This article brought to you by a donation to our Writer’s Fund from Five Leaves.

Williamsburg and Greenpoint Parents Our Public Schools! or WAGPOPS! is an organization formed in 2011 by parents of public school students in North Brooklyn’s District 14.

The group, which is the focus of a recent Village Voice story, consists of hundreds of parents and community members “who support and promote schools that are of, for and by the community.”

Just this…

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  1. Are we really surprised someone with the last name Moscowitz was recruiting people into a money making venture? Theyre all about the $$. All the way to the mayor. How many inflated contracts and project costs in the city all to benefit a certain group? Nobody wants to say it because its not politically correct. Just do some research.

    Not even our children or the public school system are safe from this type of corruption. Thankful to this group of parents for standing up!

    1. Really? The first comment on this article is an anti-semitic accusing Eva Moskowitz of being a money grubbing Jew? Nice job.

    2. Again, “hipster bashing” is not allowed in the comments but anti-Semitism is?

      Mike Bloomberg, self-made billionaire, has a track record of giving hundreds of millions of dollars to charities.

  2. Thank you for this interview. However, I would like to hear the argument for new administrations to come into some of these schools as well.

  3. I am completely flummoxed by Ms. Parker’s financial assessment. How do the ‘free-market profiteers’ make money off this? The ‘investors’ are actually donors. They are not receiving money back from ‘investing’ in these school. They do get tax benefits from making charitable donations, like they would if they donated to WAGPOPS or any other non-profit organization, but there is no financial return to the investors. Of all the nutty things Ms. Parker has said, and she has said thousands of nutty things, this is by far the nuttiest.

    I’m not sure what Ms. Parker is less skilled to do: understand simple finance and tax rules, or serve as an authority on whether Brooklyn and NYC parents want more and better school options (hint: they do).

    1. Success Academy fan,

      I thought I explained “New Market Tax Credits” clearly, but I guess I didn’t. Investing in a charter school is not the same as giving money to a charity. Here is a link that point out exactly how “investors” make money with charter schools. I didn’t make this up. But if you need more than this, feel free to post again. I am happy to substantiate this brief interview with evidence.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-big-business-of-charter-schools/2012/08/16/bdadfeca-e7ff-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_blog.html

      Success Academy is particularly lucrative. The recent NYDaily news article by well-respected investigative journalist Juan Gonzalez who foiled Success Academy’s tax returns showed a $23.5MILLION dollar surplus even as she asked claimed poverty to increase her management fees 50%.

      https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eva-moskowitz-success-academy-charter-schools-disproportionate-share-state-education-money-article-1.1101668

  4. The charter chains are just like any other chain, one size does not and never will fit all, especially in such a diverse community as Greenpoint/Williamsburg. Besides, we desperately need more middle school options and have available space in the existing schools that are better performing than these chains.

  5. There is a lot of money to be made by the charters and it’s largely because they are uncountable on so many levels. For example, why is Eva Moskowitz allowed to open a Success Academy Charter School as the “lead applicant,” then populate that school’s board with her own people, and then the board hires Success Charter Network, the company of which she is CEO, to manage their operations? In some instances, people who sit on the Network board ALSO sit on the board of an individual school. Even SUNY’s own evaluation of a Success Academy Charter School brings this into question:

    “A concern to the school evaluation team is that board members can hold dual membership on the Network and school boards, possibly creating a conflict of interest.” p. 19: https://newyorkcharters.org/documents/HSA2EvaluationReport2ndYear200910.pdf

    They may try to hide behind their non-profit status, but with such an incestuous financial management model and complete control of revenue, the Network can rake in public funds and then pay themselves as much as they want, even if it exceeds standard compensation, as in the case of Eva’s salary.

