The Department of Education proposed a location for Success Academy in Far Rockaway after a three-year-long battle between the city and charter school parents on Friday, March 6.
“I fought tooth and nail for a school for my son, and this morning I got to tell him that he won’t have to leave Success Academy next year,” said Giselle Valiente-Sukh, mother of a Success Academy student said in a statement.
According to a DOE’s website, the agency proposed two co-location sites for the school’s 227 middle school students, the first at M.S. 53 Brian Piccolo where the Success Academy is currently located and I.S. 238 Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Hollis. But parents have only won the battle not the war for space since both sits are temporary with space only being allocated for Success Academy students for one and two years respectively.
At a recent town hall in Elmhurst, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that the department would continue to work with Success Academy to find a long-term location for Far Rockaway students.
The proposed locations come a year after Success Academy rejected the DOE’s previous proposal, Our Lady’s Catholic Academy, a shuttered Catholic school in Ozone Park, for being too small, too dilapidated and too far of a commute for students living in Far Rockaway. The DOE will vote on the new proposed locations at the next Panel for Educational Policy meeting on April 22.
