What’s the Role for Charter Schools?

Posted by & filed under CGR Staff, Rochester Business Journal.

Kent GardnerWhen Eva Moskowitz chaired the Education Committee of the New York City Council, she demanded to know why Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein didn’t do a better job improving public education. Rochester Schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, then a regional superintendent in the NYC schools, remembers his own time on the Moskowitz hot seat. A New York Magazine profile describes her as having “grilled and filleted” administrators in a series of 100 hearings in 2002.

Bloomberg called her bluff. “If you think we’re doing such a bad job, why don’t you give it a try?” So in 2006 Moskowitz founded the Success Charter Network with the first Harlem Success Academy.  The network now runs four schools in Harlem with another three approved for the fall. Moskowitz plans to increase the network to forty schools.

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