Today we received the 3d or 4th mailing in the last week from the Harlem
Success Academy, looking to enroll [his son’s name].
This really surprises me: A. How do they get the $ to do direct mail & find out what kids are going to start kindergarten?
B. Why are they direct mailing to White couples on 102nd?
Really curious if you have any thoughts or insight - -
Juan’s column in which he showed how she picked out the space she wanted for her schools in existing zoned public schools, which Klein then tried to illegally close for her benefit, is here.
In her emails to Klein, Eva confides her desire to engage in saturation mailings, supposedly to promote “choice”, but really to build up her waiting list; which then she uses as a political weapon in their battle to lift the charter cap.
This may be one reason DOE is making parents register for Kindergartens earlier at public schools, so they can capture their addresses and make them available to charter schools in time for their lotteries.
Though Eva told the NY Times she spends $325,000 on recruitment, a cursory examination of the school’s financial statements shows that her spending on recruitment is actually much more.
Of course, no district public school could afford this sort of marketing campaign; and if they did, they would be accused of wasteful spending.
To the left is Eva’s message to Klein, dated Dec. 21, 2007, in which she complains about the fact that DOE only allows “one mailing to elementary and pre-K families” and that she wants to be able to mail promotional materials 10-12 times to each family.
To the right and below is the response from Michael Duffy, the head of the DOE charter school office, written the day after Xmas, in which he pledges cooperation and tells her she can always call him, day or night, on his cell.
Her mailings and advertising, financed through contributions from her hedge-fund supporters and billionaires like Broad, resemble the saturation mailings and domination of the air waves that New Yorkers have been subjected to by our billionaire mayor, each time he runs for re-election, sparing no expense.
Just as he has bought his way into a third term, the hostile takeover of public education by charter schools has nearly unlimited financing to back it up. No one could argue that this is an equal contest, when all the advantages are being provided to the charters; not to mention Klein’s relentless promotion of charter schools, which is priceless.