Hopefully this will be the last post on this for a while, but regarding the battle between the NESTies and the Rossies, the Department of Education has helped the Ross Global Academy Charter School find a location where they won't be harassed next year. I don't know where that will be (especially since many public charters deal with some form of passive-aggressive harassment in the schools where they share space.)

Here's the kicker though: NEST+m, the elite school for PGT (precious, gifted and talented) students will get to keep their underutilized building to themselves, but their principal (the one who questioned whether a top school official was qualified to scrub her toilet) will be removed and faces insubordination charges.

This seems like the best possible resolution at this point.

1.) Ross wins because no public school should have its students, teachers, and parents subjected to what they would have gone through if they were in the NEST+m building on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Hopefully, the school will now be able to finally concentrate on a smooth opening.

2.) NEST (which engaged in some amazing grassroots activism to fight this) wins because they get to keep the charter school out of their building. Hopefully, the school will understand that the best way to protect themselves going forward is not by hiring publicists and lawyers but by making the most efficient use of the building they have invested so heavily in fixing up. That means offering seats in their high-quality school to as many additional NYC students as humanly possible without compromising quality.

3.) Joel Klein wins because he gets to put this whole mess behind him in a way that doesn't send a message to other public schools that all they have to do is whine a little bit and they can keep other public charter schools out. In this case NEST's principal may have saved her building, but her job is now in jeopardy. (The Chalkboard noted she was toast here.)

4.) That said, NEST Principal Celenia Chevere sort of wins too. You don't turn a school into something as successful as NEST by being stupid. She knew exactly what she was doing when she started getting personal in this fight, so she clearly made the calculation long ago that she wasn't going to be heading back to NEST next year. (She said herself she didn't care if she got fired.) So she saved her school from outsiders and was prepared to handle the ramifications. She threw the Hail Mary pass and it worked out for the best.

Hopefully, neither NEST nor Ross will suffer in terms of academic quality as a result of the time-consuming skirmishes.

PS - If any charter schools are looking for a leader with guts who will go to the mat for their kids and school community, you should try to snatch up Chevere while you still can!