We are grateful for the attention this article has brought to the initiative we have begun. People from across the country have joined our listserv and suggested schools for us to visit. We are especially pleased that concerned citizens have continued the dialogue in this comment thread and agree that public schools should serve their entire community. Please help us continue the dialogue by visiting our website (www.odysseyinitiative.org) and getting involved: recommend a school, join our listserv, and email us to share your thoughts on the movement towards providing access to quality education for every child in America.

I don't think that any parent is satisfied with their "choices" esp. as Bloomberg, Klein and now Walcott have done such damage to our public schools. But is the answer to further expand charters, further segregating our schools by race and class? I wish the NYT would be a bit more thoughtful about the way you phrase your questions, and a lot less biased in your examination of these issues. This article frankly read as though the reporter was on Eric Grannis' personal payroll.

Opening charter schools in gentrifying neighborhoods should NOT be about providing ways for newly arrived white parents to avoid the predominantly black or Latino neighborhood schools. When you move into a neighborhood, you need to move into that neighborhood with respect for the community, and not with thinly veiled racism. The reporter and the parents interviewed in this piece seem to use the word "diversity" as code for "we want to avoid all the black people in our neighborhood" - regardless of the fact that they chose to move into a predominantly black and historically black neighborhood. It's appalling and disheartening. I hope that new schools opened through the projects mentioned in the article actually serve entire community, and not just the most vocal and wealthy (and white) families in those communities.

So in other words, deep-pocketed snooty whites would rather find a way to segregate their precious offspring rather than devote time and energy to enrich existing schools in the neighborhood. The article fails to mention this oft-occuring facet of gentrification. Newly injected whites having misgivings, mistrust and disdain for long-time minority residents, thereby seeking to cloister themselves and their progeny, rather than having them interact with those children. It's pathetic.

Claim the neighborhood - claim the schools! They should be REQUIRED to support the neighborhood schools. No new high-priced specialty or alternative schools designed and tailored to keep out other community ethnic groups should be allowed or tolerated. If they have to commit to local schools, maybe they would get their butts in there and help develop and improve them.

Shame on you, Anna Phillips for not digging a little deeper to see that what is disguised as choice is actually a thinly veiled effort to segregate the schools and dismantle the public school system. The charters have a vested interest in describing good neighborhood schools as failing. Ask the parents, teachers, and principals and you'll see the only failure is Bloomberg's failure to support our schools. Under his administration they are under constant attack via high stakes testing and his meaningless and punitive grading system. Educate yourself on this issue. Everyone should read Diane ravich's book on the public school system if they want to know the truth about what's going on here.

Anyone who actually believes that this is about valid choice is deluded. This is about business. This is about a California chain (and a dodgy one at that) looking to open up a couple of Brooklyn branches because they think they can appeal to a certain public - that being the uninformed young white parents who are afraid, mostly out of ignorance and prejudice, that their local zoned school isn't up to the level they imagine for their child. This charter's project is predatory and deceitful. I feel sorry for the parents who would sign up for such a sham. They would be much better off joining the passionate, engaged community of Brooklyn parents who are committed to developing and improving our diverse and integrated local schools (for the benefit of all!), many of which are thriving more than ever. People need to educate themselves more about the real content of the issue, starting with the writer of this article!

See the article below. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...

This puff piece for Moskowitz and Grannis should serve notice that the NYT is no longer the "paper of record" and belies their motto. Shame on the NYT!

Flat out discouraging that the NY Times has no investigative impulse when "reporting" on these essential issues.

The privatization of the public education system has amassed a powerful conglomerate of interests including the President (whether he understands it that way or not) the Governor, the Mayor, legions of legislators, the media (Rupert Murdoch owns ARIS and now Joel Klein... ) the legislation fabrication complex known as ALEC, with the motivation and lubrication of the private finance industry, who is very bullish on this new market.

I suppose it would be naive to think the NY Times would shine a light on the effort to undermine a foundation of our Democracy.

But to not even touch on the implications of race, class and place surrounding an issue this divisive in the City of New York?

Why bother even writing a piece about a private gathering of sensitive souls whose children might be too delicate to risk mixing with natives in an outer borough public school? How charming that these dedicated educators want to embark on a mission of discovery and bring the fruits of their earnest quest to our fair borough! How nice for them that they have teamed up with a fiscal conduit who can help them fund this Mission. May they go forth and Discover.

