Ten minutes later, the school's operations manager, a 2007 college graduate named Alex MacMullan, ran into Moskowitz in the school's main office and vowed to have the light changed by the end of the day.
Manly said the attentive operations support allows him to spend more of his time meeting with students and teachers. Harlem Success parents marvel that their principal can greet every single student by name at the door each morning. Manly also observes at least two teachers while they work every day, collecting ideas for how to help them improve.
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At Eva Moskowitz's Harlem Success Academies,"knowledge saturation" is the name of the game.
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"What Jim has created is as close to educational nirvana as I've ever seen," Moskowitz said that day, sitting with Manly.
Letting that thought sink in, she paused and added, "I can't believe we're having to fight our way into doing these things."
The Road Ahead
On the day of the hearing, some staff at P.S.194 said they didn't like the fact that most charter schools' teachers are not represented by unions. One even pleaded with the DOE to "save our jobs."
But the loudest complaint among P.S.194 supporters has nothing to do with Harlem Success or the fact that its teachers aren't represented by a union.
Cleary even declared her support for Moskowitz's approach to school improvement. "I run it like a charter school," she said of P.S.194. "Eva Moskowitz and I are no different in this regard: We believe in academic excellence, and we believe in choice."
The problem, declared Morgan Curry, who lives across the street from P.S.194 and whose mother is a longtime employee there, was that, in its efforts to give families access to a better education, the Bloomberg administration had failed to consider a key constituency: the families themselves.
"It's not what you're doing, it's how you're doing it," she said. "You do not come into our community and tell us what to do."
For Rice, it's about keeping what they have already built—the PTA that she is so dedicated to, the chess program, the book club—and giving it a chance to grow. "All schools need that opportunity to thrive, and I do not think that 194 has had that opportunity," she said.
These complaints climaxed in a full-blown lawsuit filed last month by the teachers' union and the NYCLU, along with parents who felt they hadn't been properly consulted. Faced with charges that replacing zoned schools with charters represented an unlawful redrawing of district lines, the DOE last week backed off closing P.S.194 and the other schools—though only, officials said, to avoid "confusion" created by the lawsuit. Next fall, Harlem Success Academy 2 will either stay put or share space with P.S.194—which could still face closing in the future.
For her part, Cleary never gave up her hope of turning her school around from the inside. "Yes, a failing school should be closed, or you change the leadership," she said at the hearing, addressing a line of city officials taking notes. "But you don't know me, and you don't know what we've been busy doing."
"So let us find a solution," she concluded, her voice shaking with tears, "and let us not hurt one another doing it."
