Charter School Anger Boils Over as City Moves to Vote Tonight Updated February 24, 2010 3:06pm

The Bloomberg Administration's attempts to move charter schools into public school buildings has prompted protests across Manhattan. (Suzanne Ma/DNAinfo)

By Jon Schuppe

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — The city's Panel for Educational Policy will vote Wednesday night on proposals to allow charter schools to expand into more city classrooms, a move that has widened the rift between supporters of private and public education.

The panel voted last month to close 19 failing public schools despite a wave of protests and legal battles. In many cases, those schools are bring replaced by charter schools.

Wednesday’s vote doesn’t involve closings, but to public-school supporters it represents another step in the Bloomberg Administration's attempts to squeeze them out.

The panel is expected to approve the new proposals. Eight of its 13 members are appointed by the mayor, who is trying to revamp and cut costs in the nation's largest public school system.

In East Harlem, Bloomberg wants to move a charter school, Harlem Success Academy II, into a building currently occupied by three schools. Of them, the KAPPA II charter school, is being shut down for poor performance. The remaining public schools, P.S. 30 and P.S. 138, which serves special-education students, will share the building with Harlem Success Academy.

The proposal was subject of a heated hearing Monday night at the P.S. 30 building, where supporters of the school said that Harlem Success Academy should find its own space. P.S. 30, they said, was doing fine academically.

Many parents and teachers have argued that the expansion of charter schools drains money from public schools, and is leading to the gradual privatization of the 1.1 million-pupil system.

The Coalition of Educational Justice issued a report this month calling the “co-location” policy “callous and often reckless.” The moves “are creating a two-tiered system in which charter schools expand at the cost of existing schools that continue to serve the lowest-income students, English language learners and students in special education,” the group said.