Let the Green Charters Wither and the Chain Gangs Bloom

A clip from Michael Winerip's latest, which focuses on the benefits of the well-connected corporate charterites of the Bloomberg dominion, where advantage goes to Wall Street, i. e., City Hall acolytes.  While progressive independent charters like Growing Up Green struggle to find space and pay rent, KIPP and the Moskowitz KIPP wannabes, with hundreds of millions in Wall Street tax write-offs, pay no ($0.00) rent. My bolds:  

. . . .The city pays a charter $13,527 per child. To increase his revenue, Mr. Greenberg set his average class size high, at 28 students per class. He would prefer to have 25, but those three extra children in each classroom — a total of 27 additional students at the school — generates $365,229 in revenue, which literally pays the rent.

Rent is not something charter chains worry about. KIPP, the nation’s biggest (99 schools) and richest ($160 million in corporate grants over the last four years) chain, pays no rent for its seven charter schools in the city. Nor does Eva Moskowitz, who has opened seven Success Academy charters in Harlem and the Bronx. Achievement First has 10 charters in Brooklyn that do not pay rent, andUncommon Schools has 12. Citywide, 67 percent of chain charters receive free space in public school buildings, compared with 51 percent of independent schools.

“I look at every dollar of every oil and electricity bill,” said Mr. Greenberg, whose school in Long Island City, Queens, is flourishing. There are 700 applicants for 90 spots for the next school year. The school blends Mr. Greenberg’s progressive philosophy with a testing regimen. Every six weeks, students take assessment tests on laptops. Michelle Hessey’s science class is raising seven baby chickens, and the kindergarteners are caring for their teacher’s pet, Walter the duck.

To improve the ratio of teachers to students, Mr. Greenberg uses his reading, music, art, science and gym teachers to assist classroom teachers each morning for language arts and math lessons. “If I didn’t have to pay rent,” Mr. Greenberg said, “I’d have more money for science, resource materials, books, more teachers.”