The Million-Dollar Typo Risking Funding for New York City’s Top Charter Schools

“A simple typographical error” could be the reason that the New York state education department rejects $1.5 million in federal funding for the top-performing public school system at New York City, Success Academy, as the feud between the state’s charter schools and its local leaders appears to be heating up. The chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, Virginia Foxx, is scrutinizing New York’s education department for allegedly failing to grant Success Academy the federal funding awarded for Covid relief. The department pointed to an error in Success’s submission, which listed the overall dates of reimbursement as “3/1/2020 – 12/31/2020” rather than “3/13/2020 – 12/31/2020.” That error was “trivial and obvious,” Ms. Foxx wrote in a letter sent last week demanding more information from the department’s commissioner, Betty Rosa. The development appears to be part of a broader feud between charter schools and both the state and federal education departments. Ms. Foxx has previously charged that the Biden administration has “outright ignored” the success of charter schools, a challenge to the traditional model of public schools.“There was a minor typo that the SED is now using to reject $1.5 million in reimbursements that Success has already spent on learning loss relief,” the head of government affairs at Success Academy, Cathleen Sims, tells the Sun. “SED’s job is to reimburse schools for legitimate costs, not to seize on typos as an excuse for refusing to distribute funds.”The typo only occurred on an Excel spreadsheet of receipts that Success created upon the SED’s request. Success’s initial reimbursement submissions in October and November were tagged correctly, and so too were their receipts from vendors.The consequences of the state education department’s inaction will be felt at 31 of Success Academy’s 53 schools, Ms. Sims says, where that money has funded new guidance counselors and teachers as well as tech services like Chromebooks that enabled remote learning at the height of the pandemic.New York City has become a laboratory for the model of charter schools. It currently has about 275 of the schools, which are privately managed yet publicly funded. Governor Hochul has proposed lifting the already-reached cap on the number of charters in the city, which would enable charter applicants in the city to access the 84 charters remaining for the state. Yet she faces tough opposition from charter school critics at Albany.“People have different opinions about the role of charter schools,” a state senator, John Liu, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, tells the Sun. “They were from the outset meant to be a relatively limited part of the school choices for New York City parents.” The statutory cap was established, Mr. Liu says, “to strike a balance between giving parents some measure of so-called choice and ensuring that the city would have enough funding to keep all the public schools open.” The press office of New York’s state education department did not respond to the Sun’s repeated requests for comment for this article.Charter school students, on average, gain the equivalent growth of 16 additional days of learning in reading and six additional days in math compared to their peers in traditional public schools, according to a 2023 study of 1.8 million charter school students by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes. These tuition-free schools are so successful, proponents say, because they teach values, boast strong leaders, and are forced to constantly improve due to local competition. The schools of Success Academy, founded and run by Eva Moskowitz, report ranking in the top 1 percent to 3 percent in math and reading compared to all 3,500 New York state elementary and middle schools.Success Academy is working with federal and state elected officials in urging the education department to respond to its appeal for reimbursement. It’s also asking the U.S. Department of Education to step in. Ms. Foxx is joined in her information request by Congressman Aaron Bean, Congressman Brandon Williams, and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who is the fourth-ranking House Republican.

The Million-Dollar Typo Risking Funding for New York City’s Top Charter Schools

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