On the charter renewal, Albany owes the public more than a hearing on a document it couldn’t review

Last week, when the Riverhead Board of Education held a hearing providing the public with the opportunity to comment on Riverhead Charter School’s renewal application, it did so without making that document available to the public, as it is would otherwise be required to do by the State Open Meetings Law.

But the district couldn’t comply with the State Open Meetings Law because it did not have a copy of the charter school application.

That’s because the State Education Department didn’t provide the district with a copy of the application, nor did it post the application on its own website before the hearing. And the State Education Department never responded to RiverheadLOCAL’s request for a copy of the document.

That meant residents’ opportunity to comment on the application was an opportunity to comment on a document they could not read.

The publicly available notice supplied only the bare outline: a proposed five-year term, from July 1, 2027, through June 30, 2032; kindergarten through grade 12; and enrollment of 1,244 students in each year. No proposed charter revisions were listed.

That is notice that an application exists. It is hardly enough information to evaluate it.

A renewal application should allow the public to examine the school’s record, its plans and the case it makes for another five years of operation. Previously published audits and other school information can help inform that discussion. They cannot substitute for the document the state is actually reviewing.

The resulting hearing gave residents an opportunity to express their views about charter schools. And Riverhead teachers, joined by teachers from other districts, staged a dramatic display of opposition coordinated by Long Island Against Charter Schools, whose logos appeared on bright yellow T-shirts worn by most members of the overflow crowd at Riverhead Middle School. It was a great opportunity to publicly bash charter schools for the perceived damage they do to public education. Speakers at the hearing repeatedly decried the tens of millions of dollars charter schools draw from local school district revenues in annual tuition payments. They also demanded more transparency by charter school governing bodies and more accountability of the schools.

Again, though, the local school board has no authority to control any of this. Changes to the state’s charter-school funding and oversight laws must come from Albany.

Assembly Deputy Speaker Phil Ramos (D-Brentwood) nevertheless addressed the Riverhead board as though the renewal were a decision for its members to make. He also mistakenly identified SUNY as the Riverhead Charter School’s charter entity.

A senior member of the Assembly’s Democratic leadership should understand which government body has authority over the application he is discussing.

Ramos gave a rousing speech at the hearing, but he directed his appeal to the wrong government body. The Legislature, meanwhile, can change the laws governing charter schools and how they are funded. It also has oversight of the State Education Department.

When questioned afterward about the missing application and changes to charter-school funding, he offered no concrete legislative plan to address either problem. He expressed his opposition to charter schools. He also said they should receive state funding, before describing a model in which families would pay for a private-school alternative.

Charter schools are public schools under New York law. Whatever alternative Ramos favors, the immediate question concerns the public-school system the Legislature continues to authorize and the financial obligations it places on local districts.

Opposing charter schools does not answer that question.

Ramos’ proposed legislation imposing local approval requirements and referendums addresses who would have a say over charter-school applications. It does not resolve the separate question of how tuition is calculated or how the resulting financial obligations affect district programs, staffing and taxpayers.

Those funding rules are choices written into state law. They can be changed through state legislation.

Democrats control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office. That does not mean every proposed change would be easy or command agreement. It does mean Democratic leaders should explain what they support, what they will introduce and what they will work to enact.

They should also ensure transparency by the State Education Department in this process. There is no reason that charter school renewal applications should not be made part of their publicly available “profile” pages on the SED’s website.

And it should go without saying that the department should provide the application to the district so that the district can post it on its website prior to a public hearing, as required by the State Open Meetings Law, with any legally necessary redactions. The department should not leave districts or residents to chase down the document — a fool’s errand, as it turned out.

Without that disclosure, of what use is a public hearing — other than to provide a local venue for venting by taxpayers and teachers who are angry about the current funding scheme for charter schools in New York. It is damaging to local school districts. According to figures cited by the president of the Riverhead Central Faculty Association, the Riverhead school district has paid tuition to the charter school totaling nearly $74 million over the last five years.

The state’s lack of transparency in this matter is appalling. It created charter schools. It established laws governing how they are funded. It oversees their operation. And yet it — by law — leaves to the school district the responsibility to hold a public hearing on a renewal application the state doesn’t even provide to the district or its taxpaying public.