    As has already begun to happen in other cities, the next big wave of profiteering in these charter deals will come from real estate. It is probably no coincidence that Gideon Stein — who sits on the boards of 1) a Harlem Success Academy School, 2) the Success Academy Network, and 3) the Tapestry Project (founded by Eva Moskowitz’s husband, Eric Grannis) — is a real estate developer. By foisting co-location on us years ago, Joel Klein created a masterstroke: knowing that public school parents and the union would fight co-locations on ethical grounds, it paves the way for charters to say they need funds to build their own schools. Either way, public schools lose and profiteers win.

    I hope that all parents will read up on this issue. Here are a few articles to get started:

    A brief history of the charter school movement in NYC:
    https://gothamschools.org/2011/08/31/we-read-steven-brill%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cclass-warfare%E2%80%9D-so-you-don%E2%80%99t-have-to/

    Public Role, Private Gain
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/13/AR2008121302079.html

    Insider deals, DOE gives $26 mil to billionaire to build his Red Hook charter:
    https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/09/we-fought-invasion-of-ps-15-real-life.html

    What profiteering looks like:
    (“ ‘We can make money solving big problems,’ Bradley said in a telephone interview. ‘When I make an investment, I look for the sucking sound of demand, and there is a huge sucking sound of demand in urban education across the country.’ ”)
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-02/agassi-forms-fund-to-build-charter-schools-with-canyon-capital.html

    An Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform:
    https://www.scribd.com/doc/78177066/False-Choices-The-Economic-Argument-Against-Market-Driven-Education-Reform

    Pennsylvania Schools’ Financing Fight Pits District Against ‘Charter on Steroids’:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/education/pennsylvania-schools-funding-fight-pits-district-against-charter.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    1. brooke feels she speaks for all parents in D-14 but in reality that is not the case. just as many parents disagree with her views and are strong supporters of the charters that exist in D-14.

  6. Marr, The fact is that at BOTH Hearings for Citizens of the World, hundreds of parents showed up opposing the school and a combined 4 parents showed up in favor.

    WAGPOPS! got widespread support across the district with informed parents and by informing parents. We noticed that the only people buying into the Citizens of the World sales pitch were parents of very young children who had no experience with NYC public schools.

    I could make a long list of the false claims Citizens of the World made about our neighborhood schools in order to set their own school in relief. Here are just two examples of how the false marketing worked 1) Citizens of the World Charter Schools told parents that none of our neighborhood schools offered “differentiated instruction,” in spite of “differentiated instruction” being a mandate for NYC DOE public schools for at least ten years. 2) Citizens of the World boasted about their fabulous Everyday Math curriculum, quoting from the Everyday Math sales website. Sounds great, but the NYC DOE mandated Everyday Math years ago (remember the Math Wars?) only to reject it in recent years for all the reasons teachers told them to in the first place.

    The steadfast supporters of Citizens of the World, and there really aren’t many of them (we’ve seen their email lists), can never seem to articulate what they find unique about Citizens of the World. Members of WAGPOPS! have had plenty of discussion on and off the brooklynbabyhui with them about this, so we’re familiar with the paucity of their arguments. I’ve also thoroughly read the Citizens of the World proposal which details (as much as there are any details) the reasons why parents want these schools. When pressed to go beyond “I just want more choice,” the supporters invariably point to the non-union teachers (read: TFA is more white than our public school teachers) and the “diversity” of its student body (with a goal of 55% white, Citizens would definitely be whiter than our neighborhood schools). Draw your own conclusions.

    1. I’ve looked at the proposal as well. I’m stumped by the Licensing Agreement between the school and the Network for “intellectual property” at a rate of 3% of revenue, plus the “actual costs of additional services” (management fees). I’m not suprised that they’ve found a way to siphon off 3%, for nothing more than use of a logo and recruiting a couple principals and an Exec Director. Its just that the “actual costs of additional services” is so vague. What does that mean? Its such an unusual way of structuring the relationship. Most other chain Charter Schools have a CMO, whether for profit or non-profit. This one decides to license its “intellectual property” –I’m not sure it really has anything that is unique, other than a name and a logo. How can they get away with that? Clearly the “actual costs of additional services” are management fees, but they don’t want to call them that for some reason, leaving it open-ended. Can someone help me understand this better?

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