How about sending them out to New Orleans to see what the situation is for public schools there? Perhaps they can interview parents in Chicago who took time off from work to occupy their school, to find out why they felt civil disobedience was necessary? Perhaps they could talk to Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan about ALEC while they're passing through. Oh and they could talk to the LA Unified School District about Citizens of the World, their relationship to Wonder of Reading and the kickbacks, phony bids, manipulations and cost overruns that abused millions of public dollars in 177 Los Angeles public school libraries!

Now that might be worth a NY Times article.

Instead of encouraging the increased diversity of these gentrified neighborhoods, these privateers are encouraging further segregation. A very nice promotional piece that will surely benefit their recruitment of parents, without providing any balance or contrary view. As is well-documented, the expansion of charters has led to more segregation, according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project. This has also happened here in NYC, see NYC Public School Parents: Charter schools and their segregating effect - http://goo.gl/Qjiei I'm very disappointed in this biased piece of pro-charter propaganda.

In my D6 neighborhood, we have a healthy range of non-charter elementary schools to choose from, but not enough seats in the most popular ones. Yes, many of the kids in our school don't pass the state tests, but they're also working against plenty of disadvantages, such as poverty and poor health and nutrition, that make much more of a difference in their academic success than the nature of their school. Plus I know so many of them personally, and I can vouch they are wonderful kids, and they teach my own kids all kind of valuable things those tests (and Bloomberg) don't care about, but I do. I've got two major problems with my school right now: it doesn't have enough money, even for basic supplies, much less for the kinds of enrichments I'd love the students to have (not the school's fault) and what was, five years ago, vibrant, creative, progressive teaching is slowly becoming standardized in response to testing pressures (partially the school's fault, but hard to blame them when so many politicians and corporateers deserve the blame instead).
I can't say the same for the middle schools in my district. However, since most charters these days seem to follow the traditional parochial school model, having more of them doesn't expand my choices anyway. We have plenty of traditional, test-driven schools in our district.
So what's up, Ms. Phillips? Your article paints a one-sided, and rather misleading picture of what's really going down on the streets of NYC these days. Do Eric and Eva have you on the payroll?

New York is a city under constant change. We are fortunate enough to have people here who pioneer new ideas and systems that address those changes in a thoughtful way. I applaud the efforts of these educators to provide another educational option to ALL families living in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Really, Leonie Haimson is right on the money! This really does seem like free PR for the eduentrepreneurs Grannis and Moskowitz. Why no mentions of the Moskowitz bait and switch modus operandi in Cobble Hill? Why no mention of the way district 15 is a district with good schools precisely because neighborhood parent activists rolled up their sleeves and worked hard to better the public schools, yet despite this, Eva made her real estate grab, heedless of the fact that her Eva brand was unwanted and not needed by the community? Why no mention of the problems that "Community Roots," (how ironic) had with the community and the school they were co-located with? Why doesn't SchoolBook interview people with opposing yet valid and informed viewpoints like Kate Yourke? Why no mention of the real estate grabs that will occur to the detriment of neighborhood public schools?

Is this supposed to be an "article," or this an opinion piece?

From what I understand, the "integrated" mix the Tapesty Project is looking for is a 50% white student body. That's not really integrated per NYC statistics. I hope those new parents have actually toured their public schools and perhaps gone to their district CEC meetings to get a feel for what is really going on there.

How wonderful those 3 educators are taking a year off to tour the country. I'd be even more excited if they were getting master's in education at Bank St to further their "progressive" ideals.

Why is it that when it comes to Charter Schools (and their relationship to perceived gentrification), the NYT goes all soft focus? Is this journalism? Can't wait to read in-depth reporting from tonight's D14 CEC meeting regarding 2 proposed Citizens of the World Charter Schools. Why do we need them? All of our schools are diverse already.

Rebekah,

Have you noticed the blizzard of "bad schools must be replaced" articles? Have you become convinced that the schools are worse? If the answer is yes to BOTH questions, you have been suckered! Can schools improve? Always! But these articles, and organizations funded by the 1% are NOT interested in that. They just want to make profit. You would think that these ideas were a dramatic improvement but the truth is that they aren't doing any better with kids like yours, and often worse. Search beneath the baloney and see the statistics that do not support these assertions. This is merely an attempt to destroy Public Education in the USA. Get educated, please, for the sake of your children.

