By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — Parents rallied Tuesday in support of a controversial Upper West Side charter school that's the subject of a recent lawsuit.
Parents whose children have been accepted at Upper West Success Academy, a new charter school that's opening on the Upper West Side this fall, spoke out in support of the school Tuesday morning on the steps of Brandeis Educational Campus on West 84th Street.
That's the same spot where another group of parents announced a lawsuit earlier this month aimed at stopping the charter school from moving into the Brandeis building, which is already home to five high schools.
Parents of children who attend those high schools say Upper West Success Academy doesn't belong in the Brandeis building. They worry that sharing space with the charter school will mean less space and resources for the existing public schools at Brandeis.
They also say it's not appropriate to place Upper West Success Academy's kindergarteners alongside high school-aged students.
But on Tuesday morning, parents who've applied to Upper West Success Academy said it was their children who would lose out if the lawsuit succeeds in blocking the charter school from opening.
Upper West Success Academy received 700 applications for 184 kindergarten seats.
"We support the school basically because of choice," said Matt Morey, whose twins were accepted at Upper West Success Academy. "Parents should have a choice in what kind of school they send their children to."
Morey said he applied for seats at the charter school because sending his children to private school would be too expensive, and his local school didn't score well on recent progress reports.
Eva Moskowitz, the former City Councilwoman who founded Success Charter Network, which runs Upper West Success Academy, spoke at the rally, saying that "narrow politics" shouldn't be allowed to defeat the charter school.
"This is not just about August and September," Moskowitz said. "It's really about our city and whether we're going to be offering our parents choices and exceptional quality. It's hard enough to live in New York and we don't need to make the schooling problem any more difficult."
Upper West Success Academy filed a motion Tuesday to dismiss the Brandeis parents' lawsuit.
Critics of charter schools have succeeded in stopping other charter schools from sharing space with existing public schools. The state Department of Education recently overturned a decision to move a charter school into P.S. 9 in Brooklyn.
