Riverhead Charter School

Riverhead Charter School gained approval from the NYS Board of Regents Monday to expand to grade 12. The school also had its enrollment limit increased from 850 to 1,244 students over the next five school years.

Traffic on Sound Avenue makes it inappropriate for a school.

The planning board last week approved the site plan of the Riverhead Charter School high school on Sound Avenue, voted to require an environmental impact statement for a 131-acre industrial subdivision in Calverton and set a March 3 public hearing on a proposed drive-in restaurant and retail building on Rt. 58, just west of Osborn Avenue.

Superintendent Augustine Tornatore said 25% of the student population and 22% of the district’s staff did not attend school the last three days, a number which he attributed primarily to COVID cases, isolations and those waiting for test results. 

A proposal for the Riverhead Charter School to undergo the largest expansion in its history garnered both large praise and sharp opposition during a public hearing at the Board of Education meeting on Tuesday. “We are looking to build our pipeline of students organically from the ground up, so we would like for children who start in kindergarten with us to finish in 12th grade with us,” said Charter School Superintendent Ray Ankrum.

The Riverhead Charter School is pursuing a special permit to convert a vacant Northville building on Sound Avenue into a high school. 

Riverhead Charter School students and their families marched with teachers, school administrators and board members in downtown Riverhead today, commemorating Juneteenth and demanding justice for black Americans.

A Juneteenth protest march is set for for 4 p.m. today in downtown Riverhead. It is one of many protests taking place across the country to commemorate the day a Union army general and 2,000 troops brought news of the Emancipation Proclamation to the slave population in Texas, where slaveholders refused to acknowledge the proclamation or the end of the Civil War.

Riverhead Charter school is serving a community the school district has failed. The district responds with misinformation designed to stoke fears and kill school choice.

Emotions ran high at a contentious public hearing Tuesday night on a proposed expansion by the Riverhead Charter School—which has submitted an application to the New York State Department of Education to revise its charter and increase its enrollment capacity from 787 to 1,037 students over the next two years.