Rule 1 when I taught: Never keep a child from going to the restroom. Seems that's changed now.
Eva Moskowitz and her Success Academy Charter schools are power players in New York education. She is known for moving her charter schools rent-free into existing public schools and taking the space she wants.
"We have a gap to close," says Paul Fucaloro, director of instruction. "I want the kids on edge, constantly."
(Photo: Yolo Monakhov for New York Magazine)
Once she even blamed accidents by the children on the fact that there weren't enough bathrooms to go around. She did not mention that was her fault.
The "Eva" Empire has expanded to the Bronx, bringing a Harlem turf war for school space into the borough. Eva Moskowitz, the City Council member-turned-charter school CEO, has opened two new academies from her charter school franchise, Success Charter Network, inside Public School 30 in Mott Haven, and PS 146 in Morrisania. And Bronx Success Academies 1 and 2 are already ruffling feathers with district school staffers.
....Staffers at the district schools say their new neighbors have booted them from classrooms and stairwells, while sharing the libraries, cafeterias and playgrounds.
...."Staffers at PS 30 say Bronx Success 1 sealed off the third floor to its staff and students - even taking over a stairwell - so Success students don't mingle with their district school neighbors.
"We are not allowed there," said one PS 30 teacher, noting the classrooms taken over by Success were formerly used for tutoring children with special needs. Now we have to do therapy sessions in the hallway."
This last week the New York Times had an article about their high scores and polarizing tactics.
One teacher complained that she was expected to announce all of her students’ scores on practice tests, by asking those who had scored a four to stand up, followed by those with a three and then those with a two. The teacher and her colleagues persuaded their supervisors not to make students with a score of one stand up, but those students were still left conspicuously sitting down, she said.
At one point, her leadership resident — what the network calls assistant principals — criticized her for not responding strongly enough when a student made a mistake. The leadership resident told her that she should have taken the student’s paper and ripped it up in front of her. Students were not supposed to go to the restroom during practice tests, she said, and she heard a leader from another school praise the dedication of a child who had wet his pants rather than take a break.
“I dreaded going into work,” the teacher, who now teaches in a public school, said.
Other former staff members also described students having wet themselves, in some cases during practice tests. Two former staff members who worked at Success Academy Harlem West, a middle school, in the 2013-14 school year, said that they recalled having to go to the supply closet to get extra underwear and sweatpants, which were always on hand, for students who had wet themselves.
More on this issue from The Business Insider last week.
In NYC's top charter schools, students are reportedly so scared to take a break they wet their pants
Students at Harlem Success Academy, a free, public elementary charter school in New York.
In a statement sent to Business Insider, a Success Academy spokesperson said, "Success Academy has students go to bathroom before a test, just the way parents do before a long road trip. Sometimes, as happens at schools across America, kids have accidents."
My comment on that: Some kids can't go when ordered to do so. Some kids do need to go during testing. When did Eva get to change the rules on that?
The Insider says the NYT is not the first to report such a problem.
In spring 2013, a commenter on a website on Success Academy Cobble Hill, who described themselves as a parent of a former first grade student, wrote that their child developed problems with going to the bathroom at the charter school:We were hoping for academic rigor. Instead we found a school that was overly strict, cold, and insensitive to the overall needs of the young children entrusted in their care. My son wet his pants for the first time since he was three years old because the school did not let him go to the bathroom when he asked. The school was incapable of recognizing that he had also developed anxiety around going down the hall to the bathroom.
The explanation of Eva Moskowitz is not very acceptable.
Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, disputed these reports, telling The Times that students are allowed to go to the bathroom during practice tests even though doing so isn't encouraged. These policies are in place, she explained to The Times, "to mimic the environment of the actual test."
"We have plenty of kids who don't always prepare adequately ... very occasionally there are accidents, and we get that it's uncomfortable for the student," Moskowitz told The Times. (my comment...how does one "prepare adequately" for not using the restroom in times of great stress??)
The Success Academy CEO also attributed the "accidents" to "the challenges of sharing space in public school buildings, which meant the restrooms were sometimes several floors away," The Times reports.
That's because the education leaders in New York allowed Moskowitz to move in and take over.
The education "reformers" and the charter school magnates need to be accountable to the parents, teachers, and especially the students.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hate to tell you but I recently talked to tea party person, and they would have nodded their head and agreed with everything you said.
keep their eyes open at the same time? 
Have to laugh, otherwise I will go insane.
I had some that misused this, but I would call the parents and they usually talked to the kid. No perfect answers, but the rules were we were to let them go. One of my primary teachers used to say sarcastically if we would like the class to wait. Never knew how to answer that one. 
Those kids will be scarred for YEARS! 
And that Paul Fucaloro is the one who said they were turning them into "little test-taking machines."
One of those corporate changes in which they want no regulation at all. 
He also doesn't approve of special education.
At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”
The school is not a social agency? Doesn't believe in special education? Well, not surprisingly neither does Arne Duncan apparently.
Even if the teacher is inconvenienced, or anyone else is....it's just wrong.
hahahah!!!
She deserved it!
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one.
I wasn't doing it to be funny or mean. My mother would have beat me senseless if I had peed my pants (well, my dress, as this was in 1962). It just happened to be funny to my classmates and it made me feel a little better about what I did. No one actually saw me bare-butt, I moved the can behind her desk. So that was smart
I did get in trouble at home for doing it, my parents said we were both wrong. I don't remember what the punishment was, so it couldn't have been too bad. I still have the reputation for the girl who peed in the wastebasket in 1st grade. It showed up on Facebook when I made some of those old classmates "friends".
