ALBANY, N.Y. June 3, 2019 — New York State United Teachers today applauded the state Board of Regents for rejecting early renewals of two Success Academy charter schools. The schools were seeking renewal through 2026 despite the fact that their current term doesn’t expire until 2021.
“While there are some SUNY trustees who would rather blindly cozy up to wealthy charter interests than demand real accountability from them, the Regents did the right thing once again in rejecting this absurd request for early renewals,” NYSUT President Andy Pallotta said. “Success Academy’s track record of failing to serve our children with special needs and English Language Learners made this decision by the Regents a no-brainer. We hope the SUNY Charter School Committee will actually consider the facts on the second go-around and reject this blatant attempt by Success Academy to avoid a more accurate state review of their performance.”
Under the law, charter schools seeking renewals of their charters must submit educational objective progress reports; detailed financial statements; copies of their annual reports; and information about how they will meet their enrollment and retention goals for students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. While charters typically are renewed in the academic year their term expires, applying for early renewal years in advance allows charter networks to dodge a timely review of their fitness to serve students and their communities.
The SUNY Charter School Committee can now choose to resubmit the renewals to the Regents with modifications, resubmit the renewals without modifications or abandon the charters.
“At a time when our state should be considering more transparency and public accountability for greedy corporate charter interests, it is incumbent upon the SUNY Charter School Committee to do the right thing and reject these early renewals,” Pallotta said.
New York State United Teachers is a statewide union with more than 600,000 members in education, human services and health care. NYSUT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.