Give ’em an A — in hypocrisy.
The Big Apple’s powerful teachers union is being accused of having double standards when it comes to co-locating charter schools in New York City buildings.
The United Federation of Teachers has waged a fierce campaign to block charters from sharing space with public school sites — but not when it comes to one co-founded by the union’s national boss, Randi Weingarten.
University Prep Middle School — a charter co-founded by Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and former head of its local affiliate UFT — was granted more space in a city building last week.
The city’s Panel For Educational Policy — at the recommendation of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration — voted 22–0 to allow the charter to expand in the South Bronx building it shares with the Rapport School for Career Development HS, which serves special needs students, and the Academy Leadership Charter School.
While the UFT often gripes that such moves deprive classroom footage from students and staff in traditional unionized public schools, not a peep was heard from union brass about the University Prep plan, though a union rep from the Rapport School raised objections.
By comparison, the UFT recently filed a lawsuit to block two Success Academy Charter schools from co-locating in city school buildings in Far Rockaway, Queens and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
Earlier this year, the union fought against the co-location of three other Success Academy schools in facilities located in Queens and The Bronx.
The city Department of Education found other sites for them.
Success Academy, founded and headed by former Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, is the city’s largest charter school network with 49 schools and 20,000 students.
It’s teachers are not represented by the UFT.
The UFT or their allies have sued Success Academy 20 times before — never successfully — to block co-location, according to the charter school network.
“This blatant hypocrisy shows that the UFT’s opposition to letting charter schools use underutilized school buildings has always been about protecting its schools from competition, not a sincere concern for children,” Moskowitz told The Post Sunday.
Weingarten sits on the governing board of University Prep, formerly called Green Dot, and its teachers are represented by the union. Another former top UFT official and Weingarten lieutenant, Burton Sacks, serves as treasurer of University Prep’s governing board.
The staffers at the overwhelming majority of the 275 charter schools operating in New York City are not represented by the UFT, and they are exempt from the union contract.
In a February 28 impact statement, the DOE said the Jackson Avenue school building utilization rate would be between 86%- 97% after handing over more classrooms and space to University Prep.
“There will be sufficient instructional and administrative space [in the building] in X155 to accommodate UP Middle, ALCS, and P754X@X155 pursuant,” the DOE said.
The UFT has claimed charter co-locations cause crowding.
But University Prep’s expansion will result in a higher utilization rate at the shared building than virtually all of the contested Success Academy co-locations that the UFT has opposed. The utilization rate for those buildings with Success Academy in them were projected to be 64%, 76%, 79%, 87% and 94%, according to the DOE’s own analysis.
During the April 19 PEP meeting, the head of University Prep boasted of the charter school’s ties to the UFT.
“We’re also a union school. We were started in conjunction with the UFT and every member of our teaching, counseling and. Operation Staff, as a proud member of the UFT,” David Patterson, the founding principal, said before the panel’s vote.
“We’ve worked tirelessly over the past four years with. The other two schools on our campus, and we’re very proud of having a great relationship with them.”
University Prep’s executive director Andrea D’Amato testified that “with Randy Weingarten on our board ….we continue to partner productively and collaboratively with our, with the union to which our teachers, our counselors and also our operation members.”
But one union rep in the building, Christina Gavin, did object to putting more University Prep middle school students on the same floor as special needs students, calling the move “very foolhardy and unsafe” at the PEP meeting
She said her students need to “breathe and de-escalate.”
“What will now prevent them from walking into the area that the University charter staff and students occupy … unless you create more restrictive barriers, which in turn can escalate and trigger the students?” she asked.
A rep for Weingarten had no immediate comment.
A UFT spokesperson, asked about criticism of a double standard on co-locations, said, “We are opposed to the DOE pushing through any co-locations without giving real thought to the space needs of the existing school and to the new state law requiring smaller class sizes.
“The law governing co-locations specifically requires the DOE to do an analysis of the impact on the students already in the building. We look to the school communities as to whether that analysis was properly done.”
The UFT also is fighting to block Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to lift the regional cap set in state law, so more charter schools can open in New York City.
Weingarten was more open-minded about charter schools in the early days, saying in 2000 that traditional public schools should be given the same flexibility as charters on rules managing outside the basics such as salaries, pensions, due process and public safety.
The UFT even had its own k-to-8 charter school in East New York, Brooklyn, but it closed in 2015 for performance.
The University Prep Charter HS was founded in 2008, while the middle school opened in 2019.
