The Education of Eva Moskowitz

by Eva Moskowitz

  Anti-charter ideologue Diane Ravitch also claimed that our co-location required “kicking out students with disabilities.”41 and Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss repeated Ravitch’s lie that “special needs student[s] . . . will be evicted” and also wrongly claimed that our “middle school hadn’t yet been started,” which would certainly have come as news to its students.42 Thus, she’d managed to completely reverse the facts: she’d claimed that current PS 811 students would be affected (wrong) and that current Harlem Central students wouldn’t (wrong again).

  As Mark Twain observed, a lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is putting on its shoes. We tried to give truth a shove by putting out a press release explaining that no students would be forced out of PS 811 and citing the official documents that conclusively proved this, but nobody was interested. “Special education students not being harmed” just wasn’t a story.

  Moreover, just as I’d feared, de Blasio was executing his divide-and-conquer strategy. While Kathleen Grimm was telling me my co-locations were being revoked, de Blasio aides were meeting with six charter school leaders who’d been organized by Jonathan Gyurko, a former UFT operative. The following day, Gyurko emailed Wiley Norvell, de Blasio’s deputy press secretary, to give him a “first look” at a statement Gyurko had drafted to see if it “worked” for the administration. This statement, which Gyurko hadn’t even shown to other members of his coalition first, supported the administration’s decisions, claiming they’d been “principled.” This was easy for Gyurko’s coalition to say since their co-locations hadn’t been revoked. Indeed, the administration had actually extended the co-location for Rich Berlin, whose organization had a board member who had raised substantial funds for de Blasio’s mayoral campaign.

  De Blasio was playing his hand well. He was isolating Success by only revoking our co-locations, lying about special ed kids being displaced, and deploying Fariña to claim that it was all just a coincidence that the only schools whose co-locations were being revoked were those run by the very person de Blasio had repeatedly lambasted. Thus, we had to tell our story and this is where our level of organization paid off. Our head of communications, Ann Powell, managed to organize a press conference at Harlem Central with both parents and students just hours after de Blasio announced his decision. Reporters immediately recognized that this was a juicy story and covered it sympathetically. “Mayor de Blasio,” wrote the New York Post, “brought down the hammer Thursday on three charter schools operated by his nemesis Eva Moskowitz, leaving hundreds of kids without classrooms this fall.” The Daily News wrote, “New York City education officials lowered the boom Thursday on a trio of planned charter schools run by a fiery former councilwoman who is Mayor de Blasio’s political adversary.”

  While media interest was intense, I feared that over time they’d move on to the next thing and that de Blasio would just weather the storm. We had to keep the story alive by showing the real impact of this decision on children. We decided to run an advertisement with pictures of each of the 194 kids at Harlem Central who’d lose their school with the title “Save the 194.” We followed up with a TV spot that used the same image. It began:

  These are the 194 faces of Success Academy’s public middle school in Harlem. They love their school and all the opportunities it brings. But Mayor Bill de Blasio just announced he is closing their school, taking away their hopes and dreams.

  As the narrator said this, the pictures of the students started fading away and the narration continued:

  He’s taking away a public school where the fifth-graders have the highest math scores in the entire state . . . and scored twice the city average in reading. Mayor de Blasio, don’t take away our children’s future. Save our school.

  I felt that this ad was particularly strong because it tugged at the heartstrings (“hopes and dreams”) while also appealing to logic (“the highest math scores in the state”).

  Fortunately, the editorial pages of several newspapers rose to our defense. The New York Post wrote:

  De Blasio is taking the space away because these kids are learning. That’s a huge embarrassment to a mayor and his union allies who spend their time excusing public school failure rather than redressing it. So he’s taking it out on the kids. How nasty is that?

  In an editorial titled “Bill slams Eva’s kids,” the Daily News wrote:

  Former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz is the bête noire of the de Blasio administration. He’s aiming at a grown woman—and catching children in the crossfire.

  The story soon went national. The Daily Beast wrote:

  When does a local education fight become a national bellwether? When it touches a policy lightning rod, scrambles partisan allegiances, and involves political actors who stand in for whole political ideologies. And, sure, it helps when the locale staging the fight is New York City.

  As Slate observed, de Blasio endured “days of searing press coverage.” But there was still the problem that I’d anticipated from the beginning: while we were hurting de Blasio, the goal wasn’t to hurt him but to get him to treat charter schools better, and he’d given no signs he was willing to do so. Fortunately, however, we had a plan B.

  36

  A TALE OF TWO RALLIES

  2014

  Days before the mayor’s eviction of Harlem Central, other charter leaders and I had become deeply troubled by Chancellor Fariña’s unwillingness to give the charter sector any reassurances about what the city would do on co-locations and rent, so we’d decided to ask Albany to protect us from de Blasio. While the legislators there didn’t love us, we felt that sympathy for our plight might make them more receptive than usual.