While I understand the concerns of the young parents moving in, I was particularly puzzled by one of the comments made by one of the parents, saying "we want a school that has a lot of different people". What these parents fail to understand (maybe because some are not from New York) is that New York was a city (and still is) segregated by neighborhood. Therefore, in Bed-Stuy in particular, you will find a majority of Black residents and their economic realities differ greatly compared to the upper class Whites moving in.

Sadly, some of the generalizations here ring true: some “progressive” schools appear to insulate their student body from the community, serving as a kind of enclave from the neighborhood with which they’re so rarely engaged. Community Roots Charter School, from which these three teachers hail, is an exception to that unfortunate practice. From day-one, students are actively engaged in and educated about community awareness and advocacy year-round; from organizing donations to the local shelter, to working in tandem with other schools to restore a community garden, and so much more. Even the most staunch critics of charter schools have conceded that Community Roots (a non-profit, public school), is not only an exception to the negative profile, but a model for a true “community partnership." These three extraordinary teachers from Community Roots will undoubtedly model their school in like mind.

As one who had every intention of staying with our district elementary school for the long haul, I can unequivocally attest that the decision to bring our children to Community Roots had nothing whatsoever to do with avoiding predominantly black and Hispanic schools. After two years at our local school, where I was consistently underwhelmed by the dissonant communication from school leaders and the wildly inconsistent methodologies practiced in the classrooms, we found Community Roots (whose lottery gives preference to District 13 families and is predominantly black), to engender a sense of harmony and consensus among teachers and staff concerning educational philosophy and overarching methodology. There exists a school-wide culture of respectful, open dialogue between parents, teachers and school leaders alike. I can’t imagine a more utopian educational setting, and yes, I wholeheartedly wish it were so for schools everywhere.

I'm happy that there are more choices for parents who believe in public schools and have a commitment to living in NYC. Huge numbers of middle and upper class families are staying in NYC and raising their kids here.

I generally support these new charter school options because they help broaden the pool of choices, especially in communities where the public schools haven't risen to the achievement levels of the more gentrified neighborhoods.

With all due respect, I think that's an oversimplification of a very complex situation, and I don't see how that helps the discussion. Turning around struggling or low performing schools is very different from starting with a blank canvas, and a very delicate process. Do the people you describe exist? Sure. But I do believe in these situations, those folks you describe are a true minority, and ones not worthy of my time or energy. While I'm not for or against charter schools, the American school system is a mess and I do have great respect for people with the energy and know-how to get out there and contribute to improving standard of education for all of our children. Some of the projects named above are trying to do just that, and to respond their efforts with mistrust and disdain on the basis of race or economics is unproductive.

In a perfect world, Brown v. Board’s legacy would have been parity, not attempted forced integration. That hasn’t worked so I’m excited by the work of Grannis and the Odyssey Initiative.

The race and class dynamics are unsettling but unavoidable. The interests of the families in the article are converging with the student population that’s been in the neighborhoods for a long time. If that convergence is what’s necessary to create better schools, that’s okay with me. People aren’t bad for not taking an interest in schools until it’s time for their own kids to enroll.

This article touches on an encouraging trend: parents, teachers and entrepreneurs are focusing on making public schools good. A generation ago, similarly situated people were more likely to just opt out of public school, in part because the schools are often majority-minority. I read this as a focus on the quality of the education provided *and* a genuine interest in an integrated student body. Is progress coming too slow, and do we get better schools for the wrong reasons? Yes, but it’s progress nonetheless.

First of all, Eric Grannis doesn't know anything about education, let alone progressive education. Grannis' schools, Girls Prep and his wife's Success Academies, are hardly models that appeal to middle class families. Grannis is in the business of opening charter schools. Not teaching and learning. He would open a charter school to service ANYONE as long as it was a charter school. He's been quoted as saying that more should open and more should fail so that more could open. Grannis doesn't believe in community or community schools. He believes in creating a market out of schools and students.

Grannis is manufacturing a need for new schools by preying on parents with young children who are unfamiliar with the school choices available in their district. These parents are offered school models that already exist in their neighborhood schools. For example, the parents are told that only the school that Grannis offers will have "differentiated instruction" or "project based learning." Meanwhile, ALL of the schools in the areas surrounding them have differentiated instruction and project based learning.

All of this gets couched in the language of "choice." What's the harm in choice? The harm comes from the segregated schools that result in capitulating to these new parents' fears.

