The Ocean Hill Charter School and Christopher Avenue Community School, who share a building in Brownsville, Brooklyn, have a disparity in school grades and performance.
Chelsea Garcia, 6, (center at top) works inside her first-grade classroom at Success Academy at Bedford-Stuyvesant One.
Dewayne Smith, 13, is an eighth-grader attending School for the Urban Environment, 70 Tompkins Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, says he would fix the computers at his school — if it had any.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/1-building-2-schools-nyc-unequal-education-system-article-1.2151259
Two fourth-graders who attend classes in the same building share a cafeteria, an address and an auditorium — but the quality of their education is a world apart.
Jordan Joseph Sannon, 11, goes to Leadership Preparatory Ocean Hill Charter School in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Jordan, from East New York, is marked late if he arrives a minute past the 7:30 a.m. start time, and his teachers talk incessantly about the day he’ll graduate — from college.
“Students come here so that they can learn, and get better and better for state exams and for the future,” said Jordan, who likes math and wants to be a pediatrician. “I feel like they’re a hard-working group of young people.”
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Manuel Rodriguez, 9, who lives in Brownsville, has a very different experience when he walks into his classroom at Christopher Avenue Community School, which shares a building with Leadership Prep.
“Kids are always cursing, they start fights, they don’t even listen to the teachers that much,” said Manuel, who says he peeks longingly at the busy, engaged Leadership Prep floors whenever he can.
“When I go to the charter floor, they’re so quiet. I see them line up two-by-two by the classrooms. They’re all just in their classes and doing their work. That’s why I want to be in that school,” Manuel said.
All across the city, similar patterns exist: two kids enrolled in different schools that share a building, where conditions can range from hellish to sublime.
And who ends up where is often decided by a process that can feel as random as a coin toss. Kids who are admitted to charter schools mostly get their places through lotteries that give priority to families who live in the district.
But parents must seek out privately run, publicly funded charter schools and apply for them separately from district schools, a process that critics say weeds out the neediest families from the charter school pool.
There’s no denying the kids at the district-run Christopher Avenue Community School face more daunting challenges than those enrolled in the charter school upstairs.
Thirty percent of Christopher Avenue Community School students have disabilities, compared to roughly 9% of Leadership Prep’s students. At the charter school, 85% of kids qualify for a free lunch or reduced-price lunch, according to Leadership officials, compared to 94% at the district school.
And a whopping 36% of the district school’s kids are homeless, compared to 4% of Leadership Prep’s students, city officials said.
Christopher Avenue Community School principal Deon Mitchell said the fact that her school serves far needier kids than the charter is the biggest reason for the disparities in student performance.
“Our children have some very unique needs that are very different from what’s represented upstairs at Leadership Prep Charter School,” she said. “That is one of the main differences that account for the difference in the test results.”
At Christopher Avenue Community School, which has 318 students and occupies the first and second floors of the building, just 8% of third-graders tested proficient in math in 2014. At Leadership Preparatory Ocean Hill Charter School, with 486 students on the third and fourth floors, all third-graders passed math — a 92 percentage point difference.
In reading, just 7% of Christopher Avenue third-graders tested proficient in 2014, compared to 80% at the charter school, Leadership Preparatory.
A spokeswoman for Leadership Prep said the charter's network, Uncommon Schools, works hard at reaching the neediest students and Leadership Prep's students are more similar than different from those in the district school.
But Jordan’s dad, Hertz Sannon, a sanitation worker, is thankful that his son attends the charter school. He thinks his son is lucky and he feels bad for the kids in the district school.
“They don’t have the same experience,” the dad said.
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the disparities that can flourish between a district school and a charter school that share a building are on full display at 70 Tompkins Ave.
That’s where eighth-grader Dewayne Davis attends the School for the Urban Environment, along with roughly 60 other students. Dewayne walks to school, following nearly the same route as Chelsea Garcia, 6.
Chelsea heads to her charter school, Success Academy of Bedford-Stuyvesant One, which occupies the second floor and part of the first. At Chelsea’s elementary school, almost all the kids read and do math on grade level. At Dewayne’s middle school on the fourth floor, no students read at grade level and only 3% passed state math exams.
The School of Urban Environment, which opened in 2005, wasn’t supposed to be a dead end. It was one of the small schools created by former Mayor Bloomberg to bring quality education to underserved areas.
Nine years later, Dewayne is one of just a handful of kids making the best of poor situation.
“I like my school. I’m happy here. I don’t know much about the charter school. They’re on a different floor and we aren’t allowed to go there,” he said.
Teachers have praised Dewayne for his ability to fix things — like the classroom whiteboard.
“I’d like to study computers, we don’t have any computers, I bet I could fix those,” the 13-year-old said wistfully.
A floor away, Success Academy charter school has plenty of computers. The school offers Chelsea a very different education than Dewayne’s — but like many charters, it serves far fewer needy kids than the neighboring district school it outperforms.
At Chelsea’s charter school, 10.6% of kids have disabilities and 81% qualify for free lunch. At Dewayne’s district school 30% of students have disabilities and 92% qualify for free lunch or reduced-price lunch, including him. Seven percent of the kids at the charter school are homeless, compared to 20% in the district school.
Chelsea is one of the fortunate ones — but her good luck was the product of parent involvement and a random charter school lottery. Her mom, Rebecca Grullon, was determined to get Chelsea enrolled, and was at her computer waiting to click when online applications first opened.
By comparison, Dewayne’s mom didn’t even know the charter school application existed.
Principal Kourtney Boyd said the School of Urban Environment faces the challenges of the community it serves.
“While there is always more work to be done, I am proud of the work of our faculty, staff, students and families,” Boyd said.
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