  The best time to seek Albany’s help was when it was negotiating the annual budget, which typically turned into an omnibus legislative package. We therefore decided to hold a rally on March 4. This didn’t leave us much time, but, fortunately, Families for Excellent Schools again agreed to plan and organize the rally.

  Gyurko’s coalition announced they’d be boycotting our rally in part because de Blasio was planning to hold a rally in favor of pre-K funding on the same day as us and they feared we’d upstage him. One coalition member asked, “Is that how you start out the conversation, with a punch in the face?” I was flabbergasted. The mayor had vilified me throughout his campaign and then revoked three of my co-locations and I was the one punching him? It was like the Woody Allen joke: I’d hit his fist with my face.

  Danny Dromm, chair of the city council’s Education Committee and a former UFT delegate, called for hearings to investigate Success “just in case there might be corruption” and objected to our plan to close our schools for a day so that our entire community—teachers, students, and parents—could attend the rally. We responded: “We will close our schools for one day to keep the mayor from closing them forever.”

  But nobody expressed more eloquently what was truly at stake than Harlem Central’s principal, Andy Malone, who wrote to his faculty:

  One September afternoon in eighth grade, I hauled my oversize backpack to the public library to begin a research project that would end up changing my life. I was studying the 1961 Freedom Rides. As I read about the rides—a series of nonviolent protests in which hundreds of Americans rode integrated buses through the segregated South—I became completely engrossed. I promised myself that I would dedicate my life to fighting injustice, that I too would be a Freedom Rider.

  I came to believe that educational inequality was the civil rights issue of our time. Building great schools for every child in America—this was our Freedom Ride. So after graduation, I set out to teach. Working hard to become a better teacher, and then a better school leader, this was the nature of the fight.

  Thursday has changed all of that. Our school has become a political target despite our incredible academic achievements. The hardest part is that it is happening to Laminu and Serea, Vakaba and Amanda, Kwame and Kayla, Jayden and Tiayna, Sharron and Staci, [to our] actors, artists,
dancers, basketball players, computer scientists, chess prodigies. In the face of injustice—the lack of logic, the blatant hypocrisy—we see the impact on the kids we know and love.

  How do we move forward? The only way is to leverage great teaching as a form of political action, and leverage political action as a defense of great teaching. We need both kinds of Freedom Rides.

  Steel yourself for the demands that will come your way: to get every parent to Albany, to invite video cameras into your classroom, to rally and write and speak out. Heed the call to be incredible teachers and incredible advocates as we lead a new Freedom Ride toward the right side of history.

  We will get there.

  Andy

  On March 4, we held our rally. Eleven thousand parents, students, and teachers from one hundred charter schools statewide participated. Nobody could remember the last time so many citizens had descended upon the capitol to plead their cause. Unbeknownst to me, Governor Cuomo could see them arriving from his office window and was so moved by the sight that he decided at the last minute to speak at our rally. Cuomo was often emotionally reserved in his speeches. He seemed to hold back a piece of himself, to hide the idealism that had led him to choose a life of public service. Perhaps he wished to avoid being perceived as a carbon copy of his father, who was famous for his soaring oratory. This day, however, he spoke with real passion:

  You look so beautiful to me! They say it’s cold out here, but I don’t feel cold, I feel hot! I feel fired up! We are going to save charter schools and you’re making it happen by being here today!

  You are here, 11,000 strong. You are braving the cold to stand up for your rights. [T]his is the most important civics lesson you will learn, because this is democracy and this is how you make your voice heard!

  Wow! I thought. Calling our rally a “civics lesson” was a hard whack at those who’d criticized us for closing our schools. He continued:

  And we are here today to tell you that we stand with you. You are not alone; we will save charter schools . . .

  We spend more money per pupil than any state in the nation; we’re number 32 in results. It’s not just about putting more money in the public school system, it’s trying something new and that’s what charter schools are all about . . .

  I am committed to ensuring charter schools have the financial capacity, the physical space, and the government support to thrive and to grow.

  I was elated. Cuomo had publicly committed himself to solving our facilities problem. Our rally was widely covered in the press, which compared it to de Blasio’s:

  An overflow crowd of 11,000 charter-school supporters braved Albany’s subfreezing weather Tuesday. . . . Meanwhile, de Blasio drew fewer than 1,500 people [leaving] the toasty-warm, Washington Street Armory more than half-empty.

  The Times published two stories about our rally. One had many pictures of the sea of parents clad in yellow shirts who had descended upon Albany. The other was titled “De Blasio and Operator of Charter School Empire Do Battle” and began as follows:

  She was a darling of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration, given free space to expand her charter schools from a single one in Harlem into a network larger than many New York State school districts. Along the way, her Success Academy empire became a beacon of the country’s charter school movement, its seats coveted by thousands of families as chronicled in the film “Waiting for ‘Superman.’”

  But eight years into her crusade, Eva S. Moskowitz is locked in combat with a new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who repeatedly singled her out on the campaign trail as the embodiment of what he saw was wrong in schooling, and who last week followed his word with deed, canceling plans for three of her schools in New York City while leaving virtually all other charter proposals untouched.