We applaud ALL of our educators. The problem, Rebekah, is when these "educational options" are foisted upon a community, often against the best interests OF the community. For instance, Citizens of the World is coming into Williamsburg with TWO proposal designed to redress our segregated schools. These proposals are virtually identical to the schools in the area, mind you. There isn't ANYTHING unique in these proposals - no new ideas or systems. And Citizens of the World isn't coming into the socioeconomically and racially isolated areas, they're coming into the areas that ARE diverse - to bring us diverse schools that look exactly like the schools we have. The net result will be a re-segregation of our schools in the name of having diverse charter schools. That's just not sound policy.

These policy decisions, decisions that redistribute public funds into privately managed hands, are best made BY the community, not FOR the community. WAGPOPS is made up of parents, not the teacher's union. We do not support the status quo. We believe in supporting our schools through parent engagement. Charter schools are not pioneers who've cornered the market on new ideas and systems.

It's so amazing how Arts/Letters changed their reconfiguration to offer this progressive education. I believe now the word "progressive" has also been corrupted along the lines of "choice". Parents are moving in and choosing not to be involved in the neighborhoods they chose. I would think by now that the charters don't want to compete for children either. What makes a seat quality? No one has asked Mark Sternberg of the DOE who say she's creating these high quality options. The seat is empty until you enroll your child. Is it the role of the school to turn your child into this quality citizen or do you as a parent instill these traits into our children. Why don't the gentrifiers want to embrace their neighborhood school? Its about who's controlling the school. We have a mayor and chancellor who is trying to erase every legacy in the city. Their closing schools that have ties to communities. I am so tired of people judging schools in the city based on Free/Reduced Lunch. Everyone in the country is hurting and are the 99%. We are more than that. Let's go back to Arts/Letters which is now a K-8 in District 13, oh yeah the principal is leaving in June who begged District 13 to make this happen for these progressive gentrifiers. She's moving on to run a private school. I agree, that most think diversity means "whites included". Our communities in District 13 are diverse without whites. We have families from around the world with different economic status. We don't need the inclusion of whites to be diverse. Why do whites reduce themselves to this type of status. As I told one of my advocate mom's, If whites keep walking past their neighborhood schools, the diversity their looking for will never happen". We're not begging them to enroll their children, keep walking by, at the same time don't ask for space in that same building for your charter exclusion program. This is why the hostility continues. We are all pawns in the 1% game and we refuse to come out of the matrix and work together. There is no perfect school. The community makes the school and when a community is hurting because of unemployment, homelessness then the school should be a safe haven for our children and for the community. The school should be a place to solve issues not a battleground for adults with their own agenda. Also, the money that these teachers have available to spend traveling will be needed for their new school. True educators do not have to search the U.S. True educators know what will work for "all" children. This sounds like a wasteful endeavor. Why aren't they taking some parents from Farragut along with them to see as well? Oh yeah, free and reduced lunch doesn't qualify them for this.

We have wonderfully progressive schools like The Brooklyn New School, Earth School, Children's Workshop, etc. You mean to tell me we need this group to show us how to do it? DOE is capable of replicating these schools just like the charter chains, but they don't want to. SUNY and DOE would rather pump our money into Aris, Pearson, Moskowitz and now Grannis. That keeps them supporting their friends. When their friends get rich, the public gets poor. If these charters are so amazing and have so much private money, surely they can buy their own buildings and set up their own schools, right? No, they'd rather use our schools and our funding for their private agenda. Those who are so supportive of this idea ought to check the other cities whose public schools have been given to the private sector and see how happy they are now......This might be an interesting way to fact check before you are so quick to buy (and sell us all out.)

Todd,
Why don't you just share what you find with the world on a blog, rather than horde your discoveries in a new school? Wouldn't ALL of our schools nationwide benefit from sharing best practices rather than competition? Aren't you in this for the betterment of ALL children?

It's this proprietary relationship to best practices that we find so disturbing about your initiative (aside from the paternalism, colonialism, and lack of democracy). That and the idea that one must travel far and wide to find good pedagogy when all you really need are two feet and a subway card.

Choice? What choice? Do I have any choice at all? Where is the progressive school? Where is the classical education school? The school that teaches Mandarin and Spanish at the age when a child is best suited to learn it - in Kindergarten? Where is the school that offers half-day Kindergarten with a nap, play time and a focus on singing, building with blocks and proper handwriting (handwriting before essay-writing, duuuhhh). What choice?

You can tell from perusing the comments that this is a charged topic. I didn't see a lot of parents' comments so I thought I would add mine. We have a child who will be entering kindergarten this fall and consequently have spent a good deal of time investigating our options. We have found that unless you are wealthy enough to be zoned for a great public school, the decision of how to educate your child can painfully pit your most personal parenting concerns against your broader civic concerns. It's been a difficult process, at turns frustrating and humbling, and I have learned not to judge any parent's decisions.

