One more reason to go the the October 15 PEP meeting Tuesday to challenge the Moskowitz dominated charter lobby and punch holes in their forced Oct. 8 march over the Brooklyn Bridge.According to DOE records, in 2011/2012 Upper West Success was only able to fill 164 of its authorized 188 Kindergarten and 1st grade seat (an estimated marketing cost of some $6000 per enrollee). We estimate that Eva spent over a million dollars on recruitment/marketing for Upper West Success alone in 2010/2011 school year. According to Eva, and to SUNY, her charter authorizer, this effort generated a wait list of 1400 kids, on top of 188 lottery "winners"... Noah Gotbaum
Success Charter forced march over BklynBrModeled on Bataan Death march
The Success Charter Network, a chain of charter schools headed by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, spent an astonishing $1.6million in the 2009-2010 school year just for publicity and recruitment of new students, the group's most recent financial reports show. ... Juan Gonzales, Success Charter Network has been just that for Eva Moskowitz but not for public schools
Talk about inflating demand for your product...Not just protests but every single hearing has a videographer and often a sound guy. And sometimes while I get pushed around by DOE security, these guys who are not press get special treatment.
The money went to everything you can imagine - bus stop ads, multiple mass mailings of glossy color brochures to tens of the thousands of homes, a small army of part-time workers going door-to-door to sign up applicants, high profile "school choice" fairs.
Community leaders and educators in Harlem and the South Bronx - where those first seven schools were located - say they have never encountered such a relentless and well-financed campaign aimed at convincing parents to desert the public schools. Many are stunned that the nonprofit Success network is able to spend so lavishly while regular city schools are being forced to cut their budgets.
Many neighborhood parents and community leaders say Moskowitz enjoys special treatment from education officials both in Albany and at Tweed. They say once she sets up in public school, she keeps insisting on more and more space for her programs.
The Success network even spent $72,000 last year on a videographer whose duties included filming protests against its schools.
And this from Noah Gotbaum:
Why did/does she need to spend all that money? Because the "huge" demand and "enormous" waiting lists claimed by Success, and by Citizens of the World, and by the charter lobby are, for the most part, fictitious. Either that, or the screening out and cream-skimming of applicants by Eva and other charters is so great that out of 1400 on the waitlist they were unable to find 20 kids THEY would be willing to accept.I'm looking through my hats to see which one I will eat if deBlasio gets Eva to pay rent.
We asked Success Charter how this could be and didn't receive an answer. Then we asked the DOE, and they directed us to SUNY. SUNY then directed us to Success Charter's Board of Directors. No response. So CEC3 FOILed for information on the lottery/matriculation/enrollment process.
That was 3 years ago.
We are still waiting.
I am hopeful that under Mayor deBlasio the waiting will end, and transparency, accountability and equity for our schools, will begin. I also hope that Bloomberg, the DOE and Success won't be allowed to destroy all the evidence before they leave office.
Noah
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