Anatomy of a Walkout at Hearing Over HSA 3 Charter Expansion in Public Space

Harlem activist Bill Hargraves points out the shoddy methods in how the DOE runs a so-called public hearing and then leads a walkout.

Concerned Educators Network Comments:

There was a walkout at the DOE sham hearing to expand Harlem Success Academy in a Public School building on Monday June 21, 2010. Those sham hearings have become a pattern around the city set by the Bloomberg/Klein DOE bureaucracy. They always say, “we come to hear your concerns” only to go back and proceed with their own agenda anyway, namely, close down schools, undermine, underfund, and sabotage them in a systematic way. The New York State Education Law makes the provision for these hearings where communities get to make their voices heard. However, after watching several of these hearings around the city, we have discovered a major flaw in the law. There is no oversight as to the real implementation of the law from beginning to end. In other words, there is no oversight to make sure the DOE honestly and respectfully give weight to the communities concerns in the decision-making process. There is never any change in the DOE’s original proposals, no adjustments that show they really take into account anything members of communities present at those hearings. Therefore, those hearings are pure sham, pure fraud. They become meaningless until such a time when concerns of communities really carry some weight in the decision-making process. Bill was able to expose some of the mechanisms of this sham and fraud at the “hearing”.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7bb1OrfbAE

For background info see:

Mosaic Prep/HSA Charter Invasion Follow-up