  I had mixed feelings about the press’s interest in seeing this as a battle between de Blasio and me. I wanted to keep the focus on the critical policy issues at stake rather than me personally, which is why I’d declined to speak at either our Albany rally or our march over the Brooklyn Bridge. On the other hand, the perceived rivalry increased press coverage, which was ultimately a good thing for us.

  The next day, a teacher emailed me a picture of one of our students, Sidy Fofana, a boy who played soccer avidly and who, inspired by his cousin’s beautiful smile, aspired to become a dentist. The picture showed Sidy, who had attended the rally, sitting next to a structure he’d made in school from wooden blocks. “Sidy built Harlem Central a new middle school building,” the teacher explained. “Such a sweet sentiment! If only things were this simple.” It made me realize how incomprehensible it must be for children that anyone would want to take away their school.

  At a press conference, Fariña was asked what would happen now that our co-location had been reversed and she responded, “They’re on their own now.” It was one of those answers that, like Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake,” was perfectly wrong. The press jumped on her comment as heartless. Two days later, she apologized and said that the city was now “looking for additional space that might accommodate” our school. While I liked the sound of that, it wasn’t clear to me whether she was promising she’d actually find us space or just give it the old college try.

  I was invited to appear on the political talk show Morning Joe and then on March 10, de Blasio was invited on the show to give his response. After playing the clip in which de Blasio said I shouldn’t be tolerated, Joe Scarborough asked, “What don’t you like about Eva Moskowitz? That seemed awfully personal.” De Blasio denied it, but when pressed to explain why PS 811 couldn’t lose seats given that three other special-needs schools were opening, he punted by saying the decision had been DOE’s and he had to “trust” they’d made it correctly. De Blasio was dodging this question, not because he was too busy to learn the facts—after all, he was appearing on a national news show precisely to discuss this very issue—but rather because there was no good answer.

  He did, however, say that his administration was going to find “an alternative for Success Academy.” This seemed to confirm Fariña’s comment although we still had no details. Where would it be? Would it be permanent? Would he make us pay rent? Bizarrely, we had to learn everything from TV and newspapers just like everybody else because the administration wouldn’t speak with us.

  Given this uncertainty, we decided to initiate claims before the State Education Department and the federal courts. As any reader of this book now knows all too well, state law required detailed notices and multiple hearings to change a building’s use. Moreover, de Blasio had promised to go beyond those legal requirements and do additional preliminary engagement of “stakeholders.” Instead, he’d simply announced his decision to revoke our co-locations as a fait accompli without even putting in a single call to us, much less holding the necessary hearings. His hypocrisy would have been comical if the fates of real children weren’t at stake.

  We followed up on our rally by arranging for dozens of meetings between our parents and their representatives in Albany. These meetings put a human face on our schools and allowed us to educate legislators and their staff about charter schools and parents’ dissatisfactions with the district schools. I met with the head of the assembly’s Education Committee, Catherine Nolan. She wasn’t a big fan of charter schools but, unlike some of our opponents, she had common sense and a good heart. She seemed genuinely surprised by de Blasio’s actions. From our contact with legislators, we also came to understand that de Blasio had alienated many elected officials in Albany with his pre-K rally because it had felt to them like an attempt to force their hand rather than plead his cause.

  On March 13, the senate majority proposed legislation that would reinstate the co-locations de Blasio had revoked, prohibit him from revoking any more or charging us rent, and require the city to provide new and expanding charter schools with either facilities or the funds to rent them. Predictably, Gyurko drafted a statement opposing the legislation which said that his coalition “would prefer
a solution that includes the direct involvement of the affected communities, families, and other stakeholders.” This infuriated me. De Blasio was refusing to speak directly with the “families and other stakeholders”—namely us—which was exactly why we needed Albany’s help.

  Shortly thereafter, Cuomo expressed his views in a radio interview:

  If a charter school is not given a location and is not given funding to find a location, then in essence the charter school is out of business. We’re not going to be in a situation where charter schools stop, okay? Not if I have anything to do with it.

  On March 16, the New York Times finally weighed in:

  [T]he three co-locations that were initially rejected involved schools run by Mr. de Blasio’s longtime political rival, Eva Moskowitz. . . . Ms. Moskowitz, who has a flair for the dramatic, staged a rally in Albany, hit the airwaves and has threatened a civil rights lawsuit. Both sides should stop escalating the conflict, which helps no one.

  I found it amusing to hear that my protests reflected a “flair for the dramatic,” as if I’d gotten my knickers in a twist over some small slight. As for de Blasio and me being longtime political rivals, that was flat out wrong. I’d never run against de Blasio for office or said one negative word about him until after he’d won the primary, at which point he’d been attacking me publicly for months. Finally, the claim that escalating the conflict was “helping no one” was even more silly; it was helping kids! It had gotten de Blasio to promise he’d find space for Harlem Central and I was hoping it would get him to find space for our elementary schools as well.