We are committed to the public school system but are not satisfied with our local options and are probably going to move as a result. Our zoned school is decidedly mediocre on its quantifiable measures and touring it didn't reveal anything to offset that - if anything, the school came off as somewhat chaotically-run and the teachers seemed over-worked and generally stressed (a stark contrast to some of the more celebrated public schools we toured). Meanwhile, we lost out on the lotteries for the two local charters (one, after adjusting for siblings and economic preferences had 5 seats for 350 applicants) and the spike in G&T-qualified kids this year suggests it wouldn't be prudent for us to pin our hopes on getting a seat in one of those programs.

As a result, we are left with the choice of sending our child to a school we don't like or moving out. This has been a painful process and we consider ourselves lucky that we can afford to move - there are many people in the same situation who don't have that option and we as a broader community should be concerned about what we are doing for them, because it doesn't seem like there are any viable solutions on the table right now. A good place to start may be to understand why the wealthiest neighborhoods have the best public schools.

Sadly, some of the generalizations here ring true: some “progressive” schools appear to insulate their student body from the community, serving as a kind of enclave from the neighborhood with which they’re so rarely engaged. Community Roots Charter School, from which these three teachers hail, is an exception to that unfortunate practice. From day-one, students are actively engaged in and educated about community awareness and advocacy year-round; from organizing donations to the local shelter, to working in tandem with other schools to restore a community garden, and so much more. Even the most staunch critics of charter schools have conceded that Community Roots (a non-profit, public school), is not only an exception to the negative profile, but a model for a true “community partnership." These three extraordinary teachers from Community Roots will undoubtedly model their school in like mind.

As one who had every intention of staying with our district elementary school for the long haul, I can unequivocally attest that the decision to bring our children to Community Roots had nothing whatsoever to do with avoiding predominantly black and Hispanic schools. After two years at our local school, where I was consistently underwhelmed by the dissonant communication from school leaders and the wildly inconsistent methodologies practiced in the classrooms, we found Community Roots (whose lottery gives preference to District 13 families and is predominantly black), to engender a sense of harmony and consensus among teachers and staff concerning educational philosophy and overarching methodology. There exists a school-wide culture of respectful, open dialogue between parents, teachers and school leaders alike. I can’t imagine a more utopian educational setting, and yes, I wholeheartedly wish it were so for schools everywhere.

No matter which ways we goes Public school choices, In each structure they must have Parent Engagement Standards thar align to improving student learning. These standards are guideline for schools and distrcit that ensure parents have a voices and apart of civic engagement for school reforms. www.21stparent.com

Parent-U-Turn Standards for Parents, Caregivers and Parent Leaders.

Standards for Parent Engagement, seven standards are delineated. These standards fall under three larger organizers, as shown below, and include:
The Focus of Parents Rights and Advocacy The Conditions for Parent rights and Advocacy Parent as a Advocate

Standard 1: ParentsAccess to information and Data collection:
• Access to information: The school/ district inform parents of testing results and the statistics of the area/school/subject matter.
 Information of results/statistics available via handouts or on-line
 The results would be printed in multiple languages
 Alert system to inform parents that the information is available
 Contact person that parents can ask to help them read and understand results-how readily available is this person.
 Parents understand and use varied assessments to inform instruction, evaluate and ensure student learning.

• Collection and Analyzing data:
o The school welcome parents on campus for research or just to observe.
 How easy or hard is it for a parent to come on campus for these purposes?
 Some type of procedure should be in place and strictly abided by, by all involved as to accommodate the parent as well as not to cause too much classroom disruption.
 There a person who is readily available to provide the parent support to conduct research.

