UFT Questions Move
Klein Opens Tweed To Charter School

By HOWARD MEGDAL

An embattled charter school has found a home - just two floors away from Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein's office in the Tweed Courthouse across from City Hall.

JOEL I. KLEIN: Gives charter school a home.

The Ross Global Academy, which had been slated to move into New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math's building on the Lower East Side, ended up two floors below the Department of Education headquarters after NEST parents and staff protested and filed suit to stop the move.

UFT: Telling About Klein

United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who has often said that charter schools put unfair obstacles before Teachers wishing to organize, said through a spokesman, "Well, I guess DOE couldn't get another school to house them, but it certainly shows where the Chancellor's priorities are."

DOE had sought to remove NEST's Principal, Celenia Chevere, a 33-year veteran of the school system, because of her opposition to placing Ross Global inside her school. A spokesman for the department said she would have faced disciplinary charges if she hadn't retired.

Ms. Chevere allegedly moved students from room to room during DOE visits to give a false count of the school's population, forced Teachers to assign anti-Ross letters addressed to Chancellor Klein as in-class essays, and gave extra credit to students who attended anti-Ross rallies.

The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents Ms. Chevere, had no comment on the allegations.

Academy Bumped

The move will require a new home for the City Hall Academy, an initiative of Mayor Bloomberg's which provides students from around the city a two-week course on the workings of city government.

"We made a commitment to find a home for the Ross charter, and we are honoring that promise," DOE spokeswoman Kelly Devers said in a July 20 interview. "City Hall Academy is a program we're all committed to, and we will find a home for it, too."

Ms. Devers said she expects the placement of Ross in Tweed to be a "temporary, one- or two-year solution," but a welcome one. The school will serve 160 students in kindergarten, first, fifth and sixth grades.

"It's great for us - the whole point of City Hall Academy was to remind us bureaucrat types why we're here," she said. She added that the Chancellor will not visit the school more than any other, however.