#Success Academy delays reopening after being denied access to buildings

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Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy Charter schools, speaking at a City hall conference today.
William Farrington

The Big Apple’s largest charter-school network has delayed its scheduled on-site reopening because the city is barring access to shared buildings for at least another month, the group said Tuesday.

Success Academy planned to begin some in-school instruction Aug. 20, with a staggered schedule that would have students alternating between remote and campus teaching.

But in a statement Tuesday, Success CEO Eva Moskowitz said the city’s position and new state social-distancing requirements amid ongoing concerns over the coronavirus have forced a delay in the reopening of local DOE and charter-school shared buildings for at least another month — so there will just be remote learning for now.

“We are disappointed,” Moscowitz said in the missive. “We miss the kids so much, and we know parents need some relief to be able to work.

“But our students simply cannot pay the price of delay. There are already gross educational inequities.  We were founded to counter them, and so we will launch remotely.”

Sources said the network tried pushing back on the lack of access to the co-located buildings but ultimately determined that it needed to move forward.

Success said it was told that it would not have access to the shared schools till the middle of September “at the earliest.”

The city’s public schools are set to reopen in mid-September with a combination of in-school and remote learning.

For the sake of uniformity, Success said, it will also delay the reopening of its  Hudson Yards location, which it is solely responsible for.

Success Academy operates 47 schools in Brooklyn, The Bronx and Manhattan and enrolls 20,000 mostly low-income black and Latino students.