NYC charter school bursting at seams fights uphill battle against ‘anti-charter’ bias

A New York City charter school is making headlines as its administrators attempt creative solutions to the school’s spacing issues made worse by a hamstringing city law.

In an exclusive profile, the New York Post reported a student choir at Success Academy Charter High School of the Liberal Arts on Manhattan’s East Side has been forced to rehearse in school hallways, with individual students practicing their instruments in storage closets.

The newspaper also noted students are using a classroom filled with weights as a gym to train for their athletic events.

“We’ve gotten creative with solutions,” shared Kenneth Zhang, Success Academy principal. “We have office spaces, hallway spaces that kids are able to use to have class. And again, they make it work, but it is a lot of kind of shuffling, maneuvering things that we really, you know, shouldn’t have to do because the kids deserve the space to have class.”

The institution belongs to a family of charter schools operating 57 Success Academy locations across four boroughs of NYC and serving approximately 22,000 students.

Despite facing disadvantages in comparison to schools operated by the NYC Department of Education (DOE), educational outcomes for students of Success Academy far outpace other students in the city.

In 2024, for example, Success Academy students averaged an 83% passing rate for the English Language Arts (ELA) standardized exam, while the average for students for DOE-operated public schools was 49%.

The same was true of standardized math testing, with Success Academy students averaging a 96% pass rate compared to a 53% pass rate for DOE schools.

In a Monday op-ed, Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, argued co-location with a charter school leads to “achieving improved academic performance, greater student engagement and school safety, and higher expectations for students.”

Representatives for Success Academy attribute spacing issues to political bias among NYC education leaders, as a citywide cap on opening more charter schools prevents existing schools from splitting into new locations. 

City leadership has previously scrapped plans to co-locate additional Success Academy locations in buildings housing public schools, largely due to pressure from anti-charter stakeholders such as the teachers’ union. 

“While the teachers’ union has fought to curtail or end co-location for charter schools through lawsuits and pressuring city administrators, academic studies have shown that NYC district schools, when co-located with a charter school, benefit from co-location,” Moskowitz wrote. 

“It’s time for the city to do more than just to assess and report on its school buildings’ capacity and utilization – let’s do something about this inequity and ensure all school students, district and charter, have equitable space to learn.” 

Image courtesy of Success Academy