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700 Students Apply to Controversial UWS Charter School

By Leslie Albrecht | April 6, 2011 7:29pm | Updated on April 7, 2011 9:10am
Upper West Success Academy will open this fall in the Brandeis High School building on West 84th Street.
Upper West Success Academy will open this fall in the Brandeis High School building on West 84th Street.
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DNAinfo/Leslie Albrecht

By Leslie Albrecht

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

UPPER WEST SIDE — The controversial charter school that some parents fought to keep out of the Upper West Side received 700 applications for its kindergarten and first-grade classes, officials announced Wednesday.

Upper West Success Academy, which will open in August 2011, held an admissions lottery Wednesday where a computer randomly selected students for 130 kindergarten seats and 54 first grade slots, a spokeswoman said.

Parents will be notified by mail next week whether their children are among those who won a seat; those who didn't will be placed on a wait list.

Previous lotteries have been media events showcased in the documentary films "The Lottery" and "Waiting For Superman," but critics complained that while this year's selection process was technically open to the public, there was little advance notice and scant information about the application date and whereabouts made available.

Upper West Success Academy charter school received 700 applications from District 3 parents, the school announced Wednesday.
Upper West Success Academy charter school received 700 applications from District 3 parents, the school announced Wednesday.
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DNAinfo/Leslie Albrecht

Among those awaiting the results is George Schneiderman, a father of four-year-old twin boys who applied to Upper West Success Academy, several other charter schools and more than a dozen traditional public schools.

Schneiderman lives on West 117th Street and his children are zoned for P.S. 76, which received an F for student performance on its latest Department of Education progress report.

The father of two said he applied for Upper West Success Academy, which is part of Success Charter Network, because he was impressed with what he saw at SCN schools he visited.

The schools had dedicated science, math and chess teachers for elementary classes, and kindergartners were performing daily science experiments, Schneiderman said. "The test scores suggest that they're doing something right," Schneiderman said.

SCN's Harlem Success Academy I earned an A in student performance on its latest DOE progress report, and an A for overall progress.

Schneiderman said he was also attracted to the school's Upper West Side location because it seems likely to have economic and racial diversity, something he was looking for in a school.

Success Charter Network officials pointed to the 700 applications from District 3 parents as proof that Upper West Siders are "desperate" for better schools, but locals had waged a strenuous battle against Upper West Success Academy.

The charter school's move into the Upper West Side sparked protests as soon as Department of Education officials announced last fall that the charter school would share space with an existing public school.

Elected officials, Community Board 7, leaders from District 3 and parents rallied against the space-sharing plan — known as co-location — because they feared that the charter school would siphon scarce resources away from existing public schools.

But charter school officials contended that Upper West Success Academy would offer top-notch public education in a neighborhood plagued by overcrowded schools.

Ultimately parents lost their fight and the city's Panel for Educational Policy approved Upper West Success Academy's move into the Brandeis Educational Campus, a building that houses five high schools.

Schneiderman said the debate was on his mind as he applied for schools, and it's one of the reasons Upper West Success Academy wasn't his first choice.

He said he'd prefer to send his children to the bilingual New York French American Charter School in Harlem because he wants them to learn a foreign language.

But the fight over whether to let Upper West Success Academy share space with an existing public school was a factor in his decision too, he said.

"It can't be pleasant to be at a school when basically the students, faculty and staff in the other schools in the building all tried to keep you out," Schneiderman said. "It just seems like there's a prospect of ongoing unpleasantness there."

But he added that the protests over co-location weren't enough to stop him from applying to Upper West Success Academy. "That's a minor consideration compared to finding a decent school," Schneiderman said.