100s of Bed-Stuy School Kids Without Metro Cards During Spat Between Charter and City

By Kings County Politics News Service

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — One of the city’s top performing charter school networks is again having a war of words with the de Blasio Administration — this time, over the NYC Department of Education’s failure to issue subsidized MetroCards a month into the school year.

According to Success Academy Charter School officials, 2,624 students at 22 of the network’s schools still haven’t received their subsidized MetroCards — costing families, many of whom are low-income, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Success Academy Bed-Stuy 1 and Success Academy Bed-Stuy Middle School — two of the city’s top performing schools in last year’s statewide math and English tests — are among the schools hardest hit, where 502 children still don’t have MetroCards.

By law, students at all NYC public schools, including charter schools, are eligible for subsidized bus and subway transportation based on their grade and how far they must travel to school. The DOE delivers fully and partially paid MetroCards to schools at the beginning of the academic year so that children in need can use them.

But Success Academy officials allege entire shipments of the cards to Success schools have gone missing, and that others were sent to the wrong location, or are incomplete. Staff at the schools say they have relentlessly tried to track down the missing cards over dozens of emails and phone calls to the DOE — many of which have gone unreturned. Success Academy officials have demanded a meeting with top officials in the DOE Office of Pupil Transportation to resolve the widespread problems.

“This is yet another example of a huge schools bureaucracy being unresponsive to the everyday needs of working parents,” Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz said. “We shouldn’t have to beg for the MetroCards that our families deserve and need.”

DOE spokesperson Toya Holness countered that Success Academy officials are responsible for making sure they complete all the necessary paperwork before the MetroCards are shipped each year. As of Sept. 19, the DOE has provided Success Academy approximately 9,785 MetroCards for this school year, Holness said.

“The request from Success Academy for an additional 2,624 cards is pending until they provide the DOE with all required verification," the DOE spokesperson said. "Our requirements have not changed and are the same for district and charter schools."

Holness added: “We are dedicated to providing students with safe, reliable transportation, and work closely with families and schools to ensure students are receiving the services and supports they need. As soon as we receive the required documentation from schools needed to verify students’ eligibility for the program, the DOE issues MetroCards to schools."

The DOE currently provides more than half a million students in NYC with MetroCards.

The brouhaha over Success Academy's missing cards is only the latest salvo between the de Blasio Administration and the charter-school network. They have also battled over issues regarding universal pre-K and the co-locations of some of their schools.

A version of this article originally appeared on the Kings County Politics news site. Lead image via Google Maps