Cash For Charter Starters

 

NY POST

By YOAV GONEN

April 8, 2008

 

The challenge of finding homes for the city's exploding charter-school market got a jump-start from the federal government yesterday.

Calling them "laboratories of innovation," US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced an $8.3 million grant to serve as seed money for building or renovating as many as 15 charter schools in New York City and Newark.

Manhattan-based Civic Builders - a nonprofit facilities developer that has already worked on siting 10 city charter schools - was awarded the grant to help both cities tackle the arduous task of locating and erecting sites for future schools.

"This is a welcome addition to the work we're doing," said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at the grant announcement at city Department of Education headquarters. "In the absence of space or the appropriate funding for space, we're going to continue to face challenges."

Under Mayor Bloomberg and Klein's tenure, the city has expanded the number of charter schools from 17 to 78 - including 18 set to open in the fall.

Charters are publicly funded schools that function with greater independence from local districts in exchange for meeting stricter student performance goals.

About two-thirds of the city's 60 charter schools currently share buildings with traditional public schools, Klein said. But many of those pairings have angered the traditional school communities that suddenly found themselves sharing scarce facilities.

The grant money will be treated as a kick-start to fund new school buildings - intended to create about 5,200 total seats - that will limit the need to share valuable real-estate space at existing sites.

"Our intention is to attract about $100 million in capital," said David Umansky, CEO of Civic Builders. "The problem that we're solving is not just a capital problem but of completely relieving the burden of building facilities from charters schools' shoulders."

Officials at one of the charter schools that already got a hand from Civic Builders - the Bronx Charter School for the Arts - called the organization's $5 million transformation of a former salami factory into a school a "critical" service.

"At that time, the [Department of Education] was not offering long-term spaces to charter schools, so we didn't really have that many options in terms of how to find a space," said Xanthe Jory, executive director at the school.

Charter Schools To Receive Multimillion-Dollar Boost

BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 7, 2008

Charter schools that have been struggling to find homes in New York will receive a boost today from the Bush administration, in the form of a multimillion-dollar grant.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is presenting the award to a local group that finances, constructs, and renovates charter school buildings, Civic Builders, Inc. The money will be used to aid building efforts in New York City and Newark, N.J., charter schools, according to sources familiar with the grant.

Both the New York City schools chancellor, Joel Klein, and the Newark mayor, Cory Booker, will be on hand at today's announcement.

The grant comes as charter schools in the city face what officials at Civic Builders have termed a space "crisis." Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed, and state laws often do not guarantee them space in public school buildings. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg and his Department of Education have worked to help secure space for charter schools, welcoming them into public school buildings with some extra space, where the charter schools usually get a hallway or floor and part-time access to the cafeteria and gymnasium.

They are becoming more and more common, but these sharing arrangements are politically perilous, with parents and teachers at existing schools crying foul and enlisting elected officials to back their protests.

One school's protest has migrated to the Internet, where a Red Hook mother started a Web log, Charter-Free PS15. Another protest planned for this Wednesday is also expected to draw attention to the issue.

Civic Builders helps charter schools construct and lease buildings that are separate from public facilities. With the help of private philanthropy, it has transformed a Bronx parking garage into a 43,000-square-foot school and a kosher salami factory in Hunts Point into a school with an arts specialty, and built a 90,000-square-foot school complete with a 10,000-volume library, a climbing wall, and a rooftop athletic area in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The grant is part of a federal program aimed at making it more attractive — and less risky — for philanthropists to invest in charter school construction projects. The Bush administration has already awarded more than $175 million in grants to similar projects across the country, according to Education Department grant lists.