Riverhead Charter School seeks permit for portable classrooms at high school, as it works to find permanent home for larger facility

Riverhead Charter School’s application to site three portable buildings at the charter high school site on Sound Avenue will be scheduled for a public hearing, members of the Riverhead Town Board agreed Thursday during a work session meeting with charter school representatives.

But the decision came only after board members grilled Riverhead Charter School Superintendent Raymond Ankrum, the school’s attorney Kimberly Judd and engineer Alek Kociski about the placement and use of the portables, and how long the structures would be used as classrooms on the site. 

Riverhead Charter School, which leases the current high school, is working to find an alternative site on which to build a new, larger high school, Judd said. The current high school building — originally the Northville School — is not large enough for the number of high school students Riverhead Charter School needs to accommodate, Judd said. 

As town officials already know, Judd said, the school is in talks with the owners of “two promising properties” and hopes to reach an agreement with one of them soon. “We’re very close,” she said.

Meanwhile the charter school needs the portables to provide classroom space for its high school enrollment, she said.

The school previously sought to build a new high school on vacant land adjacent to the current high school, but withdrew that plan in response to major backlash from area residents. 

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Ankrum said the charter school no longer has any intention of maintaining its high school on Sound Avenue after the reaction of the community to the now-withdrawn plan. 

“We’re not welcome there,” the school superintendent said. The school would much prefer to locate its high school closer to its main campus, he added.

The applicant’s engineer said placement of portables on the current site had been “the transition plan for the development” on the adjacent site. It had been discussed with planning department officials last year, when the site plan for the adjacent site was under discussion, Kociski said.  

“The end goal has changed, but these temporary portables were always part of a temporary action plan,” he said. The transition to a new building is expected to take four to five years, he added. 

The charter school has six years remaining on its lease of the former Northville School property, Ankrum said, in response to questioning by Council Member Ken Rothwell. 

“Six years is temporary in your eyes?” Rothwell asked. “You’re using a temporary thing for a long-term plan,” he said. 

Rothwell asked why the school couldn’t simply limit its enrollment to a number it can accommodate in the current high school until it actually has the facilities in place to accommodate more students.

Ankrum said the charter school has already limited its enrollment, but the demand for high school space is the result of children already being educated at the charter school moving up. 

“As of now, we’d have 40 or 50 kids that would be displaced if we didn’t have these trailers next year,” Ankrum said.

Then school should not have enrolled them, Rothwell told him.

The students entering the high school started in first grade, Judd countered. 

“So what was your plan nine years ago?” Rothwell asked. “You can’t put the guilt on us for displacing kids,” he said.  

Rothwell suggested the school  look for ways to find more room for students within the existing building, perhaps by relocating administrators out of the building. Ankrum said that is not feasible because the administrators in the school building — the principal and counselors— need to be physically on-site.  

“I don’t want to see the trailers there for six years,” Rothwell said. 

Senior Planner Greg Bergman, who reviewed the school’s special permit application with the board, said the portables will be located behind the existing building and will be screened from view.  See: planning department staff report.

In response to questions regarding the traffic impacts of increased enrollment at the high school, Ankrum said the number of school buses to and from the site each day will be increased from four at present, to six or seven, morning and afternoon. Traffic impacts will be minimal, he said, since all trips are not at peak traffic times on Sound Avenue. Students cannot drive their own vehicles to school. There is no student parking allowed, he said.

The Riverhead Charter School, founded in 2001 as a K-6 school, added grades 7 and 8 in 2013. The State Board of Regents granted an expansion to add secondary grades 9 and 10 in 2018, and grades 11 and 12 in 2022. Its current charter allows a maximum enrollment of maximum K-12 enrollment  of 1,126 students in the 2024-2025 school year, increasing over the following two school years to a maximum of 1,244 students in 2026-2027. 

Riverhead Charter School is one of the longest-operating charter schools in New York State. It is one of just three charter schools in Suffolk County and operates the only charter high school in Suffolk. Its high school opened its doors in September 2022 and will graduate its first class this year.

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Riverhead Charter School students are enrolled from multiple school districts in eastern Suffolk, with approximately 61% coming from the Riverhead Central School District, according to the school’s most recent external auditor’s report (fiscal year 2022-2023). Its principal source of revenue is tuition paid by the “home” school districts of the students, as required by state law.

The school’s main campus is located on Middle Country Road in Calverton, where its elementary and middle school classrooms and administrative offices are located. 

One of the possible sites now being eyed for expansion is a tract of land adjacent to the main campus. The property owner is working to get final approval of a subdivision, Judd said. If the parties agree on terms, the Town Board would have to approve a zoning code change to allow the charter school use at the site, which is presently zoned industrial.  

All board members said Thursday that they support the charter school. Rothwell complimented the job that was done with the renovation of the existing building there. 

Merrifield said the school is “amazing” and “the students are wonderful.”

“I love what you’re doing,” Waski said. “I appreciate the charter school. You’ve got a wonderful, wonderful school,” she said.

Supervisor Tim Hubbard said when he recently toured the building, he was “very impressed with the set-up and the students.” 

But Hubbard and other board members were irked that that school had already placed one of the portable buildings on the Sound Avenue property without first obtaining any town approvals.

“It just bothers me that you went ahead and put one of them up there,” Hubbard said. “I’m getting tired of people doing that in this town — ‘I’ll do this and pay for it later,’” Hubbard said. 

“I don’t like when people come in and bully their way through. You’re not a good player when you do that, so I have a problem with that,” Hubbard said.

“If we give you permission now for three and I have to think what else are you going to do without permission,” the supervisor said.

The placement of the building without permits violates town code and subjects the applicant to a site plan fee that’s double the usual amount, Bergman told board members.

“It’s not in use,” Judd interrupted.

That doesn’t matter, Bergman said, because the trailer was still placed at the site without approvals.

Each of the three portables proposed for the site is 960 square feet. Two will be used for classrooms and one will be used for administrative offices, according to a proposed site plan submitted to town planners by the applicant. The approximately four-acre site on the south side of Sound Avenue, is located in the Agricultural Protection Zone and is currently improved with a 4,690-square-foot, two-story building, erected in 1916 as the Northville School and in use today as the Riverhead Charter School high school. Placement of the temporary portables on the site requires a Town Board special permit and site plan approval from the Planning Board.

The Town Board at its May 22 meeting is expected to schedule a public hearing on the special permit application.

Editor’s note: This article has been amended to correct an error in the date of the next Town Board meeting, which is scheduled to take place on May 22, not May 21.