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Read the press release here.

Controversial Charter Not Moving Into Crown Heights Middle School, DOE Says

 Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, right, told parents at a CEC meeting at M.S. 61 in Crown Heights on Wednesday night that a charter school will not be co-located at the school.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, right, told parents at a CEC meeting at M.S. 61 in Crown Heights on Wednesday night that a charter school will not be co-located at the school.
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DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

CROWN HEIGHTS — Parents and staff at a local middle school are celebrating this week after Department of Education Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that a charter school will not be moving into M.S. 61, as some of them had feared.

“We are not putting a charter school in this building,” Fariña told those assembled at a Community Education Council meeting at the Crown Heights middle school at Empire Boulevard and New York Avenue Wednesday night, drawing applause.

Families, alumni and staff have been rallying in recent weeks to fight the rumored co-location of Launch Expeditionary Learning Charter School at M.S. 61 after staff at the middle school saw state administrators touring the building last month  a move teacher Rhonda Morman called “disrespectful.”

“You’re walking in our building, you’re trying to size up what you want. I mean, come on,” she said.

Morman, a teacher for more than 25 years in the gifted and talented program at M.S. 61, was part of a group from the middle school who made their case against the co-location at several public meetings in past weeks, most recently at a Panel for Educational Policy meeting held last week in Manhattan, she said.

That same coalition showed up to Wednesday’s CEC meeting, ready to continue their plea and thinking the fight was not over.

“We did not think this was going to happen tonight,” said Lisa Duprey-Simon, whose son Pryor attends seventh grade at M.S. 61. She said she was “overwhelmed” when the chancellor delivered the news.

“We thought we would have to go to a couple of more meetings, appeal to a whole level of people, rally as much as we can,” she said.

Fariña did not explain the details behind the decision to keep Launch Expeditionary Learning out of M.S. 61 Wednesday night, saying only that there were “lots of reasons for this.”

“Some of these decisions are out of my hands, but it’s always nice when I can come and give a community the news they want to hear,” she said.

M.S. 61’s building is just over half full, according to the most recent DOE data, with 777 children enrolled in the 2013-2014 school year and a total capacity of 1,375 students.

It’s unclear where the city will find space for Launch Expeditionary Learning, which is one of four charters the DOE approved for co-locations in September and that the city must find space for, under state mandate.

Inquiries to the charter school and to the DOE were not immediately returned Thursday.