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A state Supreme Court judge has rejected a request from public school parents and advocacy organizations for a preliminary injunction to require New York City to charge charter schools rent for the space they occupy inside public school buildings.

The Success Academy Charter schools are among the city's highest performing and most controversial schools, as they are state-funded and housed rent-free in public school buildings, and on Tuesday a state board allowed five of these schools boards to merge under a single board of trustees. NY1's Education reporter Lindsey Christ filed the following report.

A growing body of research has examined how cultural capital, recently broadened to include not only high-status cultural activities but also a range of different parenting practices, influences children's educational success. Most of this research assumes that parents' current class location is the starting point of class transmission. However, does the ability of parents to pass advantages to their children, particularly through specific cultural practices, depend solely on their current class location or also on their class of origin? The authors address this question by defining social background as a combination of parents' cur- rent class location and their own family backgrounds. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement, the authors examine how different categories of social back- ground are related to parenting practices and children's academic achievement. The results offer novel insights into the transmission of class advantage across generations and inform debates about the complex processes of cultural reproduction and cultural mobility.

Barack Obama is presiding over the beginning of a process that will inexorably result in the privatization of our school system. That doesn't meant of course that all of our schools will be owned by big corporations; it means instead that within the next five to ten years, our largest school systems will be enmeshed with the private sector, and the regulatory framework that encourages same will be defended vociferously by a new and fierce network of rent seekers. Within a generation, "public schools" will be public only in the sense that they will rely on primarily on government money-similar in that way to the defense industry.

"As previously reported on this blog by an anonymous teacher at Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy charter chain, parents, teachers, students, and staff have been directed to participate in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge on October 8 to protest any slowdown in allocation of  public space to charter schools or any effort to charge the charters rent for public space."

"Few people realize that the struggle for civil rights and racial integration had a northern component and many battles were fought in the New York metropolitan area. Palisades Amusement Park in Fort Lee, New Jersey would not permit African Americans in its famous saltwater swimming pool until 1961. Levittown on Long Island originally required homebuyers to sign a contract that they would not sell or rent to Blacks. Many local battles of the Civil Rights era took place in Hempstead, so Dawn Sumner and Claire LaMothe had students learn about these struggles. "

New York City Parents File Lawsuit Against Separate and Unequal Charter Co-locations and Illegal Free Rent and Services to Charter Schools

New York State Education Law requires that when a district provides space or services to a charter school it shall do so " at cost", and yet the NYC Department of Education provides free space and services for nearly one hundred co-located charter schools. Using figures from the Independent Budget Office, we estimate that the space and services they currently receive is worth more than $100 million annually, and that this practice contributes to the fact that these schools receive about $3,000 more per student in public funds annually than traditional public schools.   Our lawsuit seeks to stop the New York City Department of Education from violating the law.  Their illegal provision of free space and services has created a separate and unequal school system across the city, sparked divisive battles between parents and community members, and encouraged rapid charter school expansion at the expense of our public schools. 

The battle over Charter Schools and whether or not they should be allowed to use space in public school buildings free of charge is playing out in court.