By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — Parents worried that a lawsuit could stop a new charter school from opening on the Upper West Side will rally Tuesday in support of the controversial school.
Families whose children have won seats at Upper West Success Academy charter school will hold a 9:30 a.m. rally at Brandeis Educational Campus on West 84th Street to demand that the charter school open in August.
Upper West Success Academy is slated to open in the Brandeis building, which is home to five high schools, but parents whose kids attend those high schools sued the Department of Education earlier this month to stop the charter school from moving in.
If the lawsuit succeeds, it will leave the 184 kindergartners who've been accepted to Upper West Success Academy with few options, said Kerri Lyon, a spokeswoman for Success Charter Network, which operates Upper West Success Academy.
"Nearly 200 families who made a choice to send their children to this school because they viewed it as the very best option are now faced with the very real possibility that they'll be denied that option come the fall," Lyon said.
"They want the community to know that they want this school, and they deserve to be able to send their children to the public school of their choice."
The lawsuit alleges that the DOE didn't follow proper procedures when it proposed moving the charter school into the Brandeis building. The parents behind the suit want the city's Panel for Education policy to reverse the vote that allowed Upper West Success Academy to share space in the Brandeis building.
Parents whose children attend schools in the Brandeis building have battled Upper West Success Academy's move into the building for months. They worry the charter school will siphon resources away from the existing public schools in the building.
Lisa Steglich, a member of the parent association at Frank McCourt High School, which is inside the Brandeis buiding, told DNAinfo in January that sharing space with Upper West Success Academy could mean losing access to some of McCourt's most valuable resources, such as a ceramics studio with a kiln, a blackbox theater and choral rehearsal room.
Parents are also concerned about a DOE plan to spend $500,000 to build a separate cafeteria for charter school students, carving space out of the existing Brandeis building, Steglich said.
"It's a wonderful facility, we have great teachers and enthusiastic students and we want to be able to continue on our path," Steglich said in January. "We don't want to be restricted on how we can grow."
Steglich is one of the plaintiffs in the recently filed lawsuit to stop the charter school.
Despite the controversy, Upper West Success Academy attracted 700 applicants for 184 kindergarten seats.
Lyon said those parents approached Upper West Success when they heard about the lawsuit, asking what they could do in response.
Among them is Daniella Ballou-Aaref, whose 4-year-old daughter Sabine was accepted at Upper West Success Academy.
Ballou-Aaref said decided to try to get her daughter into the charter school after she attended an informational session with Success Charter Network founder Eva Moskowitz and her husband toured schools in the Success Charter Network.
"We were really impressed with what they've accomplished in their other schools, their curriculum and their approach," Ballou-Aares said. "We thought our local option wasn't particularly strong, so we were looking at other options outside our zoned school."
Ballou-Aaref, who lives at West 111th Street and Broadway, is zoned for P.S. 165 on West 109th Street. The school scored a "D" in student performance on its 2009-10 DOE progress report.
