This was published in the NY TIMES. I strongly urge those of you who have something to say, to contact the Board of Regents, Mayor Bloomberg, or anyone else who would be interested in the at Hyde School as well as the lack of education.
Where is the proof that Hyde is successful? There are not any accurate statistics that I know of that are truthful coming from the Hyde camp.
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By ELISSA GOOTMAN (NYT) 605 words
Published: January 10, 2006
The Board of Regents subcommittee that handles charter school applications approved four new charter schools for New York City yesterday. But it shut out two would-be school operators, including Ninfa Segarra, a former president of the New York City Board of Education who was also a deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani.
The charters, which the full board is scheduled to give final approval today, are the last the Regents can authorize under a state law capping the number of charter schools at 100 statewide.
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who calls charter schools central to his mission of overhauling the city school system, had given his blessing to six charter schools. But because of the cap, which Mr. Klein and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg oppose, the Regents can pick only four.
At the meeting yesterday, the Regents subcommittee followed recommendations by the State Education Department in deciding which of the six schools to select.
The four that were chosen included the International Leadership Charter School, a high school in the Bronx that will require students to study two foreign languages; and the Achievement First Endeavor Charter School in Brooklyn, which would be the third New York school run by a nonprofit group that started creating charters in New Haven.
A third, the Ross Global Academy Charter School planned for Lower Manhattan, will be modeled after the Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., which was founded by Courtney Sale Ross, the widow of the Time Warner chairman Steven J. Ross. And the fourth, the Hyde Leadership Charter School in northern Manhattan, according to its application, will eventually serve 904 students.
Stephen m0re110, a spokesman for Chancellor Klein, said that all six of the charter schools had been worthy of opening. ''We are delighted that New York City students will have four more charter schools from which to choose and extremely disappointed that they will not have six,'' Mr. m0re110 said.
He said the rejection of two ''points out the absurdity of the cap.''
Ms. Segarra, who worked on Mayor Bloomberg's campaign in the recent election, had proposed the Lower East Side Charter School for Leadership Excellence. It was a middle school that its application said would combine a ''demanding liberal arts education'' with ''character development, ethical values and leadership skills.''
Ms. Segarra did not return telephone calls seeking comment. State evaluators raised questions with her proposed curriculum and fiscal plan.
The other charter school rejected was the Riverview Lighthouse Charter School, which was to be in the Bronx, running through the seventh grade. The evaluators said that another charter school in the Bronx run by the same group had not yet proved effective.
Mr. Klein and Mr. Bloomberg not only want the limit on charter schools lifted, but also want the mayor to have the authority to approve the schools himself, without seeking clearance from the state.
The state charter law allowed 50 schools to be authorized by the Regents and 50 by the State University of New York trustees, which will dole out its remaining four charters at a meeting in two weeks.
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