This week PS 9 in Brooklyn became a landmark in the turf struggles over siting charter schools, when State Education Commissioner David Steiner overturned the city's plan to move Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter School into PS 9’s building this coming fall. For the second time in a year, Steiner threw out a city charter school siting because the city had failed to adequately ensure that it would treat fairly all students in each affected school. (Last summer, he nixed the city's plan to expand Girls Prep Charter School in its existing building.)

PS 9, which my two children attend, is an ethnically diverse school in a gentrifying, kid-friendly neighborhood in Prospect Heights. It has many good teachers and a lot of warmth, but also an uncertain status in the neighborhood, as many well-to-do parents have fled to schools in other neighborhoods or lunged to find spots via lotteries. I have two neighbors who have paid, in the form of extra rent, a year’s worth of private school tuition to place their kids in PS 321 in Park Slope. A community survey of Prospect Heights residents in 2004 showed that public schools were the number one negative about the neighborhood.

Is PS 9 second-rate or on the move? Over the past three years, PS 9 parents designed and raised funds for the school building’s brand-new library. The school is getting a new playground this summer. Brownstoner-dreams of a increasingly resource-rich yet diverse school have been bubbling: almost 200 students have enrolled for next year’s kindergarten.

In December, the city Department of Education proposed phasing-out MS 571, a low-performing middle school which shares the PS 9 building, while moving in the charter school. It seemed to many PS 9 parents that the DOE hadn’t planned a workable co-location involving three schools in an elementary-sized building so much as figured everything would work out.

To oppose it, many of us turned our daily routines inside out for weeks or even months. We confronted a massive learning curve in campaigning against it. Living inside the DOE, administrators have a native advantage against parents who want to stop the department’s actions. DOE staff deal daily with school statistics, arcane processes, elected officials and complaints. We were lucky to have some parents who are public relations professionals, graphic designers, teachers, lawyers, and that some of us had enough flexibility to devote time. But so many of the tasks, starting with decoding DOE’s documents, were foreign.

So Steiner’s ruling stupefied us last night: did we just beat the Man? We had fought hard against DOE for weeks on end. We scored some points (gaining media attention, rousing speeches by elected officials, a split vote by the Panel on Educational Policy). But the Man won, as he almost always does. We took comfort that even our losing campaign had helped bring out the PS 9 parent community. It helped show us that we had the resources to build up the school in other ways.

Steiner’s decision provides no certainty that the co-location is finished. The DOE may well appeal the decision. If so, PS 9 parents will try to mobilize again. Many of us are simply astonished that we’ve spent so much time, together, working on this. Yet after all the energy expended, it helps to know, finally, that a senior education official here in New York is willing to weigh our arguments, rather than just rebut them.

Many PS 9 parent advocates are simply astonished that we’ve spent so much time, together, working on this. Yet after all the energy expended, we are pleased to know, finally, that a senior education official here in New York is willing to weigh our arguments, rather than just rebut them.

You can read Steiner's decision here.

UPDATE: In a statement from the press office on Friday evening, the Department of Education vowed to continue their efforts to locate the charter school in the PS 9 building:"We are reviewing all of our legal options and remain committed to co-locating Brooklyn East Collegiate Charter school with PS 9 and MS 571 next year."