The NY Daily News, in findings similar to what the paper discovered several years ago, notes that while some NYC public schools are severely overcrowded, many others have plenty of leftover space to create rooms for teacher professional development and spacious offices for counselors.

Despite some conspiracy theories floating around that the reason Chancellor Joel Klein is offering space to charter schools in underutilized facilities is because he wants to destroy public education (i'm not kidding, some people really believe that is the case,) there are some basic issues of efficiency and public interest in play here. NYC officials have an obligation to make the best use of public space, and allowing public charter schools to use available space is one way to do that.

The Chalkboard understands, however, concerns raised by both the charter schools and their host schools that the process needs some serious work. Right now, it doesn't seem fair to either school to ride the roller-coaster that DOE requires to pull this off. But understand that this is a problem that is solvable with something short of banning charter schools from using underutilized space. Reasonable people can find reasonable solutions to this one.