Moskowitz's Success expansion set to go deeper into Brooklyn

The city’s school board isn’t set to vote on the last of the Success Charter Network’s 2012 expansion plans until tonight. But plans for the network’s 2013 additions are already well underway.

In a letter sent last month to elected officials and community leaders in central Brooklyn, Success CEO Eva Moskowitz announced that she intends to apply for charters to open three schools in the area in the 2013-2014 school year.

One school would go in District 13, an area of Brooklyn that Moskowitz had originally said would house the school now set to open this fall in Cobble Hill. The two others would go in District 17, which includes Crown Heights and parts of Flatbush.

Already, the tentative plans are drawing criticism. The district manager for Community Board 2, which covers much of District 13, told the Brooklyn Paper that the community would be hesitant to embrace any such plan after Moskowitz suddenly opted out of her plans to open a school in the district this year.

“The board is not prepared to go down that road again,” Rob Perris told the newspaper.

City Councilwoman Letitia James, whose district covers large swaths of both districts, said she has grown wary of co-location battles in public school facilities, something that has accompanied nearly all of the Success network’s school openings.

“I’m not anti-charter, but it would be great if she had her own free-standing school,” James told GothamSchools. “I have an issue with forced co-locations that pit parents against one another and put elected officials in the middle of it.”

The new schools would grow Moskowitz’s network to 15 schools, and more 2013 applications for other areas might well be on the way. Mayor Bloomberg has already said that part of his education agenda for the remainder of his term is to accelerate expansion plans for high-performing charter networks. In his State of the City address, he specifically named Success and another network, KIPP.

Moskowitz has said that she wants to expand the network to 40 schools in New York City. But with Bloomberg exiting office after 2013, that plan could be in jeopardy if the next mayor is not as willing to let charter schools operate in public school space.

By entering District 17, Moskowitz is also signaling that she hasn’t abandoned the idea of opening schools in low-income neighborhoods with large minority populations. Over the past year, controversy surrounding Moskowitz has focused on her swift and aggressive campaign to expand into middle class neighborhoods, including the Upper West Side, Williamsburg and Cobble Hill. Median household income in the neighborhoods that make up District 17 hovers around $40,000, according to 2010 census data, about half that of the Upper West Side and Cobble Hill.

In her letter, Moskowitz wrote that she hopes to retain her vision for racially and socioeconomically integrated schools, as she is doing at Upper West Success. She said the schools would also place an emphasis on serving special education students and English language learners.

“The aim would be to educate all students at the same high level, irrespective of socioeconomic, racial, ethic and/or other status,” the letter reads. “We deeply believe that economically and racially integrated school settings provide important benefits to both students and the community.”

The Panel for Educational Policy voted last month to close two schools each in District 13 (Satellite 3 and the Academy of Business and Community Development) and District 17 (P.S. 22 and P.S. 161’s middle school). Only one of the buildings — P.S. 161 — does not yet have plans for a new school to replace it.

Moskowitz’s letter to local officials is below: