Success Academy’s Bronx Charter Hand-Off to CEO’s Husband Faces State Pushback, Charter Cap Looms

An influential charter school leader’s attempt to transfer a Bronx campus to her spouse puts New York’s strict charter cap—and its leaky enforcement—under the microscope.

At a recent meeting in Albany, New York State’s Board of Regents found itself passing judgment on an unusual familial transaction. Eva Moskowitz, the combative doyenne of Success Academy—the city’s largest charter school network—had proposed transferring one of her Bronx schools not to a faceless education conglomerate, but to a network founded by her husband, Eric Grannis. The Regents referred to the application as a “circumvention of the cap”—criticisms that, one suspects, echo through many a city conference room where public funding meets private ambition.

The technicalities matter. New York’s statutory limit on charter schools is fiercely guarded by union-backed lawmakers and traditional public-school advocates; the city has hit its ceiling, with 59 Success schools operating within a limited and jealously rationed cap. Opening a fresh charter without legislative blessing is off-limits. In response, Success and others have grown adept at bureaucratic hopscotch: restructuring, merging, and, as in this case, repurposing existing charters to squeeze every possible school from the available quota.

The transfer in question concerns Success Academy Bronx 3, an elementary school in Mott Haven. Documents state the school would be operated under a new Strive Charter Network, founded and led by Mr Grannis, a veteran of the sector. Mr Grannis’s record includes helping incubate new charter initiatives, lending a veneer of pedagogical seriousness to the plan. But the optics—wife hands campus to husband—are awkward, to put it politely.

The process illuminates the patchwork of accountability mechanisms in New York’s charter sector. The State Education Department urged the Regents to reject the plan, not simply over the whiff of nepotism, but because they argued it undermines the legislative charter ceiling. However, the Regents’ rejection is mostly for show: real power resides with the SUNY Board of Trustees, the charter’s official authorizer, which had already approved the transfer in October. SUNY may now simply send back the proposal unchanged, thumbing its nose at the state’s education establishment.

The main existential threat posed by such manoeuvres is not merely regulatory: they threaten to erode public trust in charter sector governance. Charter advocates, often quick to invoke market discipline and innovation, risk appearing cavalier about oversight. “This is a joke,” complained Board member Brian Krist. Such sentiments are not rare among parents and educators who sense that well-connected operators can take liberties denied to ordinary citizens.

The episode portends more friction between city and state, as charter school foes and advocates jostle for advantage. To critics, Moskowitz’s gambit exemplifies how the cap has devolved into kabuki theatre rather than a substantive check on school proliferation. To supporters, her resourcefulness—if not her familial favoritism—demonstrates how arbitrary limits hinder education reformers.

Economic implications abound. Charter school growth, in theory, increases consumer choice and puts pressure on traditional schools to improve. But in New York, sector expansion has recently flagged. Success Academy itself has faced stagnant or, at times, shrinking enrollment—a rarity in a system once marked by fierce lotteries and mile-long waitlists. In leaner times, the incentive to spin off underused charters rises, especially as political resistance in Albany shows no sign of ebbing.

Shadows and sunlight in the charter sector

The underlying tension in the city’s approach toward charters is mirrored nationally. New York’s cap has long made it an outlier among big American cities, many of which have loosened restrictions. Yet New York also leads in high test-score charters: Success routinely touts robust results, with its students regularly besting citywide public school averages. The paradox is clear—quality may cluster where quantity lags.

Elsewhere, scandals involving self-dealing and cozy relationships have bedeviled charter networks, from Ohio to California. New York’s iron triangle of authorizers—the Regents, SUNY, and the State Education Department—was meant to provide insulation. Instead, it offers overlapping lanes of accountability, and when these bodies disagree, as now, the rules blur into little more than guidance for the bold.

Importantly, while the familial aspect may capture headlines, the broader reality is less salacious. Regulatory architecture always adapts to pressure points. If charter proponents deem the cap unfair, their instinct will be to test its seams. Albany lawmakers could strengthen prohibitions on such transfers, but the odds of deep structural reform remain puny while current political incentives persist.

The greater irony may lie in charter politics’ yawning gap between legislative heat and parental demand. Despite dips at some networks, citywide appetite for high-performing schools endures: for all the rhetoric about public versus charter, what most New Yorkers desire is simply a better classroom for their children.

We find more wry amusement than outrage in the spectacle. Messrs Moskowitz and Grannis are hardly the first power couple to test the bounds of bureaucratic patience. Rather than decrying their maneuver as uniquely egregious, state officials should reconsider whether the present regime—caps, convoluted transfers, overlapping boards—serves students or merely frustrates them.

By treating the charter sector as a closed shop, New York politicians may unwittingly foster precisely the opacity and deal-making they decry. The city would be wiser to clarify the rules, police conflicts of interest vigorously, and permit modest charter growth where genuine public demand exists. Anything less only invites more back-room shuffling—and, quite possibly, another round of marital transfers.

In education as in politics, sunlight—preferably accompanied by a clear set of rules—remains the best disinfectant. ■