By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — An Upper West Side charter school embroiled in a court battle is now the target of a second legal challenge, meaning more uncertainty for students planning to attend the school this fall.
Upper West Success Academy is slated to open inside the Brandeis Educational Campus on West 84th Street, but a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP aims to stop the school from moving into the Brandeis building.
The teachers' union lawsuit, which also seeks to prevent nearly two dozen schools from closing, is the second legal challenge mounted against Upper West Success Academy, a new school in the Success Charter Network.
A group of Upper West Side parents sued the Department of Education in April over the charter school. Like the teachers' union, they want to stop Upper West Success Academy's move into the Brandeis building, where the charter school's kindergarteners would share space with students from five high schools.
It's highly unusual for one charter school to face two lawsuits, said Todd Ziebarth, vice president of state advocacy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
"It's reasonable for folks to raise questions about how [schools sharing a building] is going to work, but that's very different from laying down in the middle of the road and trying to stop it altogether," Ziebarth said.
If the lawsuits succeed, Upper West Success Academy may not open, which would leave the 184 children who won seats at the school in limbo. Parents who applied to Upper West Success Academy have said they did so because private schools are too expensive and they don't want to send their children to poor-performing neighborhood schools.
The teachers' union lawsuit names 18 charter schools slated to share space with existing public schools, a process known as "co-location." The suit claims co-locations illegally give more space and resources to the charter school students in public school buildings, in some cases favoring them with more time in the cafeteria, library and gym.
"Many of the co-locations do not provide for tenable — let alone equitable and comparable — use of shared space," the lawsuit states.
Those complaints echo what many Upper West Side parents have been saying for months about Upper West Success Academy.
Parents at Frank McCourt High School, one of the schools in the Brandeis building, have said allowing the charter school into the building could mean McCourt students will lose access to resources such as a ceramics studio with a kiln, a blackbox theater and choral rehearsal room.
In a victory for the parents who sued the DOE, a judge recently ordered a temporary halt to the construction needed to move Upper West Success into the Brandeis building while the court considers the parents' lawsuit.
A spokeswoman for Upper West Success Academy said in an e-mail that officials are "taking a close look at the implications of the [teachers' union] lawsuit." She added, "There is so clearly a need for this school and we hope our parents prevail."
