For Sarah Polanco, a longtime Williamsburg resident and parent of two young children, the de Blasio Administration’s highly marketed universal ‘Pre-K for All’ campaign should be tweaked to ‘Pre-K for Some’ to reflect a bigger reality.
That’s because Polanco is one of dozens of Brooklyn parents caught in a tug-of-war contract dispute between the City’s Department of Education and Success Academy schools over the DOE’s insistence that all organizations, including charters, that applied to host a de Blasio UPK program sign a 38-page agreement or they won’t get funded.
The contract includes stipulations such as regulating the school day down to the minute, and controlling the curriculum – activities that run against core charter school principles that they maintain independence from the city’s education bureaucracy and are answerable only to SUNY and the New York State Education Department.
“The mayor just doesn’t get the charter school concept. It’s about doing things differently, about fresh approaches to helping kids learn and grow, not foisting on schools a 38 page contract that tries to dictate how our pre-K is run the way the UFT contract dictates how the district schools are run,” said Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz.
While a few of the city’s charter schools reluctantly signed the agreement for the funding, the SA network held off. Instead they self-funded three UPK charter schools, including two in Brooklyn, and filed a complaint with the NYSED, charging the DOE with violating a 2014 state law allowing them to run their Pre-K program without city interference.
The complaint, filed last October, included affidavits from officials at several other Brooklyn charter schools, including Ian Rowe, CEO of the Public Prep charter school network and Jacob Mnookin, executive director of Coney Island Preparatory Public Charter School
“We were thrilled as a public charter school to finally be given the right to run a high quality UPK, and bring all the innovations to enhance the education of young learners,” said Rowe. ““But this contract, including provisions such as mandated curriculum or limited exposure to technology, suppresses the very innovations our kids need to thrive.”
But the de Blasio Administration filed an appeal to the complaint, arguing it is their legal purview to force all organizations wanting to host City UPK program to sign a contract to get funding.
“The terms of the DOE’s proposed contract all stem directly from the baseline program quality requirements set for participating pre-K providers by statute, regulation, and the SED,” said DOE spokesperson Devora Kaye. “There is simply no basis to conclude that requiring Success to comply with these requirements of program quality would somehow result in Success’ inability to operate its pre-K programs.”
Complicating the situation for dozens of parents and hundreds of students is the NYSED has not rendered a decision yet, and NYSED spokesperson Jonathan Burman wouldn’t even speculate on the timing of a decision.
Meanwhile, parents in Bensonhurst are clamoring for s Success Academy UPK in their neighborhood and Success officials say they won’t be able to fund their UPK program out of pocket next year. As such they have informed parents that if they don’t hear from the NYSED by Feb. 15, they will cancel all their UPK programs for next year on Feb. 16 to give parents time to find another UPK program by the March 4 registration deadline.
This set off a chain reaction from parents of Success Academy students who kicked of a #SaveOurPreK campaign to keep the Success UPK programs open without signing the contract. The campaign features an online petition that has already drawn some 10,000 signatures, including that of Polanco, who has a third-grader at the Success Williamsburg school and another child in the Success UPk – both of which are housed in the same building.
“It’s important having them ( kids) start from a Success Academy Pre-K if parents want them to continue with Success Academy,” said Polanco. “They (Success pre-schoolers) utilize play to learn a lot more basic stuff and it’s important for them to know the environment and what they’re getting into. We feel so lucky we found this program and don’t want to slip back into another program. The mayor should make sure it’s universal pre-k for all and not just pre-k for some.”
