Build a Charter School, Get Sued by the Teachers Union
Wall Street Journal| Tunku Varadarajan
“If you’re looking for proof that teachers unions don’t care about the interests of schoolchildren,” argues Tunku Varadarajan, you can find it in the impoverished Bronx neighborhood of Soundview.” This is where FAIR Advisor and Harvard Alum Ian Rowe (MBA 93) and Joyanet Mangual are building Vertex Academies, a new charter high school with 80-85% of its students from low-income families, mostly black and Hispanic. The teachers union is suing Vertex and trying to block its opening.
As a charter management organization, Vertex will serve as an extension of feeder schools for some of its students. “The union alleges that Vertex isn’t an extension of an existing charter but a new school masquerading as an extension. New charters are prohibited in New York City because of a cap imposed by state legislators at the union’s behest.”
Rowe says “the UFT lawsuit is meritless, given that other organizations such as KIPP, Achievement First and Success Academy have extended their charters to open New York high schools in the same manner.”
Varadarajan reports that “The number of charters statewide is fixed at 460, of which no more than 290 can be in New York City. There are 50 unused charter licenses in the state, but the law prohibits their transfer to the city, where demand outstrips supply…as of 2019…81,300 applicants were competing for 33,000 seats..[and] only 29 charter schools in New York City offer ‘a guaranteed pathway all the way to 12th grade,’ Mr. Rowe says.”
Vertex is an International Baccalaureate school serving 80%-85% from low-income families, mostly black and Hispanic. As Varadarajan reports, the school is designed to have “old-fashioned rigor, both educational and moral.”