Standards 2: Parents in Decision-Making Roles
 Parents must be representative of school population, for example 1 parent for 3,000 students is not acceptable
 Space for parents to have access to administrators.
 The attitude of administration generally open to parent collaboration.
 Parents treated as reflective thinkers with possible solutions.
 Expanding roles of existing modes of parent representation, for example the PTA
 Parents can carry out research for the school, conduct trainings for other parents or even teachers on various subjects

Step 3: Parents as Student Advocates:
 Teachers are open to have parents contact/participate within their classes
 The school is informing parents on how to contact people within the power map
o For example: A handout which lists, “If you have a problem with _________ then you would contact _________ at number and office.”
 This can be in a handout that was sent home but is readily available at school functions, front office, and maybe even in the classroom.
 Trainings provided for the parent and school personnel which include power-mapping.
 Provide a list of common school-used terms complete with the definition of the term and the context it is most commonly used is readily available and sent home.
 Parents collaborate and communicate with students, parents, other educators, administrators and the community to support student learning

Standards 4: Parent Leaders at Home and in the School-Community
 Information being passed out to parents to inform them of the college process and resources available to their child and family.
o Handouts
 A process for reserving space at the school to facilitating easy meeting space for parents and the community.
 Assigned a person to be able to go to for trainings
 Parents assume responsibility for professional growth, performance, and involvement as individuals and as members of a learning community

Standards 5: Parents Effective Two-Way Communication:
 Efficient amount of translators readily available for all languages spoken by parents at school functions
o Handouts in multiple languages
o “Efficient” would be at least 90% of the teachers who need translators have them
 For any type of communication home, teleparent or phone calls home, are the comments balanced between positive comments and things that the student needs improvement on.
 Teacher respond to e-mail of phone messages within a timely manner.
 Ongoing evaluation of effectiveness of the parent liaison.

Standards 6: Parent District Level Support
 The district have a point-person whom the parent representative, the administrator who is the point-person at the school, and any other relevant persons could go to for support and resources. How available is this person?
o This person could even run the parent-district meetings and act like the liaison for the district.
 An effect program that supports parent participation, may have minimum of 25 parent.

Standards 7: Friendly School Atmosphere
 Is the school clean?
o Trash
o Tagging
o Paint: Dingy? Peeling?
 Welcome signs
 Office personnel and Teachers maintain professionalism, have an understanding of and practices good customer service.
 Parents understand student learning and development, and respect the diversity of the students.

We are living in a very sterile age for education. The choice you're looking for, Vicki, will cost you about $40K/year at Packard or St. Ann's or Dalton. All public schools, charter and non-charter are being pushed towards mediocrity by our national obsession with bottom-line standardized test scores. I have helped start two charter schools in Queens, both of which have tremendous parent and teacher input, are racially and economically integrated and promote arts and progressive education. We are not undermining public education or sticking our thumb in the eye of the UFT. We believe in public education and are working to create what seems to us a better model.

Folks in Brooklyn looking for alternative school options should check out the RAD School - www.radschool.org. We are looking for kids ages 5-7.

The question is "Are you satisfied with the public school choices in your NYC neighborhood?" followed by a couple of paragraphs about terrific charter schools expanding into new territory. The big problem I see here is less the free PR to Moscowitz et. al. than the unexamined acceptance of the concept of "choice" we have in NYC.

NYC elementary school parents can either send their child to their "zoned" school (which vary tremendously in quality), or they can play the lottery (with no guarantee of acceptance anywhere) among a mish mosh of "schools of choice", charter schools, and gifted and talented programs (which use tests that might as well be lotteries). That's not "choice." That's just byzantine misdirection.

"Choice" would be a genuine ability to select a suitable elementary school program for your child among a range of high quality options. As long as there are bad zoned schools, and gate-keeping mechanism for the alternatives, there isn't choice.

Poaching children? Who do the children belong to? The State?

I have yet to encounter a parent that doesn't want choice.

The chart is helpful to describe how city planning is not taken into account at ALL in the process of situating (let alone approving) charter schools. D14 has 20 % of it's schools as charters with 3 MORE slated to open in Fall 2013, but if you were to look at enrollment numbers, it's even more intense. This Fall, 29% of our D14 kindergartners are enrolled in D14 charter schools. We're looking at parallel systems here. Our community has said NO MORE CHARTERS in D14!!! And no one is listening. Even our high performing schools (there are several of them which perform higher than even the top performing charter schools) are under-enrolled. Here's an article which goes LOCAL with these issues:

http://thewgnews.com/2012/09/...

Creating new schools is local city planning and MUST take into account the educational landscape of the community. We're creating new schools for the sake of new schools, not with any consideration of community impact and the results will be a radical re-segregation of D14.

I'm just wondering about the source for this data because the numbers here don't mesh with those on DOE's site. For example, you say Dist 18 has 7 charters b the DOE list (http://schools.nyc.gov/commun...) has only 5. You have 8 for District 16; DOE only list 6. Is their list out of date? Or are you including charters who that have not yet opened? Is there a place where readers cab see your list? Thanks.