Madfloridian's Journal - NY public school students get limited use of school library so 3 charter schools can use it.

Yesterday I read this post by proud2BlibKansan in the education forum.

It really upset me to see a library that the librarian and community had worked so hard to expand was now being in effect turned over to 3 charter schools. The students of JHS 126 have to wait their turn, and their time is quite limited.

Someone posted a video at You Tube about the remodeling of their library. They took great pride in it.

From New York Daily News.

Brooklyn middle school students squeezed out of study space by 3 charter schools sharing building

Students and parents at a Brooklyn middle school are fuming after they were pushed out of their newly spruced-up library by an expanding charter school.

Junior High School 126 kids have severely limited access to the cozy, mural-painted reading spot this year so the three charters sharing the Greenpoint building can use the space for planning, meetings and small classes.

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At JHS 126 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, memo grants its three charter schools the lion's share of access to the library (below), which got an overhaul just last year.

"It's unfair," said JHS 126 parent association President Janeen Echevarria. "Kids need to get in there to get books out to do their reports, to read, to further their education."

Access to the library for more than 400 middle schoolers will be restricted to one side of the space for less than two hours each day, with an extra hour on Wednesdays. Eddie Calderon-Melendez, founder of the Believe High School Network, which runs the charters, said the use of shared space is negotiated every year.

"We figure out what's in the best interest of all the children in the building," Calderon-Melendez said.

Makes it sound like Calderon-Melendez is boss of the public school, doesn't it?

Actually, Bloomberg is in charge of the public schools, and we have Arne Duncan to thank for that.

One of Arne's goals is to make big city mayors in charge of the public school system. He worked to get that for Bloomberg.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan grew up in a school system dominated by mayoral control. He's said he loses sleep at night over Detroit Public Schools. And he's weighed in on New York City's governance structure, declaring that the city's public schools are best left in the mayor's hands.

Now, as if the education secretary doesn't have enough going on, he's wading even further—and more dramatically—into the thorny issue of local control and school governance by declaring that more big-city mayors need to take over school districts. And if the numbers don't rise, he said according to Libby Quaid's Associated Press story, he "will have failed as secretary."

..."The New York Post patted its own back today, hard, for helping the state renew the mayor’s control of the public schools. The surprising thing is that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined in, thanking the newspaper, owned by the ambitious Rupert Murdoch, for its “leadership” and “thoughtfulness.”

New York City newspapers have a proud tradition of waging campaigns both on and off the editorial page, and then congratulating themselves when they hit their marks. But having a cabinet member for a sitting president join the cheering is more unusual.

“I think that must be out of context, that Arne Duncan is giving the Post credit for mayoral control,” the president of the principals’ union, Ernest Logan, said when I called to ask his impression.

So if it sounds a little like a takeover of a public school library....that is because it is just that. And since the students and librarian of JHS 126 are unhappy, we can add the word "hostile" to takeover.