NEW YORK CITY — The state has approved the charters of 14 new Success Academy schools set to open in the city, including one slated for District 3 that's set to open next year.
Of the 14 schools — which are aiming to open in every borough except Staten Island — four are planned to launch in the 2015 school year, with the rest expected the following year, the charter network said.
Success Academy can handle that level of growth and there is enough demand to justify the expansion, said Susan Miller Barker, executive director of the Charter Schools Institute at SUNY, during a meeting in Albany Wednesday of the the university's board of trustees, which authorizes new charter schools in the state.
"The one thing that I am convinced of is that the [charter] parents and the communities... do not care about the politics of this issue. They want their kids to have good schools," trustee Joseph Belluck told his colleagues at the meeting.
As a parent, he said he identified with that goal and was therefore amenable to authorizing the new charter schools.
In District 3, Success Academy is planning to open a 675-seat K-5 school by the fall of 2015, according to its application.
Earlier this week, the District 3 President's Council authored a petition opposing the charter school that had 347 signatures as of Wednesday morning. Supporters said District 3 schools are already overcrowded and do not have room for a co-location.
Community Education Council 3 has called for a moratorium on new Success Academy charter schools in the district until they make more of their data public, including information about enrollment and student achievement.
At a hearing on the charter plan last week, parents criticized Success Academy for not sharing proposed locations along with its application.
Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz said in a statement that her network will work with the DOE to find locations for the schools.
The DOE did not respond to a request for comment on a possible location for the new District 3 charter.
"There is clearly tremendous demand from parents for high-quality schools in New York City with the applications far exceeding the number of available seats in our schools," Moskowitz's statement continued.
Success Academy claimed that 16,000 families applied for 3,000 open seats this past year. The network currently operates 22 schools across the city.
Under new state legislation, the city is forced to find rent-free locations for the charter schools in existing public buildings or pay as much as $40 million in rent for the schools.
