You may have heard about the documentary called Brooklyn Castle in which a team of public middle school kids from NYC win the national high school chess championship. It's a true story and has been written about in the NY Times and elsewhere.
A few days ago, a friend sent me this blog post saying that funding cuts in the NYC public school system are putting the IS 318 chess team at risk. At the end of the post, the Diane Ravitch writes:
About a month ago, Eva Moskowitz held a fundraiser for her Success Academy charter school chain and raised $7 million
Wouldn’t you think that just one of those hedge fund managers would adopt the chess program at I.S. 318?
Maybe we can take the politics out of this situation. I am not a hedge fund manager but I am a huge fan of Eva and what she is doing with Success Academies. And I am also a fan of IS 318 and what they are doing. There are plenty of ways to support the children in the public school system and one is not at the expense of the other, no matter what Diane thinks.
So I have connected the IS 318 chess team with DonorsChoose and we are going to run a campaign to raise the $20k they need to operate this coming year. And the Gotham Gal and I are going to do some sort of match to get this thing going.
I will be back to you all once we get this all figured out. I hope you are as excited about this as I am.
