NY lawmakers call for investigation into charter school rally

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A day after families and leaders from over 200 charter schools marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, powerful state lawmakers demanded an investigation into the event, saying they believed it was an inappropriate political rally despite organizers’ claims to the contrary.

New York state senators John Liu, of Queens, and Shelley Mayer, of Westchester — the chairs of their chamber’s education committee who have both historically opposed charter school expansion — expressed concerns about the schools potentially pressuring families and staff to attend or face repercussions.

“Canceling classes during a school day and forcing families and students to engage in a political rally is an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds,” Liu and Mayer wrote Friday to Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa and State University of New York Chancellor John King. (SUNY oversees the vast majority of New York City’s charter schools.)

“Our state provides public dollars to charter schools to educate students, not for political activism or for influencing elections,” the letter continued.

Liu and Mayer called on the state Education Department and SUNY to determine whether any state laws were violated. If so, they are asking the state to “claw back” a portion of their state funding from each participating school.

While not all charter schools canceled classes for the event, Success Academy did. Success Academy, the city’s largest charter school network, was one of the rally’s organizers. A spokesperson for Success Academy said before the rally that “we are not seeking to influence the mayoral race” and that school officials asked speakers not to mention the election or candidates.

One parent, whose child attends a Zeta charter school — founded by Emily Kim, formerly the top lawyer at Success Academy — felt forced to miss work at a restaurant on Thursday to join the rally.

The child’s teacher said students would be marked absent from school without their guardians at the rally, said the parent, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding over concerns about retaliation.

A Zeta spokesperson said there were no consequences for students who did not attend.

The march followed in the footsteps of one the sector organized in 2013, before Bill de Blasio — a charter school foe — won the mayoral election. Success Academy, cancelled classes for the 2013 rally, too. This time, the charter sector mobilized as Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani leads the pack.

Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy’s founder and one of the rally’s organizers, did not publicly name Mamdani in promoting the event. But internally, she warned staff of “existential” threats, Gothamist reported. Mamdani, a Queens state assemblyman, is the only mayoral candidate who has publicly opposed charter schools.

State Education Department officials spoke with SUNY leaders on Thursday to discuss concerns about the rally, including whether students were required to attend and the march’s “actual or perceived political intent,” said JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the department.

“As the authorizer of all Success Academy charter schools in New York, SUNY should be responsible for investigating whether the rally complied with the law and each school’s charter,” O’Hare wrote in a statement.

Neither Success Academy nor SUNY responded to requests for comment.

The New York City Charter School Center, an advocacy group, dismissed the lawmakers’ call for an investigation as politically motivated.

“Don’t we have enough elected officials in this country demanding investigations of people that disagree with them on issues?” wrote James Merriman, the group’s CEO.

He added that it was “absurd” that officials might try to hurt schools “that by school year’s end will provide significantly more instructional time than the district.” Their city-run counterparts will have 176 days of school this year, although the state requires 180 instructional days.

Using the march as a lesson in civics

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, serve about 150,000 students, or roughly 15% of the city’s public school students.

Rafiq Kalam Id-Din, the founder of Brooklyn’s Ember Charter School for Mindful Education and one of the event’s organizers, told Chalkbeat before the rally that his schools planned to cancel traditional classes and treat it as a learning opportunity.

“We will be taking class out to the streets,” he said, echoing Success Academy’s argument for requiring student attendance.

In a joint statement, Kalam Id-Din, along with charter leaders the Rev. Alfred Cockfield, founder of Lamad Academy Charter School, and Bishop Raymond Rivera, founder of the Family Life Academy Charter School, pushed back against the lawmakers’ call for an investigation.

“It is stunning that Senators Liu and Mayer would spend their energy attacking a day of civic engagement rather than demanding answers for the far greater injustice: in too many public schools across New York, fewer than 25% of students can read or do math at grade level,” the charter leaders wrote.

“Where were the hearings for those failures? Where was the investigation into why children are being left behind year after year?” the statement continued.

Other charter leaders did not require their students to attend the event. Arthur Samuels, the executive director of MESA Charter High Schools, which operates two campuses in Brooklyn, said participation was voluntary.

“Our job is to teach them how to think critically,” he said in an interview before the rally. “This is a choice that they have [and] a significant number of them have chosen to do this.” He noted that it would not feel like a day off, since they’d have to arrive at school before 7 a.m. to participate.

About 10% of MESA students participated, Samuels estimated.

Officials at Achievement First and Uncommon Schools, two of the city’s largest charter networks, did not require student attendance at the rally.

Asked why the charter sector did not organize the rally on a Saturday, when there would be no conflict with regular classes and many more parents would not have work obligations, Achievement First CEO Lisa Margosian said that was a “very good question.”

“Maybe we’ll have to consider that for the next one,” she said in an interview before the rally.

This story was updated to include a joint statement from charter school leaders.

Seyma Bayram is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her atsbayram@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex atazimmerman@chalkbeat.org.