Harlem kids beg for better schools as state nixes new charters

[Kamaji]

Harlem kids beg for better schools as state nixes new charters

By Mary Kay Linge, Georgia Worrell, Susan Edelman and Rich Calder
May 27, 2023

Students in one embattled Harlem district have left their public schools in droves – and some who remain are begging for a way out.

Two-thirds of District 5’s elementary and middle schoolers, and 57% of students there overall, have spurned failing and dangerous Department of Education-run schools, making the district the only one of 32 in New York City where a majority of kids attend a publicly funded, privately run charter school.

“We’re so miserable,” Mariama, a junior at the DOE’s Frederick Douglass Academy in East Harlem told The Post. “Please help us!”

But the stark enrollment imbalance has now made District 5 the target of a poison-pill rule in the new state budget barring new charters in any such district.

Under Gov. Hochul’s April budget deal, no new charter schools can be placed in any district that already enrolls more than 55% of its students in the alternative learning institutions.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2023/05/27/miserable-harlem-kids-beg-for-help-as-state-kos-charters/