Charter vs. Charter in a Shared Harlem Building - SchoolBook Two eighth grade students sat at a table in their school's hallway, trying to concentrate on their speech therapist's iPad screen. Elevator doors opened in front of them. Students walked in and out of restrooms less than five feet away. This was the regular "classroom" for therapy at Harlem's Opportunity Charter on West 113th Street, where more than half its 420 middle and high school students have special needs. It's distracting, because you hear a lot of people talking," said 13-year-old Senay Mejia, "and I'm trying to work back here." Making matters even more frustrating, one floor below are two empty, locked classrooms - one for dance, another for speech therapy. Those rooms belong to Harlem Success Academy 4, another charter school in the building with some 300 kindergartners through fourth graders. In the recent past, most of the contentious battles over school space in the city have erupted when a charter school has tried to share the same floor with a traditional public school. In this case, the space crunch is between two charter schools, both of which are very different models. "It's charter versus charter here," said Vice Principal Shantè Spivey about the space battles. Read Rose D'souza's full report on SchoolStories.org.