiatou said. “I’m so glad I went.”
All expenses for her Harvard course, and lots of other costs throughout her school profession, were paid by HCZ, she said.
“When it comes to uniforms and happening trips, they’ve graciously covered all of that,” Assiatou said. “They’ve exposed me to lots of opportunities.”